While browsing the Journal Star archives I ran across a touching local story that I had never heard before. Some of you may know the story already, but for those who don’t this is the story of John Doe No. 24.
John Doe No. 24 was a teenager when he was found wandering the streets of Jacksonville, Il in 1945. He was deaf, blind and mute, had no relatives that could be found and after being picked up, was institutionalized for the rest of his life. He was named John Doe No. 24 because he was the 24th unknown person to be taken in to the Lincoln Developmental Center. Later he was given the middle name of Boyd, from a combination of the words ‘Boy’, because the caretakers called him John Boy, and ‘Doe’. Throughout his life he was moved between various institutions and wards before ending up in Peoria at what was known as the Smiley Living Center in 1987.
Phil Luciano wrote this about the burial service.
In August 1993, he went into the hospital for colon cancer surgery. He returned to Smiley, showing signs of depression, then went to Sharon Oaks nursing home in Peoria. He had a stroke and died there Nov. 28. After a five-minute funeral attended by a handful of caretakers, he was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave at Parkview Cemetery in Peoria. At the service’s end, a woman asked if anyone wanted to offer any words; no one did.
The original article, written after his 1993 death by Journal Star reporter Sarah Okeson, was picked up by the A.P. and reprinted in the New York Times. Singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter was moved by the story and penned the song “John Doe No. 24.” Thanks to the efforts of Phil Luciano, she quietly, and without fanfare, purchased a simple gravestone to be placed at John ‘Boyd’ Doe’s unmarked grave in Parkview Cemetery. It reads:
John ‘Doe’ Boyd
Unknown — Nov. 28, 1993
Life’s a mystery, but so too is the human heart.
It’s sad to think a person can live a life, die, and no-one even notices. In this case, albeit posthumously, someone did.