Family reunited with lost headstone for infant
Missing headstone reunited with family
A chilly start to the weekend on Saturday morning with lows in the 30s in the mountains, 40s elsewhere. Sunny thru the day and cool, not as breezy as its been, highs in the low to mid 60s. A few clouds Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Highs on Sunday in the upper 60s before another shot of colder air by Monday morning. Election Day looks nice and cool. We could have Tropical Storm Eta this weekend, well down south in the Caribbean. It would be the 28th named storm which would be a record for a season.
MABLETON, Ga. - A family is reunited with a headstone for an infant missing after 12 years.
It’s an update to a story FOX 5 first reported last week after a man found the four-month-olds headstone in the parking lot of a gas station.
“It was right there behind the dumpster” ‘Smokey’ Said.
Smokey found the grave headstone of Brandon Douglas Berry at the Exxon Gas Station in Mableton and set out on a mission to reunite it with the family.
“I was honestly getting off of a 14-hour shift getting off of my job. My phone just kept getting friend request after friend request and I don’t know these people,” Brenda Goodson said.
The story made its way to the mother Brenda Goodson and Father Steven Berry Sr.
“I went online and looked it up and I bust out in tears. The name and date was what we agreed on. The teddy bears in the corner. I knew that it was his,” Goodson said.
Brenda said the infant died while she was at work in 2008 from ‘Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” also known as SIDS. The family buried the infant in Hampton, Georgia over an hour away from where it was found.
So, the question remains: how and why did the headstone pop up 12 years later in a parking lot?
“When I kept calling to make arrangements they said it wasn’t going to be made. The information I learned later he [the father] was told it was lost and they weren’t able to find it,” Goodson said.
FOX 5 was there as mother and father got a chance to see the headstone for the first time ever.
“Oh god I never saw it before,” An emotional Goodson said.
The parents got a chance to touch the nearly 60 pound stone for the first time.
Goodson said the company they ordered the headstone from is located in Mableton where the father lives.
“Thank you. Thank you,” Goodson said while hugging Smokey.
Goodson gave a special hug to the man who made this happen.
It was a reunion 12 years in the making.
“It gets to go where it’s supposed to go. It gets to go where it was supposed to go,” Goodson said.
The family plans to hold a small ceremony and place the headstone on the grave soon.