For 108 years, Crosby Boghossian has been a forgotten man buried in a pauper’s grave – 991 – in the back cemetery of an old mental institution in upstate New York. His cause of death was listed as GPI – general paralysis of the insane.
We know it today as advanced dementia.
In 1916, the disease wasn’t accepted with compassion and care, far from it. It was a stigma that attached itself to a family like a scarlet letter on the forehead. Branded them.
There was no funeral for Crosby, no family at his gravesite to say goodbye. He was put on a train and taken from his home in Syracuse to the state mental hospital two hours away in Ogdenburg, New York to die 45 days later. He was 32.
He left behind a wife – the chambermaid he married at the same hotel where he worked as a waiter. She was four months pregnant with their third child. The stigma of insanity cut so deep, she never spoke of Crosby again.
There would be no insanity in her family. Crosby would just disappeared, like he never existed.
Until last week.
“Look at this,” Brian Crosby asked his wife, Sherry. The retired high school English teacher from Burbank was researching his family’s history when he ran across a death certificate for the grandfather no one ever talked about.
This isn’t right, Brian thought. His grandfather died alone. In 108 years, no one had ever visited his gravesite to pay respects. He would be the first.
An administrator at the new psychiatric center confirmed Crosby was buried in the back cemetery that had been closed for four decades. She said she’d have the maintenance man put a flag at his gravesite so he could find it.”
When he arrived with Sherry, maintenance man Mike Faust was waiting for them in the parking lot. He knew they’d need more than a flag to find gravesite 991. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had stopped by the old cemetery to pay their respects to anyone buried there.
Brian Crosby, left, standing with maintenance man Mike Faust, who cleared the gravesite of Brian’s grandfather when Brian and Sherry visited last week. (Photo Courtesy Sherry Crosby)
“We traveled over a gravel road overgrown with brush, parallel to abandoned railroad tracks,” Brian said. “The same tracks my grandfather arrived on. Mike had to get out of his truck twice to unlock two gates.
“We stopped at a meadow with no visible signs of a cemetery. Mike walked us over not to a flag, but to the actual marker in the ground. He had cleaned away all the overgrown grass so that I would have a clear view of 991. It was the only gravestone not buried under tall grass and weeds.
“He told us to take our time. I think he was touched by our visit. I gave him a hug and thanked him for allowing me this special moment to physically be close to the man whose first name became my last name.”
Brian’s father always joked he changed his last name from Boghossian to Crosby in honor of singer Bing Crosby, but the real reason was he thought it was too ethnic sounding.
“I learned also there was a revered missionary in Turkey named Crosby Wheeler, and many men, like my grandfather, took his first name in his honor,” Brian said.
“Standing at the gravesite, I kept thinking of my grandmother and all she had to go through. Not until you’re actually standing on that piece of earth, can you get a sense of what it all meant.
“The heartbreak and stigma; the embarrassment and abandonment. Most of all, the sadness.”
As they drove away that day, bulldozers were razing the old state mental hospital that had been replaced by a new facility.
It seemed like a fitting end to an emotional trip to pay his respects, and bury a stigma.
Brian had a lot of catching up to do with his family when he got home last week. It had taken 108 years, but the forgotten man buried in gravesite 991 would never be forgotten again.
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