Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Tafel, Gerald J. Jr. 1962
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Marilyn Ransom mlnransom@chartermi.net July 2, 2013, 5:12 pm

The Ionia Sentinel-Standard, Wednesday, August 22, 1962

State Trooper and wife and son were buried in Oak Hill cemetery in Ionia 
Tuesday afternoon following church services here.  Michigan state police pall 
bearers are carrying the casket to the lot beside the caskets of his wife and 
son, all of whom were killed in a Kansas traffic accident.  The services were 
for Trooper Gerald Tafel, former Ionia resident, his wife, Mary Lou, and son, 
Gerald Jr.  

Three of the four members of the family of an Ionia state police trooper were 
buried in a cemetery lot in Ionia Tuesday selected by the trooper’s 6-year-old 
son from a hospital bed in Kansas.

Funeral services were held Tuesday at the St. Johns Lutheran church on 
Jefferson street at 4 p.m. for Trooper Gerald J. Tafel, 34; his wife Mary Lou, 
31; and their 9-year-ld son Gerald, Jr., within a short distance of Trooper 
Tafel’s boyhood home.  It was the first triple funeral in Iona in many years.  
They were buried at city owned Oak Hill cemetery on Yeomans street where 
Thomas, at a Kansas hospital, when told of the tragedy commented “I’d like 
them to be buried in Ionia.”

Trooper Tafel, his wife and son were killed in a traffic accident in Kansas, 
returning from a western vacation camping trip.  Not at the funeral was their 
youngest son, Thomas, 6, who is in Cottonwood Falls, Kan., hospital.  
Critically injured, it is expected he will recover to be the only survivor of 
the family.  

Prayer services were held earlier Tuesday in Detroit and the procession 
brought to Ionia under Michigan state police escort.  At the small Ionia 
church two Ionia state troopers stood honor guard at the caskets until the 4 
p.m. service began.  The Rev. Theodore Timler, pastor of the Ionia church, and 
the Rev. H. Kaster, the family pastor from Paw Paw where Trooper Tafel was 
stationed, conducted the church service.  The church was filled.

Forty-five uniformed white-gloved Michigan state police officers stood at 
attention outside the church and at the grave as honorary bearers.  Six other 
troopers were the active bearers while friends from Ionia carried the other 
two caskets.  The state police detail was in command of Capt. Burt Youngfer of 
East Lansing headquarters.  Commissioner Joseph Childs of Lansing attended and 
he presented Mrs. Ferd Tafel, Sr., mother of Trooper Tafel, with the state 
flag which had draped Trooper Tafel’s casket at the grave for his son Tom.  
Two Ionia white-gloved troopers had expertly folded the flag after it was 
removed from the casket following the graveside service.

Also at the service were Capt. Bion Hoeg, commander of the Michigan state 
police fifth district and Trooper Tafel’s commanding officer; Capt. James 
MacDonald of Lansing, commanding officer of the first district; Lt. Fred 
O’Donnel, assistant commander of the fifth district; Supt. Howard Seiler of 
Lansing state police headquarters; Capt. Emeral E. Price of Big Rapids, state 
police chaplain; and several officers from the detective division including 
former Ionia trooper, now detective, Glenn Foster of Detroit.

There were also representatives in uniform of the Oakland county sheriff’s 
department and Waterford township police department and the Ohio state highway 
patrol.



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