Urn ends up in not-so-final resting place

Remains of woman who died in '03 found in Buick by repair shop owner

Remains of woman who died in '03 found in Buick by repair shop owner

The back seat of a Buick: probably not the most peaceful final resting place.

But that's where workers at a North Charleston car repair shop found an urn containing cremated remains Tuesday morning.

Transmission Wholesalers at 5531 Rivers Ave. towed the 1992 Park Avenue three or four months ago. It sat on the lot until the owner agreed to part with it for $80.

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

Demond McElveen looks at an urn containing the ashes of Izetta Dickerson. McElveen found the urn in the back seat of a junk car he bought for $80.

Sorting through left-behind belong- ings around 10 a.m., Demond McElveen, the shop's proprietor, discovered the black and gold urn labeled "the cremated remains of Izetta Dickerson."

"The owner said he doesn't know how it got there," McElveen said. "She's in there, it's got the number on the bag."

The bag bore the name of the Cremation Center of Charleston, a crematory that was renamed the Palmetto Cremation Society.

McElveen called the Charleston County Coroner's Office, which found Dickerson's sister in another state. The sister told the Coroner's Office she would arrange to have the ashes buried.

"The only thing that they could figure is that they got lost in the moving process," Coroner Rae Wooten said.

A newspaper obituary notice says Dickerson, of North Charleston, died March 5, 2003. It identifies her as the widow of Franklin Dickerson, but provides no other information.

The sister told the Coroner's Office that another relative, whose whereabouts were unknown, was the last person known to have had the remains.

"What's unusual in this case is that urns don't usually turn up at random," Wooten said.

For a transmission technician at the shop, it was the second strange on-the-job find.

Jerry Davis was working at a car repair business on Sam Rittenberg Boulevard several years ago when he went to look at a minivan that wouldn't start. He popped the hood and found a 10-foot Burmese python inside. No one claimed it, so he sold it for $500.

"A snake and a dead person. What's next?" Davis asked.

Reach Noah Haglund at 937-5550 or nhaglund@postand courier.com.