William and Marie Graves were baptized in 1911. They could not go to the temple in life because they died so long before a revelation in 1978 would have made them welcome. They were endowed by proxy in 1982, because the Church eventually provides temple ordinances to members who died without having completed them – but William and Marie were not sealed as husband and wife because the membership form in use in 1911 did not state that they were a married couple. That last ordinance in their behalf was completed on Friday, 24 June 2016.

I tucked the card with their names on it inside the pocket of my suit coat as Beth and I headed to the temple. The sealer would say their names today, inside the sealing room inside the temple. He would say their names and we would remember them, people whom I have never met but whom I have come to admire, respect, and love through the trace fragments of their lives. I only know them through the historical shreds of evidence that they left behind—crumbs that they dropped along the trail of life leading from Oakland, California, to a Mormon church in Georgia where Marie intended to introduce her friends to her chosen faith but was rebuffed with a racist dismissal by a coreligionist. Back in Oakland, they kept dropping the crumbs of life along the way: at the pulpit in testimony meeting, in the pew at the same congregation that Armand Mauss attended as a child, in the ten and fifteen cent donations Marie made to the Relief Society, in a letter to Heber J. Grant chronicling the racism that confronted Marie in Georgia—the crumbs that allowed my friend Ardis to breathe new life into their story in a way that only she knows how. It was a story that captivated me the first time that I heard it and stuck in the corner of my mind so much so that when I read Armand’s memoir and he mentioned “an elderly black couple named Graves” in his childhood congregation I had to ask Ardis, “could it be the same couple?”

Since that time Marie and William’s story has grown to occupy a center place in my heart. They wanted to be found. “I never had nothing to hurt me like that in all of my life,” Marie wrote of her expulsion from church in Atlanta. I tucked the card with Marie and William’s names inside the pocket of my white shirt, close to my heart as I changed into white and walked to the sealing office. Beth met me there and we put on the robes of the holy priesthood in behalf of Marie and William, a husband and wife who were barred from ever donning those robes in their lifetime and even barred from Sunday services in Atlanta. We would say their names today inside the sealing room inside the temple.

Beth and I were the only ones there. I announced that we hoped to perform a sealing in behalf of a couple today—names that we had brought from home, I explained—but that we were also happy to stay and serve as proxy for temple names too. Three kindly and elderly gentlemen, all three sealers, accompanied us to the room. Two of the men served as witnesses while the third performed the sealing. He was careful to pronounce their names slowly and clearly. He said them out loud, “William Graves” and “Marie Benjamin.” I hoped William and Marie were listening that day and I hoped that they heard their names said slowly and clearly inside the sealing room inside the temple. I imagined Marie somewhere in the vast reaches of heaven dancing a happy dance all around William as he laughed in joy. I said “yes” for him and Beth said “yes” for Marie, because as far as we could tell they loved each other and they loved God and Marie donated ten cents and sometimes fifteen cents to the Relief Society and William bore his testimony and said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting and was always in his seat early next to the aisle most of the way toward the back and Marie “spoke of the Lord’s goodness to her” and requested that the Oakland branch sing “Guide us, O, thou Great Jehovah”—but mostly we said “yes” because Marie “never had nothing to hurt me like that in all of my life.” We said “yes” for them and we hoped that they were listening as we said their names inside the sealing room inside the temple.

Once the ceremony ended, the kindly sealer sat William and Marie’s names at the top of his desk and paused, as Beth and I still knelt at the altar: “Tell me about this couple, please.” Their story. He wanted to know their story. Everyone has a story and he wanted to learn about theirs. Three kindly and elderly white men looked at me with friendly smiles as they waited for my response. How would three elderly white men react?—men from a different generation and men with perhaps a different vision of racism and Mormonism than Beth and I had? As it turns out, I had nothing to fear. God in heaven was smiling on William and Marie that day. The three elderly white men welcomed Marie and William into the sealing room and even into their hearts.

I told Marie and William’s story and we remembered them and the three kindly and elderly white men joined with us in honoring them. “Remarkable” the sealer said. One brother who sat quietly serving as a witness then spoke up: “I surely hope that Brother and Sister Graves preside over a council in heaven at some point in the eternities with that man from Georgia sitting under their authority,” he said with a calm dignity that captured his sense of the injustice that Marie had endured that Sunday in Georgia in 1920. “How did you learn of their story,” they wondered. “How is it that you came to be here today, acting in their behalf?” I told them about my research on race and about my friend Ardis who finds the unfindable. I explained some of the crumbs of life that William and Marie left behind and I told them that Ardis had determined that even though their other ordinances had been previously performed, William and Marie had not yet had their love for each other sealed for eternity. And so we came to the sealing room with their names tucked inside my shirt pocket next to my heart. “Thank you,” the other witness said to me as Beth and I departed, “you have done a wonderful service today in behalf of a remarkable couple.”

Marie died in 1930 and William in 1940. In 2016, we remembered them. We said their names and we told their story inside the sealing room inside the temple.