January 26, 2000, San Francisco Chronicle, Jonestown victim's cremains surface, by Peter Hartlaub,

Trucks carrying the bodies of Jonestown victims started rolling into Oakland on May 1, 1979. By the end of the month, hundreds were buried at the only cemetery that would accept them all.

Alice Inghran never arrived.

The woman's remains were discovered late last year, when a San Francisco funeral home that had been storing her ashes went out of business.

Inghran is one of 913 Peoples Temple members who either drank or were forced to drink a cyanide-spiked fruit punch Nov. 18, 1978, at the demand of Jim Jones, a religious leader who took his followers from the Bay Area to Guyana.

The surprise discovery of her ashes has caused shock among an active network of survivors and victims' relatives, who want Inghran to have a dignified funeral - something they say others who died in Jonestown didn't receive.

More than 400 of the dead rested in a Delaware airport hangar for almost six months in 1978 and 1979 while attorneys and politicians fought over a plan of action.

"The Jonestown survivors are like a close-knit family, and they protect each other," said Dr. Jynona Norwood, a pastor in Inglewood who had 27 family members die at Jonestown. "We're going to have a proper burial for Alice."

Inghran was 44 when she died, according to records compiled on the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple Web site.

She was born in Texas and lived in Mendocino County before leaving for Guyana in the late 1970s. She had a 15-year-old daughter, who also died at Jonestown.

Yolanda Williams, a Jonestown survivor and San Francisco resident, said she'd known Inghran well because they had both been counselors in Guyana.

She described Inghran as an outspoken community member who had a great sense of humor.

Williams said she hoped Inghran would get a memorial service where others could mourn.

"The mere fact that there is one who didn't get to the spot where they were meant to be laid it shouldn't prevent us from giving some dignity to the woman now," Williams said.

Norwood said members of her parish had left messages for Inghran's relatives about the discovery, but there was no word yet on what would happen to the remains.

If her ashes are scattered at the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Inghran will be the first Jonestown victim interred there since 1979.

There are 409 others buried there. The rest of the Jonestown victims were claimed by their kin, and many received private services.

The San Francisco coroner's office received Inghran's cremated remains several months ago from a mortuary that went out of business, Norwood said.

There was little information with the ashes, just a few documents explaining that Inghran had died in Guyana on Nov. 18, 1978, and been cremated the following January in West Chester, Pa.

The remains were sent from Pennsylvania to San Francisco in 1979, although Norwood and others are still unsure why they weren't passed on to the next of kin.

Cremation of Jonestown victims in other states was the norm, even though all of the bodies were embalmed in Delaware, said Rebecca Moore, a San Diego State University professor who had two sisters and a nephew die in Jonestown.

"The funeral directors had to take them to either New Jersey or Pennsylvania or Maryland," Moore said. "There was a lot of hostility."

The hostility remains, survivors say, but a movement has grown to give the victims at Evergreen Cemetery a more dignified memorial.

There is a simple headstone over the mass grave, stating "In Memory of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy, Nov. 18, 1978."

Norwood has been trying for five years to raise money to replace it with a wall, similar to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Norwood said the wall would give peace to survivors and family members who felt they didn't have a proper place to mourn.

"There has been some healing, but there will never be true healing until there is a wall," Norwood said. "They need to have their names together, where they can be remembered in perpetuity."

Norwood said volunteers have raised more than one-third of the $35,000 needed to build the wall, which would include the names of the victims.

The wall would also include the names of Rep. Leo Ryan and four others who were killed in the Port Kaituma airstrip ambush, including Examiner photographer Greg Robinson.

Church leaders say the burial process was horrible, as they hit roadblock after roadblock from the government and an angry public that blamed the victims.

"At the time, everybody was just looking down at everybody," said Donetter Lane, one of the Emergency Relief Committee members from San Francisco who organized the burials. "It was very frightening."

It took more than six months for the bodies to get from Guyana to Oakland, and then only after a lawsuit against the government and several hassles with local mortuaries that backed out of plans to inter them.

After all the other victims were buried in Oakland, there was a ceremony May 24, 1979. It was sparsely attended, with more church leaders who organized the event than relatives of the victims, according to newspaper reports.

Oba Tshaka, a professor of black studies at S.F. State, said a survey by his students in 1979 had shown that blacks saw the Jonestown victims as hopeful people who had only wanted a better life.

But he said the news coverage of the time didn't reflect that.

"(The media) treated them as dupes and people who didn't have very much sense," Tshaka said.

He said the climate has changed.

In November 1998, on the 20th anniversary of their deaths, more survivors and family members went to the Oakland grave site, including many who had never been there before.

"The last memorial that was held in Oakland indicated a real change," Tshaka said. "People who survived from Jonestown were able to vocalize. It took all these years to be able to come forward."

Professors Tshaka and Moore both said they hadn't heard of a Jonestown victim's remains turning up since 1979.

Moore said the discovery of the ashes may, at the very least, cause a few people to take a second look at Jonestown.

"The initial response of our government was not very respectful of those who died there," Moore said. "If at this late date, some measure of dignity can be granted, that's wonderful."