Paul Derek Treaster says his Vietnam-veteran father, whose ashes were discovered beside a south Alabama road, must have been looking down from above, helping to guide him back to the remains.
(FOX)- The ashes had posed a mystery for police in the town of Florala when they were found by a power line crew four weeks ago. But the mystery solved itself Tuesday when Treaster, alerted by news reports, stopped by to claim the small pine box containing his father’s ashes, along with a neatly folded, framed American flag found nearby.
Now that he has the remains back, Treaster says he can continue a solemn ritual he began on the banks of Florida’s Suwannee River shortly after the death of his father, Paul Douglas Treaster, in 2005.
“Every year on Father’s Day I go to the river and I put a little bit of him in there, and every day on the day he died I put a little bit of him in there,” Treaster said. “No matter what I’ve got going on, that’s what I do.”
Florala Police Chief Sonny Bedsole said the ashes had last been left in the family home in nearby Lockhart, Alabama, during a “bad divorce.”
“Without being specific, this person had removed all his personal property from the marital home when he left except for a few items, this box with ashes and the presentation flag being left behind temporarily,” Bedsole said in an email to The Associated Press.
Treaster told the AP Wednesday in a phone interview that he doesn’t want to speculate on how the remains later ended up in a grassy area beside the highway.