The large stone is engraved with the name of Martin Edwin Brooks.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Who’s heard the name Martin Edwin Brooks, a baby who was born in 1942 and died the same year?
His headstone appears to have gotten separated from his grave.
The Lewis County Coroner’s Office is requesting the public’s assistance to return the memorial marker to its rightful place.
The granite-like stone sits in the sheriff’s office evidence building in Chehalis, where it has been since it was discovered in February 2012 alongside the 400 block of Jackson Highway South near Toledo.
Coroner Warren McLeod wants to help get it back to where ever it belongs.
It could have at one time sat atop a private burial on family land, or possibly in a cemetery or maybe it has never even been in the ground. McLeod doesn’t know for sure.
How it ended up in the tall grass on an easement next to the highway, he doesn’t know. A county employee who was mowing had spotted it, and another individual picked it up and turned it in, he said.
The stone appears to be granite and is large. It’s two feet across by one foot, with a thickness of about five inches.
It currently appears very off-white or light brown and seems to have been professionally engraved, according to McLeod.
McLeod is hoping someone has a clue, perhaps someone knows the Brooks family who may have lived in the area in the past, he said. Or maybe some of them still do, he said.
The coroner’s office is working in conjunction with the sheriff’s office, who have already been checking various possibilities such as death registrations, genealogical web sites and local cemeteries. They’ve had no luck, he said.
His plea to the public: “Please help us find the rightful owners so the headstone of an infant can be returned to its rightful place.”
McLeod asks anyone who has any information about the headstone or the Brooks family to please call his office at 360-740-1376, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office at 360-748-9286 or the sheriff’s office evidence department at 360-740-1470 or 360-740-1331.
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