Unmarked Children’s Graves In Dubina Get New Headstones

Dubina was started in 1856. And after some people passed away, they were buried next to what now is FM 1383 in Dubina. As Dubina started to grow, there was a need for a permanent cemetery. In 1866 Joseph Peter and Ignac Muzny donated land for the current cemetery. As Dubina continued to grow, a church was established in 1877. By the late 1880s the church grew to over 600 families.

As the community grew, more and more people were being buried in the cemetery. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, some never had tombstones. Many of those unmarked graves were children. In 2010 Ed and Margie Janecka tried to rectify the situation. They scoured the records of the San Antonio Diocese dating back to 1856. They located 184 names that did not have tombstones. A granite wall was erected to identify these individuals with the names and dates of birth/death for all the individuals they found that did not have a tombstone. Once again, many of those were children and infants.

In November 2020, Karen Holub, was visiting the cemetery where she had relatives buried. While walking through the back section of the cemetery, she noticed a large number of small graves without markers. Karen was so moved by the site of all these small graves that she decided to do something about it. Karen is an artist from El Campo who has a business “Mosaics by Karen.” She contacted Ken and Wendy Syrinek, who are the sextons of the cemetery, to ask if she could design markers out of stone for each child. The marker would have the name, date of birth and date of death along with a design such as an angel, a heart, wings, etc. Ken and Wendy provided her with the information and asked her to allow God to guide her hands while she created each one. She estimated that she could complete it in about a year and kept in touch with the Syrinek’s with photos as she created each stone.

Karen said making these markers made her very happy. She wanted to make sure that these little children would always be remembered.

In May of 2021, Ken and Wendy Syrinek were presented the 42 beautifully decorated stones and each one was different. The stones were placed on each grave with a known location. “Unfortunately, it was not possible to know where every child was buried due to limited maps for that part of the cemetery. While we may not know exactly where each child is buried, at least now we know their names. We thank Karen for her incredible effort of love and generosity,” said Ed and Margie Janecka.