Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 6

6A WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY AGNES GROSS? Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sunday, Jan. 8, 1995 Baby: Thomas believes her mother attended the wrong funeral i 'All I can tell you is I worked with honest guys. If I certified a baby was dead, that would be on my Dr. John Stam pediatrician "The only way to accept it was my mom saw a dead baby, my girlfriend saw a dead baby and there was a funeral. But nothing made any sense." Thomas said she decided to take her suspicions to a professional after she returned to the cemetery in the summer of 1993.

Walking over to Mary Agnes' gravestone, Thomas saw another stone a few inches away, at the head of the grave she had always thought was her daughter's. "That spot was the exact spot where my daughter was buried." Mary Agnes' headstone was the only one on the grave site until 1989. That year, Margaret Dickey erected a stone for her daughter's grave on the same general site. Thomas thinks the funeral her mother attended was for the Dickey baby only. "As far as we know, there was no funeral for Mary Agnes," Heidepriem said.

"There was one for this other child." Thomas said the cemetery caretaker, Ray Metz, told her that no baby is buried where Mary Agnes' gravestone sits. "He said, 'I checked all my books and your daughter is buried in a different He said, 'I often wondered what the stone was doing there, because there's no Thomas said. But Metz said cemetery records in that area known as "baby-land," where newborns are buried, are not complete. Metz said he's sure Thomas' baby is buried there. "I think there is.

I have no way to prove it." Heidepriem said Friday that Thomas needs only an OK from the cemetery to excavate at the site. If a casket is found, a court order would be necessary to open Dr. Stam, the pediatrician who cared for the child after birth and also signed her death certificate, is retired and lives in Hill City. Dr. Schade, who delivered Mary Agnes, died in May 1993.

Stam, 76, said some aspects of Thomas' case don't make sense, but he is unsure what happened, and, after more than 30 years, his memory of that birth is not clear. "All I can tell you is I worked with honest guys," he said. "If I certified a baby was dead, that would be on my honor." Although Mary Agnes died June 12, her death certificate was not signed until June 14. "Say they were pulling something on me. I cannot conceive I would sign that without seeing the baby.

I must have seen it because my name was on the death certificate," Stam said. "I have absolutely no memory of this." Thomas said one of the most lasting, peculiar memories about her daughter occurred three months after she left the hospital. "I was staying with my mom in Bigelow I was sitting by the kitchen table when my mother came in with the mail and there was a blue envelope. It was a family photo of a mother and father and two teen-agers and a baby sitting on a table." Thomas said it had no return address and nothing else was enclosed. Neither she nor her mother knew the people and her mother didn't keep the photo.

"I could never figure out who would send me a family photo," Thomas said. "I said, 'Doesn't that look like Laton (Gross, her ex-husband, who died in 1991). He had dark And my mother said, 'Yeah, it "I did come around before and was lying on my back and there was a table and someone was standing there and I realized it was Dr. Stam. He was examining my baby, and it was right beside me.

I couldn't get my eyes off her feet and legs. And they were moving. I remember because I felt so much joy. Then I went back to sleep." Shortly after Mary Agnes' birth, Thomas told Schade, the doctor who delivered the baby, she wanted an autopsy performed. Schade told her the funeral home already had picked up the body and embalmed it.

Thomas said her sister and brother-in-law, Shirley and Ben Groenewold, already had left for the funeral home. When they arrived, they were told the funeral home was closed and they couldn't see the baby. Thomas said that was shortly after 8 p.m. The hospital morgue's record shows that Harold Benson, the funeral director, picked up Mary Agnes' body at 8 p.m. Thomas said she was allowed to see her baby for only a few moments.

However, other families whose babies died in that hospital the same day or the following day were able to see the bodies for a longer time. Charles Herreid of Okoboji, Iowa, and Betty Herreid of Wor-thington, said they saw their daughter's body before and minutes after she died June 12, the same day Mary Agnes died. "We have pictures of the baby in the casket," Charles Herreid said. Margaret Dickey of Bigelow, lost her daughter, Pamela Rae, early the next morning. She didn't see the baby, but her husband did.

