Man's ashes found in High Point building returned to family thanks to Facebook post

The cremated remains of a High Point man have been returned to his sister thanks to a Facebook post earlier this week.

Charles McPherson made it to the autumn of his years, dying on Nov. 22, 2010 at age 70. Now, he is back in the loving hands of family.

“I can’t tell you how my heart is beating,” McPherson’s sister, Vickie Tucker, said.

The reunion came thanks to Gary Maxwell, who was at work Monday in High Point, cleaning out a long-neglected utility room.

“I came across a couple of utility boxes, and they had a bunch of pictures in there and everything,” he said.

He had planned to throw it all away until he found a box containing a bag of ashes with the name Charles E. McPherson.

“He couldn’t throw them away because they were my brother,” Tucker said.

Tucker learned about the remains after Maxwell took to Facebook in the hopes of locating McPherson’s family.

“I told him, ‘I just want to hug your neck because I can’t hug my brother,’ so he hugged my neck and I’m so thankful for that,” Tucker said.

The reunion left Maxwell wondering how McPherson’s ashes wound up stashed away and forgotten.

“Charles didn’t want a funeral, so Ryan was just going to scatter his ashes somewhere,” Tucker said.

Ryan, who is McPherson’s son, used to work in the building where the ashes were found, but left a couple of years ago. Tucker said she never knew the ashes were in the building.

“It just felt really good to get them back to her,” Maxwell said.

Tucker said her brother will get a funeral after all, and he will be laid to rest next to his mother in High Point.