SPRINGFIELD - All Luke M. Griswold had was a stone engraved with the number 297.
No name. No dates.
Nothing to suggest he was a Navy veteran, a Civil War hero and the first winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor from Springfield.
For more than a century, Griswold’s burial site at Oak Grove Cemetery was unmarked, making it almost impossible to locate – until one very determined Army veteran did.
Now, 121 years after his death, Seaman Luke M. Griswold’s moment of recognition has arrived.
Thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, a marble gravestone was installed at Griswold’s burial site on April 30. On Sunday, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, is to visit the grave to mark Memorial Day.
“It is only fitting that ... this son of Springfield receives the proper recognition for what he did in the Civil War,” Neal said.
The gravestone was arranged by J. Donald Morfe of Baltimore, Md., an Army veteran and retired executive for BlueCross BlueShield of Maryland.
Since 1999, Morfe has helped to install memorials for 220 Medal of Honor recipients from Washington, D.C., to Alaska and Hawaii.
Along with other volunteers, Morfe photographs graves, decorates them with American flags and - when necessary - coaxes the government or private groups to buy new gravestones.
Considering that the Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest wartime honor, Morfe never expected to find so many recipients lacking decent memorials.
“I was flabbergasted at first,” he recalled.
Many of the unmarked graves date back to the Civil War and the Spanish American War. But to Morfe’s dismay, recognition has eluded many Medal of Honor recipients from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
In New Jersey, for example, Morfe wanted to photograph the grave of Charles Hosking Jr., an Army Special Forces soldier who won the Medal of Honor in 1967 for tackling a Viet Cong prisoner holding a live grenade; Hosking and the prisoner were killed, but other American soldiers nearby escaped injury.
None of this was mentioned on Hosking’s gravestone, which offered only the most basic biographical information, Morfe said.
After Morfe alerted the U.S. Veterans Administration, a gravestone noting Hosking’s military service and Medal of Honor award was installed.
“I got a letter months later from his (Hosking’s) daughter thanking me and telling me she never realized her father was a war hero,” Morfe said.
Morfe learned of Griswold’s unmarked grave several years ago, and - following his usual practice - asked the Veterans Administration to provide a gravestone.
As a Civil War veteran, however, Griswold had no Social Security number - he died in 1892, four decades before the first numbers were issued. He also lacked any traceable next-of-kin – a requirement for getting a government-funded gravestone.
After months of wrangling, Morfe gave up and convinced the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation to pay the roughly $500 for the new gravestone.
Nobody – not even the Veterans Administration - disputed that Griswold deserved a gravestone.
Born in Springfield in 1837, he enlisted in the Navy once the war broke out and was assigned to the USS Rhode Island.
On Dec. 30, 1862, the supply ship dispatched rescue boats for the crew from the USS Monitor, which was sinking in a storm off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
As the Union’s first ironclad ship, the Monitor had dueled nine months earlier with its Confederate counterpart, the Merrimack, in one of the war’s best-known sea battles.
After delivering two groups of Monitor sailors to safety, Griswold’s boat was blown off course and presumed lost in the treacherous seas; the boat drifted 50 miles before being picked up by a passing ship.
Little is known about Griswold’s life after the war.
He died in 1882; his wife later died in the city’s poor house.
“He was lost to history,” Morfe said.
That ended on April 30, when Oak Grove agreed to install the Medal of Honor grave marker free of charge.
Last week, Morfe visited the cemetery to photograph the new gravestone.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “There’s something to honor him now.”
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