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I noticed this headstone when I was walking through the park last Friday, all of the other ones are blank so this caught my eye. I’ve been trying to figure out who Stone T Berg was. Was he an actual soldier? Was it a made up name? Was it made up by Busch? Why does it look like a headstone from Arlington? All of these questions and more came up when I saw this and I decided to do a little research on it.
Apparently this headstone was involved in cinematic goof. IMDB lists the goof as being that in the movie The Contender, an actor portraying a Senator was jogging through Arlington Cemetery and several headstones with this very name showed up. I checked the database of military veteran gravesite locator and the name didn’t return any result (doesn’t mean it doesn’t really exist, my grandfather’s name wasn’t returned even though he’s in Arlington). So, it looks like this likely is (was) not a real person. So, what’s with the name? It must mean something. Well, I did a little more research and I have a theory.
I think it’s a combination of two names, Oliver Stone and Rick Berg. You probably know who Oliver Stone is, but, if you’re like me, you have no idea who Rick Berg is. Well, he wrote a book about the Vietnam War. Those are the two names that kept popping up when I typed “Stone T Berg, Vietnam”, so that’s what I’m going with. I’m guessing this headstone was originally created for the aforementioned movie by someone that wanted to throw a little easter egg in the movie which might explain why it showed up more than once in a scene.
This may be the headstone from the movie, if it’s just been spray painted gray, or it might be from some type of mold that was made to reproduce it.. Either way, when I went back to the park later that night, the headstone was either turned around or removed. If you want to take a look to see if you can find it, it was near the bridge to Ireland, across the path from the stables.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have anything to add.