A newfound respect

Family members are surprised – and thankful – to find their late father has been honored by South Portland firefighters.

SOUTH PORTLAND — Just in time for Memorial Day, a local family is finding their father’s service to South Portland was not forgotten, even though he died 47 years ago.

This past week, Laurie Walker of Saco visited the Forest City Cemetery gravesite of her father, Frank McPherson, a former firefighter. What she found there came as a surprise – beside the wooden plank that has long been the lone indicator of McPherson’s final resting place was an actual headstone.

“It was totally mind-blowing,” Walker said Monday. “When I told my sister, she burst into tears because it’s been her goal to get a headstone for each of our parents before she died.

“It’s always been a goal of the family to get a headstone, but they’re just so expensive,” said Walker, who was just 2 years old when her father died in 1965.

McPherson’s other daughters – Norma Gutgsell of South Portland and Cynthia Dyment of Canton – where also young, just 17 and 22, respectively, when their father succumbed to heart problems just shy of his 48^th birthday. Although each sister visits McPherson’s grave at least once a year, South Portland firefighters did not know that in October when they placed the new stone in a ceremony attended by nearly 40 current and former members of the department.

In fact, it seemed McPherson’s family members were the only ones missing from the event, but that, said firefighter Richard Foley, was not for lack of trying.

“We had looked and looked and put things out in the electronic media that we were trying to find them,” he said Monday.

At the time, unable to locate McPherson’s daughters, and partly because of his reputation for poverty that persisted almost five decades after his death, the department assumed McPherson’s grave was effectively abandoned. At the service, he was remembered as a founding member of Local 1476 of the International Association of Firefighters who worked several jobs to make ends meet, given the poor compensation for firefighters at the time.

“He was as meek and mild as could be, and poor as a church mouse," remembered 25-year South Portland firefighter Francis "Rich" Richardson, 76, who worked alongside McPherson. "But he was well liked. He never had a bad word for anyone."

"He was a gentleman," agreed another 25-year veteran, John "Bucky" Campbell, 73. "When it came time to do anything, whether it was to jump in the hose tower, or mow the lawn at the station, he was always the first one. He wasn't afraid to get busy. He worked hard."

Despite the fond memories, McPherson’s grave got lost by the department in the intervening years after his death, something Foley discovered in 2010 when training to take over the job of placing Memorial Day flags at the headstones of all deceased members. While marking graveside GPS coordinates for every name on the department’s honor roll, Foley found himself one plot short. He finally hunted down the physical site last year, located in the so-called “pauper’s section” of Forest City, where he was shocked to find it adorned by only a simple, wooden marker.

Foley and his peers presumed the plank was an institutional stand-in for a “real” marker.

What they didn’t know was that it had been placed by McPherson’s grandson, also named Frank.

“He made it because he thought his grandfather should have at least something for a headstone,” said Walker.

Perhaps because they’d “lost” the grave themselves, and because no one who worked with McPherson knew what had become of his family – the prevailing wisdom was that the daughters, of whom it was thought there were only two, had moved out of state – the firefighters took it upon themselves to make sure his memory was not forgotten.

“If we don't do anything else, we make sure we take care of our own," said Foley at the October unveiling. "Hopefully, this stone will last forever, because it's only a matter of time before the wooden marker gives in to the ravages of time."

Walker said her mother, Martha, died in 2000 and always claimed her husband’s plot was not actually in the pauper’s section.

“Whether she believed that or just wanted me to think otherwise, I don’t know,” said Walker.

Today, Walker runs a home day care center.

“We’re all just common folks,” she said, or herself and her sisters. “We’re still poor, but a lot of people are nowadays.”

But the family is not so common that they forgot to say thank you, which Walker did this past weekend, visiting Foley at the Central Fire Station. The firefighter emblem on her father’s new headstone was a clue to who was watching over him, she said.

“It was a heartfelt thank you,” said Walker, of the meeting. “I don’t know how we could ever repay them. It’s such an incredible kindness.”

“It was really a good feeling Sunday when she stopped into the station, to know that the effort was appreciated,” said Foley.

“Words can’t even express it,” said Walker. “I’ve always admired firefighters my whole life, maybe because my father was one, and this just proves that they are such an unbelievably generous group of men and woman.”