Mortuary's closing left woman's ashes behind

By LEANORA MINAI

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 9, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The voice of an operatic Italian tenor spilled from a stereo when Wil D'Arcy opened the front door.

"I want to introduce you to Josephine," D'Arcy announced in a British accent as he strolled toward the gutted parlor of the old funeral home.

There, under the arched 18-foot ceiling, D'Arcy pointed to a rat-chewed box containing the cremated remains of Josephine Pedersen.

From the black box, he lifted a plastic bag of ash and bone.

"I think it's reprehensible for people to have left her remains for 14 years, leaving her life unfinished with no final resting place," said D'Arcy, 62.

He recently found the box in a dusty blue suitcase while removing air-conditioning ductwork in a hidden crawl space.

The funeral home, Wilhelm-Thurston Funeral Home at 145 Eighth St. N, went out of business 10 years ago, and the building has stood vacant five years.

D'Arcy is superintendent of renovations at this 75-year-old building for co-owner Barry Flaherty. When the remodel is complete, the brick building will be home to offices and fancy apartments.

For now, though, all D'Arcy can think of is Pedersen.

"Who is Josephine Pedersen, and what shall we do with her cremains?" asked D'Arcy, who was born and raised in England and moved to the United States 40 years ago for what he said was a new adventure.

A sticker on the box of Pedersen's remains contains some vital information.

A New Yorker, she died on July 17, 1986. She was 95 years old. Brooklyn funeral home Cremation Consultants sent her body to Rosehill, a crematory in Linden, N.J.

She was cremated there Aug. 8, 1986.

So how did Pedersen end up in the dark attic of a Florida building?

"Oh boy," said Paul Giffone, manager of the Brooklyn funeral home, when asked to check on the case. He rifled through files and only found an index card with Pedersen's name. No next of kin.

Giffone will check records at the crematory over the weekend, he said.

"Maybe they were unclaimed or not wanted," he added.

A random survey of Pedersens in Brooklyn was done Friday.

"I think I can probably safely say Josephine Pedersen is not a family member of mine," said resident Lene Pedersen. "It's a common name."

Funeral directors say it also is common for relatives not to pick up remains.

"A lot of the funeral homes had rooms set aside for the cremated remains," Gunter said.

There is a Florida law now that allows funeral homes to dispose of remains after 120 days, if no one calls for them, he added.

The St. Petersburg funeral home where Pedersen wound up saw good as well as bad times. That could have something to do with the Pedersen mystery, funeral directors say.

John L. Wilhelm and Edmund E. Thurston (Wilhelm-Thurston Funeral Home) were partners and bought the building at 145 Eighth St. N in the 1950s.

After Thurston died in 1987, the funeral home was run by Richard J. DeChant, who had been working for him. Records were handled by different funeral homes in the area.

"After Mr. Thurston died, it sort of went to pot, really," said E. Dale Gunter, owner of E. Dale Gunter Funeral Home in St. Petersburg. "They just couldn't make a go of it financially."

In 1990, DeChant made news when he misplaced the ashes of a 91-year-old woman for more than four months. The remains were finally recovered in his office. A year later, DeChant was arrested and charged with selling pre-arranged burial services without a license.

DeChant died of a heart attack in 1997.

A message is printed on the box containing Pedersen's remains: "Note: For perpetual security a permanent receptacle or urn should be provided."

Said D'Arcy: "There's a better way to end one's life on planet Earth than being left in a suitcase in a storage area."

- To contact Leanora Minai, call (727) 893-8406 or write to her at minai@sptimes.com. Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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