BOULDER, Colo. — Dustin Boyd, in Boulder, never thought his decision to dig up a backyard garden during quarantine would end in mystery.
“We’ve been in the house for a while, but the back corner had an old garden that had since been taken over,” Boyd said.
So he started digging out rock and came across a rectangular piece of granite.
“When I flipped it over – it was a grave marker with a gentleman’s name on it a World War II vet,” he said.
The marker reads the name Alexander Shaw and lists his status as a veteran of the U.S. Navy in World War II. Shaw died in January 1986.
“I’d hate to think that this veteran’s tombstone was for some reason in our backyard and the family was never able to buy another one, I mean who knows,” Boyd said.
He and his wife tried to do research on veteran, but his name is relatively common. So they reached out to Next with Kyle Clark.
We searched for Shaw’s name on FindAGrave, a website with a database of gravestone photos taken by volunteers across the country. Shaw’s gravestone was listed at Green Mountain Cemetery, not far from Boyd’s house. He was listed as buried next to his wife Iona, who passed away in 1998.
Next was unable to find obituaries or records for the couple to contact family members.
Kim Bridges, owner of Green Mountain Cemetery, sent her crews out in search of the grave marker for Shaw. They found it intact.
“It is a VA (Veterans Affairs) marker so it is issued by the government to every veteran,” Bridges said.
She isn’t sure how the duplicate stone ended up in Boyd’s backyard, but she suspects it may have been flawed when it was created in 1986.
“A marker will come to the cemetery for the veteran’s burial and it could be damaged and that’s probably what happened to this one,” Bridges said.
She said the cemetery usually disposes of the stone or donates it.
“You can see how it’s chipped on the front there,” Boyd said examining the stone.
He’s not sure what he’ll do with it, hoping he might be able to find some family members who might like to hold on to it.
“I’d just hate to think this thing is here and we’ve got it and somebody might want it,” he said.
If you know the Shaw family, email steve@9news.com.
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