What was meant to be a final inside joke among loved ones turned into a very public dispute.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!At first glance, the headstone of Steven Paul Owens at Warren-Powers Cemetery in Polk County, Iowa, appears no different from countless others. A standard tribute. A loving farewell. A family remembering their own.
But look a little closer — and people have noticed something else entirely.
The inscription reads: “Forever in our hearts, until we meet again, cherished memories, known as: our son, brother, father, papa, uncle, friend & cousin.”
Nothing unusual there. Except the first letter of each line, aligned vertically, spells out a hidden message: “F*** OFF.”
For Owens’ family, it wasn’t an act of vandalism or rebellion. It was him.
Owens died on September 2, 2021. According to his obituary, he passed “to go play Yahtzee in Heaven with his mom.” He enjoyed fishing, playing flag football and slow-pitch softball, coaching his children and attending their events. He adored his grandchildren. He worked at Highland Memory Gardens and Pine Hill Cemeteries and was also employed and retired from the printing industry.
But beyond the formal details, his children say there was something else that defined him — a sharp, dry humour that could catch you off guard.
“He was a very fun-loving guy,” his son Zachary Owens told CNN, though he admitted his dad was also “easily riled.”
That combination became part of his personality.
Lindsay Owens explained that friends and family members loved to tease her father and get him “fired up.” And the phrase hidden within the gravestone wasn’t random.
“If he didn’t like you, he didn’t talk to you,” she said. “If you got him to tell you to f*** off, it meant he liked you.”
“It was definitely his term of endearment,” she added. “If he didn’t like you, he didn’t speak to you. It’s just who he was.”
Zachary shared a similar view, laughing as he described how it almost became a challenge among those close to him, saying: “It was always kind of a goal of some sort to get him to tell you to do this.”
The idea to conceal the profanity within a longer, sentimental inscription reportedly came from a cousin. According to Zachary, “Everybody (in the family) was on board.”
To them, it was subtle. Personal. A final wink from a man whose humour didn’t fit neatly inside polite boundaries.
However, not everyone in Polk County saw it that way.
A few days before the headstone was due to be installed, Camp Township Trustees — who oversee the cemetery — told the family it could not be placed because of the profanity, Lindsay said. Despite that, the memorial company installed it anyway.
But that didn’t stop the pressure and backlash from mounting. A representative of the Camp Township trustees, who asked not to be named out of concern over potential backlash, made their position clear.
“We do not want it there,” the representative said. “It really needs to be removed.”
The trustees argue the issue goes beyond one family’s tribute.
“If we allow profanity of that sort in the cemetery, and that’s okay for that, how are we ever gonna draw a line on anything else?” the representative said.
They also pointed to complaints from residents, suggesting the gravestone could be particularly upsetting for families whose loved ones are buried nearby and have no choice but to see it.
“People have the right for decency, not just the one family,” the representative added. The township “just really has to be mindful of what’s best for the masses.”
In a separate statement to KCCI, via CBS6, the Camp Township Trustees questioned the wider implications.
“How would you like to have your child, spouse, mother, father, grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin, your loved one or eventually you, have to be laid to rest next to that for eternity?”
The township is now consulting its lawyers as it considers pursuing removal of the headstone.
For the Owens family, the backlash has been difficult. Both siblings described the cemetery’s push as “hurtful.”
“Our intention was never to offend anyone, ever,” Lindsay said. Zachary echoed that sentiment.
“I would just ask that they let us remember our father in the way we remember him, and not take it personally because it has nothing to do with them,” the doting son said.
He also addressed those who say they are offended simply by its presence, saying: “No one’s forcing anyone to come out and look at it. That’s a choice that you make. We didn’t do it to offend anyone, to make anyone mad (or) hurt anyone’s feelings. We did it because it was our father, and we love him and that’s the way we remember him.”
What remains is a quiet cemetery now at the centre of a loud debate.
On one side: a family who say they’ve honoured their father exactly as he was — humour, edges and all.
On the other: trustees who believe certain words, hidden or not, have no place among rows of headstones.
Featured image credit: YouTube/KCCI (screenshots)
