Julia Mae Whitfield’s headstone sits in the New Zion M.B. Church cemetery in Steens, surrounded by yellow flags.
About 60 yellow flags are stuck in the ground at the cemetery, depicting previously unmarked graves. Whitfield’s grave was one of them until recently.
Whitfield’s son, Willie James Lenard, had Columbus Marble Works install his mother’s headstone earlier this month so she could never be lost again.
After all, Whitfield was lost twice.
She was kidnapped as a child and never returned to her family, and sometime after her death, the church cleaned the cemetery and lost her small grave marker.
“She lost her family. Once I lost the exact placement of the grave, I felt as if I lost my mother…,” Lenard said. “I’m not going to lose it again. I’m still looking for her (family).”
Finding her grave
The church hired a ground-penetrating radar technician in the spring to survey the cemetery for unmarked graves, according to the pastor, the Rev. Billy Hill.
“We went out to dig a grave, and we dug into another grave,” he said.
The radar method found more than 60 unmarked graves without disturbing the ground, Hill said. One of those graves belongs to Whitfield.
Hill, who said the church brought in the technician to help bring closure to the families of the deceased, was glad the church could help Lenard locate his mother.
“One thing I can say that is truly a blessing…we were able to provide the things he needed to give him closure so she can be at peace and he and his family can be at peace,” Hill said.
Hill said the church is working to identify the people buried beneath the yellow flags so their names can be engraved on the small marble stones the church purchased and placed in the cemetery.
The story behind the headstone
The headstone reads, “Here lay our mother, grandmother and great-grandmother Julia Mae (Dillworth Lenard Lonton) Whitfield, Oct. 26, 1927-Dec. 10, 1981, ‘Rest in peace o’calm and peaceful one.'”
Each name on the stone links Whitfield to her past, but only two names are certain – Lenard and Whitfield, after the two men she married.
Lenard said he thinks Dillworth was her maiden name.
Whitfield was taken from her family in Virginia when she was about 4 years old and brought to Steens.
According to stories Lenard has been told, his mother’s captors told Whitfield her father’s name was Morgan Dillworth.
Lenard said his mother gave her first son the last name of Lonton, which he thinks was given to her by one of her foster families.
And she took the birth date of that son, Oct. 26, as her own because her birth date was unknown.
Her name, too, was unknown, and Julia Mae was given to her after her kidnapping.
Her story
Whitfield was born in 1927 or 1928 and kidnapped in 1930 or 1931, Lenard said, recalling what his mother had told him about her childhood.
When her father couldn’t afford the ransom her captors requested, they brought her to Mississippi and tried to sell her.
But when they were unsuccessful in selling her, the captors – a husband and wife who already had four children – decided to kill her, Lenard said.
He said his mother was tortured before she was thrown into a fire to die. But the husband had a change of heart – not wanting to be accused of murder – and pulled her from the fire.
She was left on the porch of a local health care professional that nursed her back to health, he said.
Lenard said his mother’s captors were caught and ultimately sentenced to seven years hard labor in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.
Whitfield was placed in foster care and used as a housemaid until she aged out of the system, Lenard said.
He said his mother had only a third-grade education and earned her living as a housemaid after leaving the foster care system.
She had two sons – Willie Douglas Lonton, now 74, and Lenard, 71.
She later married a Columbus farmer, Willie Whitfield.
She became a member of the church where she is now buried and died in her 60s.
Lenard said his mother’s headstone tells a little bit of her story.
“She’s had quite a journey,” he said. “She’d be proud of this.”
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