Letter: Young victim from 1963 deserves gravestone

If you’ve ever traveled between Woodstock and McHenry via Route 120, you’ve probably passed by Ostend Cemetery without realizing it. It’s a tiny plot of land, old as the hills and full of weathered headstones marking the final resting places of those who settled here long before McHenry was McHenry. But resting here, too, with neither name nor tombstone, are the bones of a boy whose story is no less mysterious today than it was almost 60 years ago.

On April 24, 1963, he was pulled from the cold waters of the Fox River just short of the McHenry Dam. Wrapped in a red blanket, his little body had been beaten, covered in bruises and lacerations. He was African-American, about 7 years old – not even old enough to replace the baby teeth he’d lost.

Yet despite the savage battering he had probably endured shortly before his death, it hadn’t killed him, nor had he drowned in the river. He died of bronchopneumonia, common in young children, but can be fatal if left untreated.

Both the Sheriff’s Office and the County Coroner spent weeks searching for anyone who could identify him. Missing persons reports were scoured. Nobody had reported a child of his description missing from home or school. After a week at Justen & Son Funeral Home, he was sent to Chicago in the hopes that, just maybe, someone knew where he belonged. Black newspapers in the city offered $1,000 for information that would lead to his identification.

Eventually, he was returned here for burial. But in a show of compassion that still remains at the heart of this community, a small group of volunteers made sure he was laid to rest with the kindness he hadn’t been afforded in life.

Many here do not know his story. In fact, there is almost no official record of him in the county archives.

If the people of this county were generous enough to put an unknown child to rest in 1963, can we not expend the effort today to uncover his name and story? After 58 long years of anonymity, he deserves a gravestone, a tangible reminder that says “I was not forgotten.”

Amanda Helma

McHenry