Girl's Unmarked Gravestone Replaced After 92 Years

Under the shade of a large maple tree, the Riehle family cousins reunited on Friday morning to right a troubling wrong. The cousin’s grandmother, Frances Riehle, had taken two of her children Christmas shopping on Dec. 20, 1921. She was holding each child by their hands while the three had just stepped off the University Avenue trolley and onto the busy street. John Riehle says suddenly, and sadly, the story took a tragic turn. “When she got to the other side of the street she only had one kid in one hand,” John said. “Hildegard had been hit by a car.” Five-year-old Hildegard Justine Riehle died a short time later in a St. Paul hospital. The large, immigrant family couldn’t afford the cost of a gravestone, and the passage of time gradually erased all memories of where little Hilda was buried. David Riehle spent this past spring searching through death and burial records and eventually traced his Aunt Hilda to the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in St. Paul. “Why is a family important? A family is everybody that’s included,” David said. He helped organize the effort to put a marker at her grave, prompting this bittersweet reunion.