Cemetery couldn't find man buried in 1951 until relative turned to Ted

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Roger Stewart has been thinking about a headstone for his mother and her husband for a long time. Stewart told ABC13's Ted Oberg that his mom's husband, technically Roger's step-father, passed away on Nov. 26, 1951.

His mother passed away in 1983. They were buried, along with Stewart's aunt, in the family plot, but no headstone was ever placed.

This year, though, Stewart decided it had been long enough. It was time, he told ABC13, to get a headstone. It should've been easy since all three of them were supposed to be next to one another in three of the six family plots at Paradise Cemetery in northwest Houston.

But then Stewart told ABC13, "(The cemetery) didn't show that he was buried there."

Stewart said managers at Paradise Cemetery couldn't confirm his mother's husband was in the plot. When Stewart pressed, he said he had a tough time getting answers.

"They wouldn't answer me. They wouldn't answer the funeral home. So I decided to get in contact with (ABC13)," Stewart said.

We tried to get answers from the cemetery, too, without a lot of luck at first. We put Stewart in touch with the Texas Department of Banking, which regulates Texas cemeteries. A letter from those regulators eventually got things moving.

The cemetery agreed to open up the grave his mother's husband was supposedly in, but the answers were inconclusive given the passage of 68 years.

After the Turn to Ted team visited Paradise Cemetery, the manager called Stewart herself and gave him a definitive answer he needed.

"I watch Channel 13 all the time," Stewart told us. "You know, you always get stuff done."

The partial answers and some old files from 68 years ago gave Stewart enough of the answer he was looking for and now the headstone is on its way and scheduled to be placed next week.

"I'm getting a headstone," Stewart said. "They gave (us) permission to go ahead and put the stone on there."

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