117 years later: Lincoln family discovers long-lost relative buried at Wyuka Cemetery

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — Along the many rows of headstones in Wyuka Cemetery lies one grave without a marker.

Until recently, no one in the Soukup family knew it existed.

But now, almost 117 years later, they are adding that grave marker and celebrating Mary Soukup’s memory.

“I’ve lived in Lincoln for 30 years, drove down O street plenty of times, not knowing I had a relative buried in this cemetery,” said John Soukup. “They have a map where you can look up where people are buried so I found the plot where she was buried, but I couldn’t find any indication that she was actually there. Turns out it was an unmarked grave.”

According to Soukup, Mary died on July 15, 1908, nine days after suffering injuries from a devastating flood that swept through Lincoln. She was one of nine people killed.

After doing their research, Soukup said the family had all kinds of emotions.

“Finding that was kind of exciting in a sense that I have somebody close,” he said. “I grew up in Omaha, my grandpa was born in Lincoln but I consider myself a Lincolnite since I’ve been here for this long. It’s nice to have somebody that’s a relative here in this very historical cemetery too.”

He said doing this for a long-lost relative has brought his family closer together after recently losing his mom.

“We had a lot of questions as we were going through mom’s things that we didn’t get answered. And now we’re discovering there’s even more questions we didn’t get answered with past relatives,” he said. “So this is giving us a sense of closure that we’ve discovered something, we’ve gotten some answers on a little bit of family history that we didn’t know about.”

The family plans to have a small memorial service on Tuesday to honor Mary’s life and pay their respects.