MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee family grieving the death of a World War II veteran was shocked to discover moments before his funeral that someone else was buried in his grave.
“There were no technical difficulties. They got another body buried in daddy’s grave,” James Pharr, son of Thomas Cleveland Pharr Jr., told WHBQ-TV. “They done buried somebody who wasn’t supposed to be there.”
Thomas Pharr, 96, died in Memphis on Oct. 10, according to his obituary.
WWII veteran and retired Memphis Fire Captain was buried in the wrong grave. https://t.co/DmzJZHAkng
— FOX13 Memphis (@FOX13Memphis) October 20, 2022
He served in the Marines during World War II and saw action aboard the USS South Dakota in the South Pacific. After returning from the war, Pharr joined the Memphis Fire Department, where he retired as a captain, his obituary stated.
According to online military records, Thomas Pharr was born on Jan. 11, 1926, in Belmont, Mississippi. After the war, he worked as a switchman for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, online employment records show. According to the 1950 census, Pharr worked as an automobile inspector for the city of Memphis.
He later joined the Memphis Fire Department.
On Tuesday, family members and friends gathered for Thomas Pharr’s funeral at Forest Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park East in Memphis, WHBQ reported. He was scheduled to be buried next to his wife of 63 years, Nancy Pharr, who died in 2013.
There was a delay because the plot next to Nancy Pharr already had someone buried there.
“It was the kind of the entire service, us sitting there not knowing we couldn’t bury our dad yesterday,” Thomas Pharr’s daughter, Janis McIntyre, told WHBQ.
“I talked to five different people yesterday, and the only answer I got was, ‘I don’t know,’” James Pharr told the television station. “How did this happen? I don’t know.”
Family members wanted to know how to untangle the burial problem but said the process was difficult.
“They had to send everything to their corporate office in Birmingham, Alabama, to sign off before removing the casket,” Joseph Pharr, another son of the late veteran, told WHBQ.
Family members said the funeral director told them that they reprimanded the groundskeeper. But all they wanted was transparency.
“All they had to do was tell us the truth. Tell us there was a mistake,” Joseph Pharr told WHBQ. “We may not have liked it, but we could have handled it a lot better.”
In a statement to the television station, the funeral home said it could not comment “out of respect for the families involved.”
“We are working diligently to provide a satisfactory resolution,” the statement read.
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