A fallen comrade from the past

D.C. police academy cadets put a name on the grave of a young officer slain in 1920

Amidst moss-covered gravestones and towering monuments of angels and obelisks dedicated to lives lost more than a century ago, there's a small clearing at the Glenwood Cemetery in Northeast Washington with a partially buried stone that reads, "Gist."

This is where D.C. police Pvt. Oscar A. McKimmie was buried in 1920, after being shot to death by a burglar. It's the family plot of his wife, Marion Gist McKimmie, who was eight months pregnant with their fourth child when she had to bury her 26-year-old husband.

There was never enough money for a grave marker, and some of McKimmie's great-grandchildren did not recognize his name when a police cadet contacted them this spring for a research project.

"I told him, 'I'm sorry. I don't know anything about him. I really can't help you,' " said McKimmie's oldest granddaughter, Patricia Lee Ashburn, who retired to Florida. "My grandmother didn't talk about him."

With the help of an amateur genealogist, newspaper clippings and cemetery records, Cadet Brian A. Gates slowly pieced together McKimmie's story.

Each class at the Metropolitan Police Academy researches one of the department's more than 100 fallen officers as a reminder of the risks police officers take each day.

The 30 cadets in Gates's class visited the cemetery in June, strolling past intricately carved stones and expecting to find a similar monument to McKimmie. What they found was a marker that did not even include his name. They pooled their money for a headstone.

On Saturday morning, the cadets and about a dozen of McKimmie's descendants gathered around a modern headstone of gray granite on which appears the image of a D.C. police badge and the words "Taken Too Soon." A misty rain fell, and geese flew over the red- and orange-leafed trees.

A cadet recounted McKimmie's last foot patrol on Jan. 17, 1920: It was bitterly cold as McKimmie walked his usual beat, near where the convention center now stands. He had been with the department for nearly three years and was investigating a high-profile homicide.

Suddenly, McKimmie heard a woman screaming for help, and he raced down 10th Street NW to the home of Solomon and Yette Solet. Yette Solet had been preparing her children for bed when she noticed the muzzle of a gun poking out of the closet and found a burglar in hiding. The burglar fled the house, and McKimmie followed.

The man fired several shots at McKimmie, killing him instantly. As the officer lay on 10th Street, the burglar escaped down an alley. Two years later, Herbert S. Weston, 22, pleaded guilty to murdering McKimmie and was sentenced to life in prison.

At Saturday's service, the Solets' grandson, Mike Solet, said he had not heard the story until Gates reached out to him.