I started writing this blog, over 10 years ago. My parents were both still living and so were all 4 of my mother’s siblings. My father, James Ray McLeland, had only 1 brother, Robert Warren McLeland, who had died tragically in 1984 the victim of a hit and run bicycle-car accident. Being a genealogist I had made note of the fact that Uncle Bob died near Sandpoint, Bonner County, Idaho and that my father had been appointed his administrator since he a) died intestate and b) never married and had no known offspring.
And then, in December of 2017 my father died in Brevard County, Florida, where I was born and where my father had lived since 1957. Dad left a will appointing me his executor. And intermittently over the next several months my sister and I began the task of cleaning out the house he’d lived in since we were very young. 50+ years of a life stuffed into a 4 bedroom house takes a lot of cleaning out, picking over and thinking about. It took us several weeks, sometimes with the help of my daughter or son, sometimes alone. Dad was something of a pack rat. Not really a hoarder but he kept things – the receipt from the hotel where my parents spent their first honeymoon night, dozens of cameras and their associated accessories (Dad was a professional photographer and worked at the Kennedy Space Center for 30 years as a photographer) and decades worth of family documents, paystubs, tax records and so on. Nearing the end of the work, I opened a smallish cardboard box and inside was a Styrofoam box labelled with the name of a mortuary in Sandpoint, Idaho. In neat handwriting at the bottom of the label was Robert Warren McLeland Feb 1925 – Aug 1984.
Uncle Bob. All these years I’d thought Uncle Bob was interred in Sandpoint, Idaho or perhaps with his parents in Brown County, Kansas. Instead here he was, sitting in my hands. Needless to say I was surprised. Just a couple of weeks ago I’d made arrangement for Dad’s ashes to be interred at the Cape Canaveral National Cemetery based on his Korean War service. But I had no idea what to do with Uncle Bob’s ashes. Clearly Dad had had no idea either – after all he’d had them sitting in the house, in their original shipping box for 33 years.
My daughter came to my rescue. She recalled that we had a file folder of documents Dad had assembled when he was administering Uncle Bob’s estate. And in that folder were Uncle Bob’s discharge papers from his service at the very end of World War II. Robert Warren McLeland was a US Navy Veteran. So I contacted the Cape Canaveral National Cemetery again. And a few weeks later Robert was interred just across the aisle from his brother J. R. McLeland. His death date is obviously and wildly out of sequence with the rest of the burials in Columbarium A, Section A3, Row D.
Hence the puzzles for future genealogists – Robert Warren McLeland never lived in Florida (although he did own investment property there at the time of his death.) And in 1984 the Cape Canaveral Cemetery did not exist (it didn’t open until December of 2015.) How in the world did his remains end up in this cemetery in this state?