Former Chester Bus Driver Kept Vigil for ‘America’s Unknown Child’

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Rita O’Vary visits the gravesite of Joseph Zarelli at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia
Image via Jose F. Moreno, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Rita O’Vary from Chester visits the gravesite of Joseph Zarelli at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia

Rita O’Vary stood Thursday morning looking at the two granite markers at Ivy Hill Cemetery in East Mount Airy, the gravesite of Joseph Augustus Zarelli, writes Jesse Bunch for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

She was the only one at the grave when Philadelphia police announced the boy’s name, 65 years after his body was discovered in a cardboard JC Penney box along a road in Fox Chase.

“I can’t tell you how many times I came down here,” said O’Vary, a retired school bus driver who grew up in Chester.

With tears in her eyes, she pointed to one of the headstones that read, “America’s Unknown Child.”

Joseph had been buried in a potter’s field since his murder in 1957 but was reburied at Ivy Hill in 1998 after investigators exhumed his grave for genetic testing.

He is remembered every year by members of the Vidocq Society, a local crime-solving club.

“Every year they come with flowers, say a prayer,” said Dave Drysdale, Ivy Hill’s secretary-treasurer.

O’Vary was 10 years old when the news broke about the boy in the box.

When she could, she started visiting Joseph’s grave, leaving behind balloons, flags, and other small tokens.

Read more about Rita O’Vary and those who remembered Joseph in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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