You were born on a Saturday in June, in the woods in Rothbury, and you lived about a minute. Nobody has come forward to say who you are. So we gave you a name, and on Monday, November 9th, a church full of people who never met you will sit down together and say it out loud.
Everyone is welcome. You should have a lot of people there.
Fair Haven Church
2900 Baldwin St, Hudsonville, MI 49426
Georgetown Cemetery
Jenison, Michigan. The burial follows the service directly. Anyone who wishes to come to the graveside is welcome there too.
Monday, November 9, 2026. There is no invitation and no list. If you want to be there, be there.
If you have a child, you are carrying a memory of loving them that would fit on one page. A morning. Something they said wrong and you never corrected. The weight of them asleep on you.
Grace never got a minute of that. So we are asking people to lend her one.
Write it down and send it to her. Any paper, any length, handwritten or typed. The letters will be placed with Grace before she is buried.
No one is going to read them. They are not going to be collected, published, or shown to anyone. They go with her and they stay with her. Write whatever you would actually say.
By mail, to arrive by Friday, November 6
Dear Grace c/o VanderLaan Funeral Home 4917 32nd Ave Hudsonville, MI 49426
Or bring it with you
There will be paper, pens, and a basket at the back of the church from 10:15 that morning. Write one when you arrive if you would rather.
On the morning of Sunday, June 28, 2026, a cleaning crew found a newborn girl in a portable restroom in the Good Life camping area at the Electric Forest music festival in Rothbury, Michigan. It was the last day of the festival.
She was full term. An autopsy found that she was born alive and able to live outside the womb. Her death certificate records her age at death as one minute and lists her only as Baby Doe.
Her mother has not been found. Michigan State Police and the FBI are still investigating and no one has been arrested. Out of respect for her family, whoever they are and wherever they are, this page does not speculate about them. Grace is a name we chose for her because she needed one. If her family is ever found, the name is theirs to change.
Grace's burial, her plot, and a flat grave marker are already paid for privately. They are settled, and no donation is needed for them.
A fund has been opened for one thing only: an upright monument in place of the flat marker, so that her grave can be seen and found by anyone who goes looking for it. Every dollar goes to the stone. Anything raised beyond what the monument costs goes to Hand2Hand, a West Michigan program that sends food home with schoolchildren on weekends.
Give toward the monumentSomeone knows who Grace is. Police have said so plainly, and they have asked people not to guess in public but to call instead. Anything at all, however small or however unsure you are, is worth telling them. You do not have to give your name.
Michigan State Police
FBI · reward up to $15,000
Michigan's Safe Delivery of Newborns law lets a parent hand over a baby not more than 72 hours old, without giving a name and without answering anything.
Safe Delivery Hotline · 24 hours
The baby has to go to a person, not a place. Under the law that means an on-duty employee inside a hospital, a fire department, or a police station, or a paramedic or EMT who comes when you call 911.
A 911 call from that campground would have been enough.
They are required to ask you to identify yourself and the other parent, and to ask for medical history. You are not required to answer any of it. Anything you do tell them is confidential, and your name does not appear in the public notice.
A parent who surrenders a newborn can petition the court for custody within 28 days. The person who takes the baby is required to tell you this at the time.
Michigan law says a criminal investigation cannot be opened solely because a newborn was surrendered this way, and that a lawful surrender is a defense to a charge of child abandonment. That protection does not extend to harming a child. It exists to cover exactly this: handing a baby, safely and alive, to someone who can take care of her.
If you are pregnant and frightened, or you are with someone who is, this is the way out and it costs nothing. Call the hotline above, call 911, or walk into any hospital and put the baby into the hands of someone who works there.