THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 29, 1995 TAG: 9512290594
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
For every holiday and birthday for the past 23 years, Jeanne Johnson's family has put a special gift on her baby sister's grave. This year's Christmas present - a miniature sleigh with a tin Santa inside - was perfect.
But just a few days before the holiday, someone ripped that gift from the ground at the child's grave at Olive Branch Cemetery.
``We were all together for Christmas,'' Johnson said Thursday. ``We have a lot to be thankful for. It's really insignificant in the big scheme of things, but it was very hurtful.''
Jacqueline Leigh Farmer drowned on June 3, 1972, a month and a day before her fourth birthday. Johnson was 17.
Losing the youngest of five children was a tremendous blow to the Portsmouth family, Johnson said.
``We do different things different years,'' Johnson said. ``We've made things, bought things. It's almost like shopping for a gift.''
The gifts are later removed from the cemetery by the family.
Johnson said she had hunted for something different this year. She then settled on the 2-foot-long sleigh from a local craft store. She bought the tin Santa separately.
The family hoped to suspend time by leaving presents a child would love.
``We try to keep things that are whimsical,'' Johnson said.
Along with a poinsettia and a small Christmas tree, the sleigh was a fitting decoration for the holidays. Johnson said her mother liked the sleigh when she first saw it. But she warned her daughter:
``She said, `Somebody's going to take it.' Don't take it out there,'' Johnson recalled.
Johnson said she believed no one would dare take something from a child's grave. But on Christmas day she learned from her brother that she was wrong.
Johnson had left the gift Friday morning. When her brother visited the grave Saturday afternoon, the gift was gone.
She drove out to the plot Monday afternoon, but only the poinsettia, a small Christmas tree and four wire coat hangers that had held the sleigh in place where left.
It was devastating.
``Her picture was on the tombstone, so if they bent over to remove this they had to see her face,'' Johnson said. ``I just can't imagine somebody's conscience.''
Johnson thought maybe her mother had taken the sleigh to protect it from thieves. She called her on a cellular phone from the cemetery, but her mother did not have it.
``She was crying, and I was crying,'' she said. ``It just ruined our Christmas.''
Johnson then searched the graveyard.
``I looked in trash cans. I looked to see if somebody had maliciously thrown it away or had moved it to another grave,'' she said.
The family placed a newspaper ad Thursday. It read:
``STOLEN SLEIGH. Taken from child's grave, Olive Branch Cemetery. Wicker with wrought iron runners - Christmas arrangement with tin Santa. Did You Take Home or Receive as a Gift? Call 484-9502.''
And in a letter to the editor, delivered Thursday night, Johnson had some thoughts for anyone who might have been given the stolen sleigh: ``If you received this as a gift from someone, I want you to realize the moral character of the individual who gave it to you.''
The ad sparked a call from another parent whose child was buried at the cemetery, Johnson said. The man said that during the same weekend, someone had stolen a small angel he had atop his daughter's grave.
This was not the first time someone has vandalized her sister's grave, Johnson said. A few years ago, the small nursery-school picture was smashed.
She said she contacted cemetery personnel about the sleigh, but she had not yet told police. The sleigh cost less than $30, but money was not the issue, she said.
``To steal from a baby,'' she said. ``it just doesn't make sense.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
L. TODD SPENCER/The Virginian-Pilot
Jacqueline Farmer's grave at Olive Branch Cemetery in Portsmouth.
by CNB