COINS LEFT ON TOMBSTONES
While visiting some cemeteries you may notice that headstones marking
certain graves have coins on them, left by previous visitors to the
grave.
These coins have distinct meanings when left on the headstones of those
who gave their life while serving in America's military, and these
meanings vary depending on the denomination of coin.
A coin left on a headstone or at the grave site is meant as a message to
the deceased soldier's family that someone else has visited the grave
to pay respect. Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you
visited.
A nickel indicates that you and the deceased trained at boot camp
together, while a dime means you served with him in some capacity. By
leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were
with the soldier when he was killed.
According to tradition, the money left at graves in national cemeteries
and state veterans cemeteries is eventually collected, and the funds are
put toward maintaining the cemetery or paying burial costs for indigent
veterans. In the US, this practice became common during the Vietnam war, due to
the political divide in the country over the war; leaving a coin was
seen as a more practical way to communicate that you had visited the
grave than contacting the soldier's family, which could devolve into an
uncomfortable argument over politics relating to the war.
Some Vietnam veterans would leave coins as a "down payment" to buy their
fallen comrades a beer or play a hand of cards when they would finally
be reunited.
The tradition of leaving coins on the headstones of military men and women can be traced to as far back as the Roman Empire.
Origins: Humans have been leaving
mementos on and within the final resting places of loved ones almost
from the beginning of the species. Excavations of even the earliest
graves uncover goods meant to serve the deceased in the next world, such
as pottery, weapons and beads.
The
earliest
known coins date to the late seventh century B.C. As societies began
embracing monetary systems, coins began being left in the graves of its
citizens merely as yet another way of equipping the dear departed in the
afterlife.
Mythologies within certain cultures added specific purpose for coins
being left with the dead. In Greek mythology, Charon, the ferryman of
Hades, required payment for his services. A coin was therefore placed in
the mouth of the dear departed to ensure he would ferry the deceased
across the rivers Styx and Acheron and into the world of the dead rather
than leave him to wander the shore for a hundred years. In England and
the U.S., pennies were routinely placed on the closed eyes of the dead,
yet the purpose for that practice was not clear — some say it was to
keep the eyes of the corpse from flying open,
yet the eyes, once shut by the person laying out the body, do not reopen.
In these more modern days, coins and other small items are sometimes
discovered on grave markers, be they plaques resting atop the sod or
tombstones erected at the head of the burial plot. These small tokens
are left by visitors for no greater purpose than to indicate that
someone has visited that particular grave. It has long been a tradition
among Jews, for example, to leave a small stone or pebble atop a
headstone just to show that someone who cared had stopped by. Coins
(especially pennies) are favored by others who wish to demonstrate that
the deceased has not been forgotten and that instead his loved ones
still visit him.
Sometimes these small remembrances convey meaning specific to the person
buried in that plot. For more than twenty years, every month someone
has been leaving one Campbell's tomato soup can and a pocketful of
change on the plain black granite tombstone that marks the grave of Andy
Warhol. The
soup can
is easy to explain, given Warhol's iconic use of that commodity in his
art, but the handful of change remains a bit of a mystery. In similar
vein, visitors often leave pebbles, coins and maple leaf pins at the
grave of Canadian Prime Minister
Lester B. Pearson, the man who replaced Canada's Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf flag.
Regarding the 'tradition' of soldiers leaving on the headstones of
fallen comrades varying denominations of coins to denote their
relationship with the deceased, the earliest reference to this practice
we've found so far dates only to June 2009, when it appeared as a web
site post. The version now commonly circulated in
e-mail
appears to have been drawn from it, albeit some changes have slipped in,
such as "A buddy who served in the same outfit, or was with the
deceased when he died, might leave a quarter" becoming "By leaving a
quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the
soldier when he was killed."
Despite the claim of this tradition's dating back to the days of the
Roman Empire, there's no reason to suppose that it does. A coin might be
placed in the mouth of a fallen Roman soldier (to get him across the
River Styx), but his comrades wouldn't be leaving their money on his
grave, but rather expending it on a funeral banquet in his honor.
Given the lack of evidence that anyone anywhere is following this
'tradition,' it is perhaps best regarded not as an actual practice, but
instead as someone's idea of what should be.
Yet military folk do sometimes leave very special remembrances at the graves of deceased servicemen:
challenge coins.
These tokens identify their bearers as members of particular units and
are prized and cherished by those to whom they have been given; thus any
challenge coins found at gravesites were almost certainly left there by
comrades-in-arms of the deceased.
It needs be mentioned that not only coins, medallions, and stones have
been found on military headstones. In July 2013, a wife of a deceased
serviceman discovered another woman's name on her husband's marker in
place of her own. Edna Fielden, widow of Air Force Master Sergeant Billy
Fielden (buried at Fort Logan Cemetery in Denver
25 years
earlier) was shocked to discover the headstone bore the inscription
"Dolores" over the legend "His Wife" when she brought her grandchildren
to visit the grave.
Barbara "grave mistake" Mikkelson
Last updated: 18 May 2014
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