WALKERTON – Take a close look around the next time you visit your loved one’s grave, or you stroll through Walkerton’s two cemeteries.
Freshly painted “poppy rocks” once again honour the graves of our veterans, thanks to a few dedicated volunteers.
Last Thursday (June 2), Jon Critchfield and Terry O’Hagan gave out poppy rocks to the 14 family members who came out. The next day more volunteers placed almost 300 poppies in Walkerton Cemetery.
Another team of volunteers placed the remaining 130 “poppy rocks” in Calvary Cemetery on Saturday, June 4.
The grave of Thomas Gordon McNeill was one of the graves where a “poppy rock” was placed.
McNeill (1921-1974) was the son of Thomas Andrew McNeill and Winnifred Victoria [McConkey]. His mother died from complications following childbirth, when Thomas was just three years old, and his father remarried in 1929. McNeill would have been raised with his stepmother Amy Estella [Garbutt], half-sister Margaret (Mrs. Donald Sockett) and half-brother Harold.
He served during the Second World War as a private with the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps. McNeill married Iris P. Vlugzang, likely after demobilization, and their children included Thomas, Campbell and Clyde. When his father died in 1969 at RR#3 Walkerton, Thomas G. was living in Weston. He died in 1974 and is buried with Iris, north of the Legion cairn, in Walkerton Cemetery.
