He died alone in 1999. Now Bucks County's longest held unclaimed remains are buried.

Editor's Note: This news organization has been telling the stories of unclaimed dead and their impact on the community since 2019. As of this publication, the cremated remains of 85 have found final resting places. But hundreds more remain unclaimed in Bucks and Montgomery counties. Our original "Unclaimed" stories can be accessed on our database website, and includes updated names, stories and statuses of the unclaimed dead cases.

On a cold rainy Saturday the life journey of Casimir  Shynkaruk finally came full circle.

His long cremated ashes were buried with his parents, Anastasia and John Iwan, in a Ukrainian Catholic cemetery in Montgomery County.

It took 24 years, a curious funeral director, a compassionate county coroner and luck to coordinate this family reunion for the longest held unclaimed remains in the Bucks County Coroner’s Office.

Not much is known about Casimir Shynkaruk, who died in his Bensalem home in 1999, about two weeks shy of his 61st birthday.  His thin case file in the coroner’s office contains few clues about his life.

He was born in western Ukraine.  At the time of his death he was a widower and disabled.  Notations mentioned he rarely left his home after his wife’s death in 1997.

Casimir had not been seen for eight days when on Nov. 1, 1999 a neighbor noticed his mail had piled up. She went to the house to check on him and found him dead.

The name of a man identified as Casimir's late wife’s first husband was listed in paperwork.  He was able to provide information to the coroner’s office, but he did not want to take responsibility for Casimir.

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National Archive records fill in some information about how Casimir and his family ended up in America.  They came to the U.S. in 1949 aboard the U.S.S. General R. M. Blatchford, a ship carrying Polish refugees.  A passenger manifest shows Casimir was 11.  His mother died three years later at 54.  His father died in 1982 at 84.

His body was taken to the Bucks County Coroner’s Office, which searched for next-of-kin. His parents were long dead.  His death certificate did not list any siblings or children. His wife was buried in a family plot in a Huntingdon Valley cemetery.

How a name at the top of an unclaimed dead list peaked curiosity

Bucks County resident Michael  Nasevich knew nothing about Casimir when he called the Bucks County Coroner’s Office earlier this month to arrange pick up for a man whose funeral he was handling.

Nasevich is a funeral director for Fletcher & Nasevich in Philadelphia. He also has an great interest in genealogy.  He regularly checks the names on the unclaimed dead lists that the coroner offices in Bucks and Montgomery counties started posting online a few years ago.

While waiting  to hear back from Bucks County, he started looking at its unclaimed dead list again.  He noticed the name Casimir Shynkaruk was the first one listed.

He recognized his first name as Polish. His last name left no doubt for Nasevich that Casimir was Ukrainian.   Nasevich, himself a second generation Ukrainian American, was immediately intrigued.

He started looking on a genealogical website for clues about Casimir but he didn’t find much.  So he started researching his mother, Anastasia Shynkaruk.

Almost immediately her death certificate popped up online. It included the name of the funeral director who arranged her service and where she was buried — St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Elkins Park.

As a funeral director, Nasevich is familiar with cemetery caretakers like Walter Wyrsta, the second-generation caretaker for St. Mary’s.  He has worked there 56 years starting beside his father when he was 8, Wyrsta said.

When  Nasevich told Wyrsta about Casimir, he immediately agreed to bury his ashes for free. The caretaker also was able to locate the headstone for the Shynkaruks, which like many at the cemetery is written in Cyrillic, the Slavic alphabet.

Bucks County coroner wants to find final resting places for hundreds of unclaimed remains

The next call for Nasevich was to Bucks County Coroner Meredith Buck. Since 2020, Buck had made it a priority to find final resting places for the more than 200 unclaimed remains she inherited. Shynkaruk was the longest unclaimed followed by two men who died in 2007.

In a little more than two years as coroner, Buck has moved the cremated remains of roughly 40 people out of the county morgue, more than any of her predecessors.  Some remains, more than half military veterans or their spouses, had been in storage for nearly a decade.

Buck also implemented new procedures where staff routinely check unclaimed decedents to see if they are eligible for free interments in veteran cemeteries.

As part of her duties, Deputy Coroner Kristina Johnson reexamines old case files to see if relatives or other arrangements can be found. Those reviews started with the 2020 unclaimed deaths and already are down to the 2013 files.

When Nasevich contacted her about Casimir Shynkaruk, Buck said she was thrilled.  She immediately agreed to release the remains and waive the normal fee.

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"That we always remember him in our prayers"

Beneath umbrellas Buck and Johnson joined Nasevich at the brief graveside service Saturday. A Ukrainian Orthodox priest performed a short  panachida, a prayer for the dead, and blessed Casimir's ashes. The priest sang and prayed in his native language, before offering two sentences in English.

“May he rest in peace and may his memory be eternal. That we always remember him in our prayers. Amen.”

After, Nasevich pointed out that his great grandparents are buried a short walk away, so he will make a second stop when he visits them. He made sure an obituary for Casimir was posted online. Next, he plans to add Casimir’s first name, birth and death years to his parents' headstone.

As a second-generation funeral home operator, Nasevich said that the dead have been a part of his life since childhood.  No one should be left abandoned and forgotten in a storage room, he said.

“It’s important to me. These people all have lives. They all have stories,’ Nasevich  added. “Whether they are small or big, they are important.”

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This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County unclaimed in corones's office since 1999 gets burial