A few years after their discovery, the ashes of a World War II veteran and his wife were recently laid to rest at the Mountain View Cemetery in Keene.
Andrew Charles Schricker, an Army Air Forces veteran who died in 2004, and his wife, Marion McDowell Schricker, who died in 2000, joined Mrs. Schricker’s parents’ plot at the cemetery on June 23. Mr. Schricker graduated Keene State College in 1941 and worked in Keene for years after the war ended, according to his obituary in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
The discovery and burial was the result of several years of research by Vietnam-era veteran Steve Anderson, of Torrington, Conn. Anderson said it all began in September 2020, when the ashes were discovered during the renovation of a house in Torrington that had once belonged to Sherry Collins, who passed away in 2013.
“While these people were renovating the home, [one was] up there in the attic, and he [came] across two wooden boxes,” Anderson explained, adding he didn’t know who owned the house at the time.
The boxes were labeled with the Schrickers’ names, which Anderson later discovered were Collins’ parents.
“[The renovators] didn’t know what to do with them, as anybody would,” Anderson said. The renovators called Torrington City Hall, which contacted Anderson because of his previous involvement in genealogy projects with his own ancestors and other deceased World War II veterans.
“[The Schrickers had] been up there for ten years or more … but boy, even ten years is a long time to be stuck in an attic,” Anderson said, noting the ashes went unattended for at least a decade since Collins’ death in 2013. “I [didn’t] know what to do with them either, but if he [was] a veteran, then I [had] to take care of them,” he added.
The timeline for researching Schricker’s service records and arranging an appropriate funeral was around two and a half years long, Anderson said.
Anderson first located Marion’s family — the McDowells — burial plot at Mountain View Cemetery using an online cemetery database findagrave.com, he said, adding that Andrew and Marion’s names were already engraved on the family gravestone. Then he tracked down the New Hampshire Union Leader’s obituary, which served as proof of Schricker’s service in the Army Air Forces during World War II.
“I had an option here. I want[ed] to have the Patriot Guard provide an honor, a flag line,” Anderson said. But the Patriot Guard Riders, a national nonprofit organization that attends the funerals of veterans, required more evidence of Schricker’s service, Anderson explained.
He tried locating more service information from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, M.O., which is the main archive for U.S. government personnel records, according to its website.
The organization “could not or would not provide me with his service record,” Anderson said. He added that the denial of records was unsurprising to him because the organization usually discloses documents only to family members. Anderson got access to the records in May, with the help of the Missing in America Project, a nonprofit that helps locate and identify the remains of U.S. veterans, according to their website.
“They have a little bit more pull with the National Records Service down in St. Louis than I certainly do,” Anderson added. “Within four days, I had a letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs that did confirm on letterhead that he was a World War II veteran. He was a sergeant in the Army Air Force.”
With all the pieces in place, Anderson contacted the Keene Parks and Recreation Department in June, which allowed him to bury the two boxes at the cemetery.
Almost two decades after Andrew Schricker’s death and decade after Marion’s, Anderson drove the boxes of ash on the back of his motorcycle from Torrington to Keene, where the N.H. Patriot Guard Riders joined the June 23 ceremony.
“We took care of them, we said some prayers, and just gave them a final resting home,” Anderson said of the ceremony. “Finally getting confirmation that he was a veteran was just the icing on the cake and bringing them home to the parents and parents-in-law was just the best feeling.”
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