The Orange Chrysanthemum: Secret Letters, Missing Identity, Quiet Devotion

The Orange Chrysanthemum: Secret Letters, Missing Identity, Quiet Devotion

Seven fresh orange chrysanthemums left at a lonely grave, a cedar box of eleven love letters signed only "M," and a single dried orange blossom kept for over fifty years - what connects them to a man with no known family? Who has been visiting Edgar Fenn's grave every second Saturday of October for at least four years, and why?

In this episode, we tell the sequence of discoveries from a cemetery observer to a house renovation to a reluctant family confession, tracing the objects and people that converge on Edgar Fenn's story. How did a dried flower and secret correspondence resurface across decades to prompt a quiet, repeated devotion?

Date: October 8, 2007
Location: Calverton Township Cemetery, Indiana
Person: Edgar Fenn
Event: Letters found in cedar box during early 1990s renovation
Status: Flowers observed on grave each second Saturday of October for four consecutive years

- Mark Underwood took twelve photographs at the grave just before five in the afternoon on October 8, 2011.
- Groundskeeper Bill Costas kept a spiral notebook from 2007 with entries noting flowers at the Fenn plot on October 8, 2007; October 14, 2008; none in 2009; and orange chrysanthemums on October 11, 2010.
- Edgar Fenn died in 1989 at age sixty-seven and left no will, nearest cousins in Ohio having died before 2005.
- During a renovation in the early 1990s, Carl Munoz found a cedar box in a closet containing eleven handwritten love letters dated 1954-1961, a pocket watch, two photographs, wax paper around a dried orange chrysanthemum, and a torn four-line obituary.
- Sandra Andrews, told about the cedar box by her grandmother Agnes Munoz before Agnes's death, was twenty-three in autumn 2011 and had volunteered at Briar Creek Food Pantry since age nineteen, missing only two shifts over those years.

To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.