Житель Лувеленда установил памятник на могиле солдата Первой мировой войны, пролежавшего без надгробия более 100 лет

In late 1921, 24-year-old Charles Sylvia Norcross moved to Loveland and took a job at a local pharmacy. A native of Nantucket, Mass., Norcross had been an Army private and served in World War I. His stay in Loveland would be brief. In January 1922, he fell ill and died within a matter of days. Without close family nearby, Norcross lay in an unmarked grave in Loveland Burial Park for more than 100 years. Until Loveland resident Gina Rutz made it her mission to honor his service. Last year, Rutz successfully applied to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for a marble headstone to place at his grave, finally giving the young veteran a permanent marker. “It’s such a heartbreaking story,” she said as she stood by the new marker Thursday. “His poor, widowed mother is in Nantucket and he’s just gone.” Norcross is one of three veterans in Loveland’s cemeteries whose unmarked graves Rutz has helped identify and mark since beginning her search a few years ago. She has found five more still without markers, their graves spanning more than a century of Loveland history. A lesson in service Rutz’s commitment to veterans stretches back long before she began searching Loveland’s cemeteries. Her father spent nearly four decades in the Army, serving in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War before retiring as a colonel in 1973. Along the way, he took his family along on postings across the world including to Turkey and Germany. “I grew up playing in the streets of Pompeii and the ruins of Greece and Rome,” she said. But her childhood also exposed her to a much different side of military service. As the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular, Rutz remembers seeing some of that hostility directed at returning service members, including her father. “I was just a kid, and people were calling my father a babykiller,” she said. “It was then I understood what I had to do.” Decades later, that commitment followed Rutz to Loveland. After she and her husband moved from Akron in 2019, she joined the Namaqua Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and eventually became chair of its Veterans Committee. Among her responsibilities is the chapter’s annual Wreaths Across America initiative, part of a nationwide program to decorate veterans’ graves each December. It was while researching Loveland’s cemeteries for that effort that Rutz began to realize just how many veterans were buried there. To date, she has identified more than 1,100 between Loveland Burial Park and Lakeside Cemetery — considerably more than had previously been recognized. ‘These guys deserve more respect’ That includes the eight who are in unmarked graves, the first of whom she discovered by accident. “That’s what got me into this,” she said. “I was looking for a headstone and realized I was standing on a grave without one. So I decided these guys deserve more respect.” Finding the graves, however, is only the beginning. Before Rutz can apply for a VA-issued marker, she has to assemble enough documentation to prove both the veteran’s military service and where he is buried. That can mean piecing together information from cemetery records, genealogical sources, obituaries and military records, sometimes reaching back more than a century. For some of the more recent cases, she also works with members of the local VFW to complete the process. “I have to jump through hoops like you wouldn’t believe,” she said. So far, that work has paid off three times. Along with Norcross, Rutz has secured a marble headstone for William Clary, a Civil War veteran who died in 1905 and is buried at Lakeside Cemetery. She also secured one for Jackson Pittington, another Civil War veteran buried at Lakeside whom Rutz described as “a real character.” “He went on leave and didn’t come back,” she said. “I think he went off and got drunk somewhere. But he eventually did come back and served three months without pay.” Of the remaining five veterans Rutz is working on, two — Morris Doran and Richard Spencer — also served in the Civil War. The others served more recently, including U.S. Navy veteran Richard A. Dion, who died in 2021, and World War II Army Air Corps veteran Paul Goodrich, who died in 2024 at age 102. Those more recent cases can be more complicated, Rutz said, because surviving relatives may still be around. Before seeking a marker, she tries to locate family members to make sure they don’t object. “I really want to make sure I don’t step on the family’s toes,” she said. Her goal is to have markers installed for all five before next Memorial Day, then honor the veterans together with a dedication ceremony. After spending countless hours learning who the men were, Rutz said she doesn’t think of them simply as names on a list anymore. “I really get to know these guys and their life stories,” she said. If you have information that could help Rutz, she can be reached at 720-557-4413 or [email protected].