The tragic story behind this inscription marking a gravesite in the Village Cemetery goes back to a freezing morning on January 17, 1971, when Robert ‘Bobby’ and Janie (Wasserman) Bokerman — married just three months earlier — were on their way from Toledo to the Addison Street house they’d been renovating. Bobby’s family roots on Kelleys complemented Janie’s love for the island. Now a friend had called, saying that a broken water pipe was flooding the house’s basement. They were determined to see the damage for themselves.
They got as far as the Touissant Roads on Route 2. That’s where Bobby lost control of their compact car that went skidding off the icy pavement, overturning several times before hitting a utility pole. Janie died at the scene, Bobby a few hours later in the hospital.
Grieving family members laid the couple to rest in the Village Cemetery, close to the fence on Division Street. Bobby’s father, Marshall, was an island resident and took charge of the gravesite, marking it with a slab of native stone and a bronze plaque inscribed in Old Persian text that was never translated — though “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” has been offered as the possible source.
With no names identifying the site as the final resting place of Bobby and Janie, their grave maintained an air of mystery, though family members — including those from Toledo — made periodic visits. Then somewhere around 2022, the bronze plaque went missing. Was it lost to a seasonal mowing, or was it pried up and stolen?
One more mystery.
Enter two Toledoans with a link to the Bokermans. Jim and Cynthia Nowak are related by marriage to Janie’s sister, Ruth. When they discovered that the grave was now marked only by an overgrown stone, Jim began thinking. After obtaining permission from the village, he fashioned a simple aluminum plaque marked with the couple’s names, date of death and the inscription composed by Janie’s siblings Ruth and Mike. This past May, using a power drill borrowed from a local innkeeper, he made the installation that finally puts Bobby’s and Janie’s names on the island they loved.
