An unusual donation : Urn was left at Helping Hands
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Daily Record photograph by Charles Fowler Helping Hands Director Bill Crawford answered the phone at his office in Bentonville on Tuesday with a mystery urn waiting to be claimed on a nearby table.
BENTONVILLE — When workers at Helping Hands opened the back door to check for donations two months ago, they discovered the usual donations — clothes, furniture and various items donated to help Benton County’s families in need.
Stuck in with the hodgepodge of donations, a worker found an item that stood out from the rest — an elaborately hand-painted ceramic vase with a cherry-wood bottom. The vase looked like something that could fetch a pretty good price.
Then someone picked it up and found it a little heavier than a simple vase, and, oddly, a tar-like substance sealed the top.
After taking the vase inside the store, workers found that it was indeed different from the usual donations.
It is no vase at all, at least not the kind you stuff with pretty flowers to adorn the kitchen table. It is an urn — and inside is someone’s mother or father, maybe a beloved pet.
“ It is really pretty, but after we found out, we all just kind of stared at it for three days, ” Angela Garber said.
Workers know it’s an urn because of the tar-based seal on the vase. There are no markings or words.
“ It was strange because it is obviously not something that happens every day. It just came in the back with a bunch of other donations, ” said Bill Crawford, director of Helping Hands.
For the past two months, the ashes have been sitting underneath Crawford’s desk, waiting for someone to realize the urn is gone, hopefully think of the box of stuff donated to Helping Hands, then show up to claim the urn.
“ We are just hoping someone would come in and say, ‘ Hey, we have made a mistake, ’” Crawford said. “ This is somebody’s loved one, and we just hope that this was done unintentionally. ”
The urn is adorned with an oriental theme — hand-painted cherry blossoms, vases, mockingbirds and cherry trees.
If no one claims the urn, Crawford will have to secure a court order to bury the ashes and find a cemetery willing to donate a plot for the ashes.
Surprisingly enough, this is not the first time an urn has been left at Helping Hands. The first urn was left seven years ago at the thrift store. When the urn was not claimed, the ashes were given to a local funeral home for safekeeping.
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