A dozen people gathered at the Ulster County Veterans Cemetery in New Paltz on a damp December morning to bury Bruce J. Carroll, but none of those present had ever met him. In the 40 years since Carroll’s death at the age of 40 in 1983, no one had come forward to claim his cremated remains. Carroll, the former owner of Woodstock’s Mountain View Apartments, might never have found a final resting place if it were not for the efforts of advocates at Wiltwyck Cemetery in Kingston.
Little more than a year has passed since Wiltwyck Cemetery received the unclaimed ashes of 36 people from Lasher Funeral Home in Woodstock, which closed in 2021. Some remains, like Carrol’s, had languished there for decades. Matthew Sirni, superintendent of Wiltwyck, wanted to know how this happened, where the remains were meant to be and how to find a way to honor them.
“Each one of these is a person,” says Sirni. “It's very easy to fall into the habit of thinking it's just a name or it's just a number. But each one of these was a person who lived, who made an impact on someone, who was loved by someone. So, that for me is a motivation. This was an individual that shouldn't be forgotten.”
Sirni incorporated any existing details into a spreadsheet and enlisted the help of part-time employee Hannah Speregen. Their research began in June of 2023 and they soon acquired a volunteer, Kathy Wade. “I was helping a friend bury her Vietnam veteran boyfriend, whose cremated remains were in her storage unit,” says Wade. “So I offered to come by here one day to get his cremation certificate. When I happened to mention to Matt that this gentleman had been in a storage unit, that's when Matt told me he had taken these 36 cremated remains from the funeral home.”
Wade asked Sirni if there was anything that she could do to help. “It touched me,” she says.
In subsequent months, the team managed to find information on four of the 36 people. Speregen, who manages social media and marketing for the cemetery, searched for obituaries and articles online, while Wade engaged in some old-fashioned detective work. Her efforts involved a lot of cold calling, talking to strangers, and even occasionally getting hung up on.
One person they found a home for was Linda Walter, a Woodstock-based illustrator and cartoonist. Speregen discovered articles on Walter and interviews with her and her husband, Jerry Walter, because initially they worked together on the 1940s-comic strip Susie Q. Smith. “On the spreadsheet for Linda Walter it read: ‘Woodstock Manor,’” says Wade, referring to the supportive housing facility for those with mental illness.
“So I called Woodstock Manor. The woman who runs the place answered the phone and said she remembered Linda, who had been one of the residents in the `80s when her parents owned the place. She's the one who told us that Linda was a cartoonist, because if you Google the name, a hundred Linda Walters come up. Then we could zero in on the fact that she was a cartoonist. As a result of that phone call, we found out she already owned a plot in the Woodstock Artists Cemetery. She owned a plot and the deed was found. Everything was paid for, even the money was there to open the grave. So, that was our first burial. Her work was beautiful.”
Walters was a talented artist whose comic strip was syndicated in many newspapers and ran for several years. Yet somewhere along the line, because Walter did not have living family members, there was a disconnect. “That’s what we do,” says Sirni. “We find these missing pieces to the puzzle." They also discovered details about a Woodstock school teacher who died over 100 years ago. It’s the oldest case they have to solve. “I was able to find a little poem that she wrote that was published in the New York Sun,” says Speregen.
Another artist they discovered was Cushman Parker. “Cushman Parker did three covers for the Saturday Evening Post,” says Speregen. “And covers for Good Housekeeping. His art was akin to Norman Rockwell. It's very much a similar style, and if you Google him, his work still comes up in images. It's really beautiful artwork.”
Parker died in 1940 and his wife sold their Woodstock house in 1943, then she just seemed to disappear. “We can't find anything about her,” says Speregen. “But I just recently found his father's plot in Worcester, Massachusetts. So, I'll keep digging. Here he is, with this group of 36. He was a nationally known artist. How the heck did that happen? His drawings are amazing.” Parker’s work includes a 1917 poster for the war effort, telling children not to eat wheat, to save it for the soldiers.
According to Sirni, it’s no longer as common for remains to be kept at a funeral home. In New York State, family members who authorize a cremation must now accept responsibility for the final disposition. “In years past, it was very common and most funeral homes have dealt with it at some point or another,” says Sirni. “About two years ago, we started offering a service to the funeral homes that we would take them off their hands, so that they are in a safe place in our receiving vault.”
Sirni hopes to honor everyone on the list with a ceremony. Trying to find information on Bruce J. Carroll was not easy. “I had already run his name by our veterans agency,” says Wade. “He wasn't in their database. I already looked into whether or not he had an autopsy. His records were not found.”
She thought she might have to give up, but with the help of a friend she eventually found Carroll’s service record in St. Louis, Missouri, which then led to Carroll’s overdue burial in the Ulster County Veterans Cemetery. Since Wade could not find a photo of Carroll for the ceremony, a picture of the USS Forrester, the ship he served on, held a place of honor.
Along with Sirni, Speregen and a corps of veterans from the Kingston-based Ulster County Veteran Services Agency, Wade attended the ceremony and read a poem she wrote for Carroll. It’s not the last funeral the trio hopes to attend but it’s a rite they perform with reverence and a sense of purpose.
“When we first accepted that group of cremated remains at that time, I figured if we solved one or two of these, that would be great,” says Sirni. “With Kathy and Hannah together it's unbelievable how well they're doing in solving these mysteries and getting these people to their proper resting place.”
Ideally, a connection will be found for everyone on the list, but if not, each individual will still find a final home. “That’s important,” says Sirni.
