Cemetery’s error leaves a daughter angry

Gail Teach skipped Thanksgiving with her daughter in Texas so she wouldn’t miss her mother’s birthday. She never missed her mother’s birthday, not in life or in death.

On Nov. 26, she headed to Riverside National Cemetery, as she does every year, to sit beside her parents’ grave and quietly grieve. She brought a stuffed reindeer for her mom -- who would have been 81 -- and a small pumpkin and an American flag for her dad, a veteran.

But when she reached the spot, something wasn’t right. The headstone was there, but the names were different. Teach, 53, frantically paced row after row of granite markers searching for her parents’. Then she returned to the original site and sifted the soil under the stone to see if it had been freshly dug.

“I went to the supervisor and said, ‘Hey, did you guys dig up my mom and dad’s grave?’ And he said no, and I said, ‘So why is there another tombstone on top of it?’ ”

The supervisor then admitted that although her parents were still buried in the same plot, their stone had been removed, ground up and someone else’s marker put in its place. Teach began to cry. He apologized and said the cemetery would provide a new stone for her parents’ grave.

Distraught and angry, the Pomona woman demanded to know why anyone would grind up the headstone.

“I screamed and yelled, and that didn’t get me any answers,” she said. “I cried and cried, and that didn’t get me any answers.”

Teach had visited the grave in early October and everything was fine.

When she asked to speak to cemetery director Gil Gallo, she was told to write him a letter.

“This is not some small matter. It’s a huge mistake, but they don’t think they have to respond,” she said recently, standing over the bare patch of earth where the headstone had been. She had decorated the dirt with two long-stemmed roses. “I just want to know what happened, and they just blow me off.”

Cemetery officials admit they made a major blunder. They said it was the first of its kind in the 30 years since the memorial park opened, and it has prompted them to reevaluate their training procedures.

“The worst thing that can happen at a cemetery is putting the wrong person in the wrong grave. The second worst thing is putting the wrong marker on the wrong grave,” said Jim Ruester, cemetery spokesman. He also said Gallo would be happy to speak to Teach personally.

Riverside National Cemetery is the busiest of the 125 national cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. There are about 8,000 burials a year there, with 180,000 veterans and their family members interred at the 931-acre facility.

With those kinds of numbers, Ruester said, mistakes are inevitable.

In this case, he said, a replacement tombstone had been ordered for another grave but was placed at Teach’s parents’ site after employees failed to check that the names matched.

“The engraver put the wrong section number on the tombstone, and our people didn’t check it like they are supposed to. They have received administrative action that could range from verbal counseling to suspension,” he said. “We recognize there is a problem and we are working to correct it, including making sure our staff is up to date with their training. Procedures are being reviewed to make sure everyone is on the same page.”

Ruester said the cemetery uses work-release prisoners on weekends to destroy old markers when new ones or replacements are ordered.

“It was an honest mistake, and we have apologized,” he said. “A new stone should be in place by Tuesday.”

That doesn’t make Teach feel any better. For one thing, she liked the old stone. She also wonders about the other marker that sat on her parents’ grave. Did someone grieve over the wrong body? Were the family members of that person ever told of the mistake?

“That really creeps me out,” she said. “I think this could be going on all over this place.”

Ruester said he didn’t know if the other family was contacted.

“This is very unusual,” said VA spokeswoman Jo Schuda. “We don’t know of any other case where a good stone was taken off and another mistakenly put on. We have had mistakes on headstones such as engraving errors, but this hasn’t happened before. We are very sorry about it.”

Charles W. Teach, who lived in West Covina and Lake Elsinore, died in 2004 and was buried with military honors. He served in the Army during World War II and later was a paramedic. He was laid to rest beside his wife, Betty, who died in 2002.

Gail Teach said she was especially close to her mother. They worked together at the South Hills Country Club in West Covina.

“My mother worked the cantina, and I served lunch in the ladies’ card room,” she said, tearing up. “I come out here every year, rain or shine, on her birthday. My daughter wanted me to come to her house in Texas for Thanksgiving, but I said, ‘No. I won’t miss coming here on my mother’s birthday.’ ”

Teach visits the grave site at least once a year, often more than that.

When she comes, she sits and talks to her mom.

“I tell her how life is going now and how she has another great-grandchild,” she said. “I get a sense that she is listening. This is all I have left of them now, but I don’t think it will ever be the same.”

Despite the cemetery’s assurance that this was an isolated incident, Teach has her doubts.

“I think people should come out here and check the graves and see if their loved ones are still here,” she said. “You never know.”

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david.kelly@latimes.com