STANWOOD – Sometime around 1905, Nicholai Thomle shipped a granite monument from his native country, Norway, to Stanwood.
He set up the 7-foot-tall obelisk in a local cemetery to mark the family plot.
“He wanted a piece of rock from the area in which he was raised,” said his great-grandson, Doug Thomle.
Almost a century later, vandals have toppled the Norwegian granite, snapping it into three pieces.
They didn’t stop with one grave. Twenty-six heavy headstones and grave markers were tipped over at Anderson Cemetery. Three of the largest monuments, including Thomle’s, broke when they fell.
Police do not know who did it and do not have any suspects, Stanwood Police Chief Tom Davis said.
The dimly lit cemetery was also hit by vandals several months ago, when 23 headstones were tipped over, said David Brandt, funeral director for Gilbertson Funeral Home, which owns the cemetery.
The most recent incident, Aug. 9, was not the first such vandalism there, but it might have been the worst. Damage estimates for the three broken monuments were $15,000.
Thomle, 62, said his first reaction was anger.
“The next thing I feel is sorry for the stupidity of the idiots that did it,” he said.
For Thomle, the frustration is multiplied because he has already fixed the Washington Monument-shaped granite once. Vandalism in the mid-1990s snapped it in half.
Back then, instead of paying high repair costs, Thomle used his own skills in his Stanwood home shop. He painstakingly bored a hole in the monument and reattached the two pieces with high-strength carbon steel.
Now, the monument’s back at his shop, thanks to a relative’s portable crane and truck.
“The problem with that monument is it’s probably a challenge,” Thomle said. “These yahoos that go up there to try to do this, it’s a challenge to (knock) it over.”
Vandalism at cemeteries is more common than people think, Brandt said. His company manages 10 area cemeteries.
Arlington’s cemetery has had recent problems, too, only with thefts.
“I’ve been working here 31 years and something’s happened just about every year,” he said.
Rarely is anyone caught. Brandt suspects teenagers or young adults are usually the culprits. He urged parents to teach kids the historical and sentimental values of cemeteries.
“Whoever’s doing it doesn’t realize what’s going on and is not being taught what’s right and wrong,” Brandt said. “You’re destroying family history.”
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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