ROCKPORT — On Memorial Day 2020, Debra Drake carefully potted geraniums and took them over to her brother’s grave, at the West Rockport Cemetery, on Park Street in Rockport. It is a ritual she and her family have done since Donald Drake, Jr, died at age 57 from cancer.

That was in 2015, and every year since then, she and her parents have placed flowers on his grave.

Donald was a lobsterman, fishing out of Thomaston and the St. George River. His funeral was held overlooking the water where he kept his boat. The fifth anniversary of his death was June 12.

This past Memorial Day, Debra Drake set the geraniums in a large urn in front of his grave, said her prayers to her brother, and went home. It is a tradition with her family, “placed lovingly in their memories,” she said.

The tradition has been part of the Memorial Day legacy since she was a small child, and the flowers are watered and tended until autumn.

“Neighbors would meet at the West Rockport Baptist Church, and Leman Oxton and Vernon Hunter would be in uniform and pass out little flags,” said Drake. “We would fall behind the band and march to the cemetery. The minister would offer up a prayer and a brief service. The band would play a patriotic song, followed by the trumpeters playing taps.”

This year was different, except for the flowers.

Her parents went by the grave the next day and the flowers were gone. Someone stole the pot and the flowers, leaving a bare spot.

This wasn’t the first time a theft to the family gravesite was recorded.

“Quite a few years ago, near our grandparents, aunts and uncles, near the road along the stonewall, in the Thorndike lot, someone took three plants,” said Drake. “I just remember the same feeling of being violated and so sad to think  a person could be so disrespectful.”

The third time West Rockport Cemetery was hit by flower thieves was, “when my great aunt passed and we had a graveside ceremony,” said Drake. “I had placed a pretty, white urn-shaped container with bright yellow tuberous begonias. They were gone the next day.”

But, it gets worse.

On the anniversary of her brother’s death, her parents went by the cemetery to water the new flowers. That’s when they discovered that the lobster buoy from Donald’s collection of black and pink buoys, which had been hanging on his grave for the past five years, had been stolen.

Debra Drake and her parents are saddened by the thefts, and just want the thieves to stop.

“Our family is so upset,” she said. “He was my brother, and I loved him. I sang ‘Go Rest High on that Mountain’ at his funeral.”