The Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser mistakenly received a man’s ashes
It was revealed earlier this week that Hamilton Leithauser, the lead singer of The Walkmen, was mistakenly sent the ashes of Dwight Walter, a man he had never met.
A shocking event for all those involved, let alone Walter’s family, The Walkmen approached it somewhat humorously by sharing a news article on Twitter about the debacle, writing: “Our singer, Hamilton Leithauser”.
In the ABC7 article shared by The Walkmen, Leithouser discussed his shock at being sent Walter’s ashes. At his Brooklyn apartment on Tuesday, the musician routinely opened his mailbox and found a US Postal Service addressed, as he says, only to the “current resident”.
Leithauser explained: “I open it up and it said the cremated remains of this guy from October 17, 2017”.
As Leithauser did not know Walter, he called the funeral home – John’s Funeral Home in Brownsville – to alert them of their mistake. “When I called, they were extremely rude,” The Walkmen frontman said. “I think he said, ‘don’t you examine your packages before you open them,’ and I said, ‘don’t you check the address before you mail someone’s dead body,’ I think that’s the last thing I said and then he hung up on me.”
The funeral home eventually sent a worker to retrieve the ashes. “She was so angry, from the moment I saw her she was like, ‘this is a dead body we’re talking about,’ and I was like ‘yeah, you mailed it to me,'” he continued.
Lamont Hall, the 23-year-old son of Walter, spoke to The New York Post on Thursday and expressed his anger at the mistake John’s Funeral Home made. He labelled the mix-up as both “outrageous” and “heartbreaking”.
“Shame on them,” he said. “To see his ashes misplaced like that is heartbreaking. That’s really shocking the way this was handled. They should have reached out”.
Hall also revealed how the mix-up might have happened. He said his father, Dwight, passed away from an illness in 2017 at the age of 56. At the time of the tragedy, he was living with his eldest son, Ronnie, in the East Williamsburg studio apartment where Hamilton Leithauser received his ashes earlier this week.
“For the funeral home to turn their left cheek and say, ‘That’s not our problem,’ is outrageous,” Hall said. “That’s y’all’s job. You’re supposed to treat that with professionalism.”
He continued: “For all these years, I thought my father was safe and sound. Come to find out … he’s been shipped around and neglected by the funeral home that said they were gonna take care of him,” he said. “I’m at a loss for words.”
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