FRUITPORT, Mich. — Hundreds of veterans are buried inside the Fruitport Pine Hill Cemetery. Many of them have plaques with their names and the branch of service they served in. On Wednesday, FOX 17 showed you one family's experience, in which they said that their loved one's plaque was stolen.
Now, there is an effort underway in the community to make things right.
“For someone to take that away, it's just really upsetting,” Shelly Pryzbylek said. “Just what was the reason behind it?”
Pryzbylek's father's gravestone had a plaque with his name, the branch he was in and the war he served. However, she explained that it had been recently stolen.
“We thought it was my dad's grave at first was the only one. And then we started to notice, hey, there are some ones that are kind of bent a little bit, and you can look where they were trying to get it off the back of it, but they couldn’t,” Pryzbylek added.
On Thursday, a couple members from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3734 were out looking to see what plaques may have been stolen.
“Myself and Andy Peck from the VFW are going to walk around the cemetery and make sure that there are no more gone or if they are we'll identify those and work with the families to replace them,” VFW Quartermaster George Kotkowicz told FOX 17. “So, this is a potential missing headstone marker. It has evidence of previously installed cement to hold the bolts. It's obviously got the shadow of the market here with some of the corrosion and weather effects around it.”
Fruitport Township tells FOX 17 a worker came out at the cemetery Thursday morning. They explain that by their count, eight plaques are missing.
“So as part of my son's Eagle project, he inventoried every single veterans grave on the premises. So we have a very detailed map of where those graves are. And the names are listed here on the wall,” Kotkowicz added.
Shelly is grateful for the VFW and their efforts to make it right for her family.
“I'd be very thankful. Just knowing there are places for veterans that still watch out for veterans that have passed or are still alive, and knowing that they care a lot about making sure it's right.
Kotkowicz is working on getting new plaques up.
“There's an automatic process in there to apply for replacement stone or marker depending on which which device they have. And that should be here by Memorial Day,” Kotkowicz added.
The quartermaster asks for the person or people who did this to return these plaques here at the cemetery by Sunday and no questions will be asked. If not he's going to the police with the information he has.
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