"I read this email from you on Sunday morning at about 6:30am. I called
my mother to ask if there were anything else she could remember. My
mother's memory is just that is is St. George cemetery. So no luck there.
"When Mardi and I were there, Nov. 12, 1978, Henry Poetker took us there.
I have no memory of directions of course. Then I thought of getting hold
of Henry but I hadn't talked to him since 1978. I believe the Poetkers
were at that moment stationed at the Hughstown MB church. They had taken
over the Kalwakurty station after my parents left. Unfortunately my notes
were very limited at best. But of course they have long since retired to
Edmonton, Canada.
"My older brother Paul visited the grave site a couple of times when he
and Bev were teaching down south and I don't recall him ever saying he had
trouble finding it at the first.
"In those days (1978) I took very limited pictures as Mardi and I were
traveling on an extremely tight budget. My two pictures of the grave site
show, one, a close up of my dad's grave with my brother, Henry, next to
it, and two, a wider view of where the grave stones surrounded by many
others. There are no identifying buildings in the background, no people at
all walking around, no grass, several trees, a fairly well kept up
cemetery with dirt walkways, and large rectangular rock slabs with names
engraved on them.
"Suddenly I thought of Mrs. Evelyn Schmidt who were also missionaries in
India at the same time as my parents. I remembered that my sister in law,
Holly, was in contact with one of the Schmidt children due to that child
having had a stroke like my brother Robert. I called Holly who gave me
the number for Mrs. Schmidt who gave me the number for Henry Poetker.
"I called Henry and Amanda Poetker in Edmonton just a few minutes ago
(7:45am Sunday). He was a bit shaky as to who I was but finally that was
settled and he was quite helpful though discouraging. He said that he was
last in India ten years ago and he had visited the St. George cemetery to
talk to the manager there. There are other missionaries buried there and
Henry was always a proactive kind of guy. The manager told him that since
the cemetery was 100% filled they were considering two options. One was
to move it 30 miles out of town. That idea had been vetoed by many
people. So the next plan was to remove any graves that were more than 25
years old as of that time (ten years ago). They had not yet done it but
according to Henry they were adamant on doing it. He had lodged a strong
protest but he felt that it had probably been done.
"He was surprised that you should have trouble finding St. George
cemetery. Henry said it was the largest in Hyderabad and was quite well
known. He offered that it was quite close - just to the east - of the
Methodist Boys School, which itself was a well known landmark.
"Hope this is helpful and you still have time to locate it, but it sounds
as though the graves won't be there any longer."
That was an impressive amount of research that John accomplished by about
8 am Sunday! And we had just a bit of hope, but not much.
We spent the morning and early afternoon sight-seeing -- Golconda Fort, Salar Jung Museum, etc. and
a terrific thali lunch.
Then back to the quest. In the afternoon, we decided to follow one clue. Our
guide had called his Christian friends without luck. I had spoken to the
taxi dispatcher in the hotel with only a few suggestions. We asked about
the "Methodist Boys School", but nobody knew of it. So we decided to look
in "the largest cemetery," apparently St. James. It took awhile to get
there on a Monday with all the amazing traffic; (the twin cities have
about 7 million people with no freeways.) I tromped around in it for
awhile, checking every grave marker that could have possibly been mid-20th
century, but I found no Mennonite names whatsoever.
So that was the story. Should anyone ever find the end of the tale, I would appreciate hearing about it.