The hospital recorded a high number of deaths June 12 and 13. Stam signed death certificates for three babies who died within hours of each other on those days. In an interview last month, Stam said it was unusual for three babies to die in such a short time. "We didn't used to lose more than one every six months." Thomas thinks her mother attended the Dickey baby's fu- Continued from 1A bluish and the heart rate will be weak or absent, according to the Merck Manual, a resource guide medical professionals use. But a baby delivered under the effects of anesthesia as Mary Agnes was is likely to have a normal heart rate and normal color, according to the manual.

The death certificate and other records indicate the baby Was not healthy at birth. The certificate, signed by Dr. John Stam, Thomas' pediatrician, states the baby died from anoxia, absence of oxygen. Hospital records the attending nurse completed say the "baby didn't take any breath." Those hospital records also state that the baby's heart rate was not strong, as Schade wrote, but that she had "no respiratory motion; only faint heartbeat; stopped (after) 30 seconds." Because the medical records don't say exactly what caused the baby's death, it is not easy to speculate on what happened, said Becky Severson, nurse manager of the Women's Center at McKennan Hospital. I Severson said it would be unusual, but not impossible, for a baby to have good color and a normal heart if the child were not breathing.

"A heart rate of (Apgar) 2 is a baby who started out good, even if it was floppy from a mom's anesthesia," Severson said. "It's (also) kind of hard to be pink if you're not breathing." The times of birth and death conflict. Mary Agnes' birth certificate states she weighed 6 pounds, 2y2 ounces, and was born at 6:23 p.m. June 12, 1962. The death certificate lists the time of death at 6:30 p.m.

However, Stam's handwritten explanation on the death certificate states she died at 6:20 p.m., three minutes before her official birth. Thomas remembers waking up from the anesthesia after giving birth. She remembers Dr. Stam's saying the baby lived an hour. His revelation that her daughter Vas dead came as a shock because Thomas remembers seeing the baby alive.

Dr. F.L. Shade Dr. John Stam neral, believing it was Mary Agnes'. Thomas' mother, Clara Zuraff, told her she attended a funeral for Mary Agnes on June 13, the day after her death, at St.

Mary's Cemetery. Thomas was still in the hospital and couldn't attend. The Dickey baby's funeral was scheduled the same day at the same cemetery, though Zuraff did not know that. Thomas recalls her mother said there was only one small white casket at the grave site. Thomas said she asked her mother to take pictures of the baby while the casket was open, but the funeral directors would not let her photograph the baby, though they let her photograph the white casket.

Years later, Thomas said she showed the photos to Margaret Dickey, who said her husband bought that casket and Pamela Rae was buried in it. Mary Agnes' last name, Gross, is handwritten on the Dickey baby's funeral record. A card from the funeral home that handled Dickey's funeral indicates a nurse called the funeral home with information on the baby's death. On the top of that card is a handwritten note: "(Gross)." Thomas wonders why a funeral card for another baby would contain the last name of her baby. Thomas said that her baby had dark hair and a forceps mark SALE $329 side chair reg.

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A week after Mary Agnes' birth, Thomas was released from the hospital and went to the cemetery. There she found a mound of dirt where her daughter's grave was supposed to be. The next spring, the county sheriff from Pierre, Thomas' friend, paid to place a marker on the grave: "In Loving Memory, Mary Agnes Gross, June 12, 1962." A few months later, Thomas visited the grave site again. "And I saw the stone wasn't in the right place," she said of her daughter's headstone. "It was next to a tree and not where the mound of dirt was." Thomas said she visited on a weekend and had to get back to work in Pierre, so she couldn't stay around and check out the anomaly.

It was peculiar, but she said she knew where her baby was buried. "I should have done something then, but I thought as long as it's right next to it, I know," she said. "I had to accept it. 2300 W. 49th St.

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