Homeless man identified

By Randy Dillinger

Tucked away in a corner of the Anderson, Ind., Maplewood Cemetery is a gravestone marking the burial plot of “John Doe.” The stone bears a photograph of a man and an inscription reading, “A stranger and friend.”

But he is no longer a stranger, thanks to the efforts of Frank Burrows, former Anderson chief of police and former AU police officer, and Ned Dunnichay, former Madison County coroner. They consulted FBI officials and genealogical records and followed possible leads in an effort to identify someone who knew the man buried in Maplewood Cemetery. There was no breakthrough until their recent discovery of the man’s mother in Texas. This was all that was needed for Burrows and Dunnichay to positively identify him as David Herman Hickerson.

Dunnichay said the effort took longer than any other “John Doe” case that he had encountered in the 20 years he worked at the coroner’s office.

Hickerson was a drifter who worked hard to conceal his identity, perhaps due to a lengthy police record he had accumulated in several states.

“He never carried identification,” Burrows said. “He would use different names and parts of his social security number.”

Hickerson had broken into many places, probably seeking nothing more than a place to sleep “and maybe some money to get something to eat,” said Burrows.

“It was his means of survival,” Dunnichay added. “To find food and shelter — that’s all he wanted.”

“And shelter could be anywhere from a building to a dumpster,” Burrows said. “And that’s what took his life.”

In the early morning of Oct. 25, 1994, Hickerson was sleeping in a dumpster in Anderson when the dumpster was emptied into a trash compactor truck. Hickerson attempted to crawl free, Dunnichay said, but he was caught by the compactor and crushed to death. News of the accident shocked the community — both for the means by which Hickerson died and because no one was there to grieve over his death.

AU associate professor of Christian ethics James Lewis was among those in the campus and local community prompted to action after learning about Hickerson’s death.

“I heard about this homeless man they could not identify and that they were going to bury him in a pauper’s grave,” Lewis said. “My sense was that [it would be tragic] for a human being to be buried unrecognized in a cemetery across the street from a Christian university. If no one else knew who he was, we could remember him. Given our mission, I felt it required that kind of moral response.”

Lewis motivated students, faculty and staff to attend a graveside service in Hickerson’s memory. A sizeable group from the university attended the service alongside many others from the local community. Toby Lambert, executive director of the Christian Center Rescue Mission in Anderson, offered the eulogy.

Although saddened by the news of her son’s death, Hickerson’s mother was encouraged to know that so many had taken the time to honor her son.