Last month someone discovered a World War II veteran's tombstone belonging to Army Sgt. Ralph Douglas Preston.

Of all places, it was found behind a gas station in Stafford.

No one knows how it got there. But the person who made the discovery called the Elks Lodge.

“And I said we can’t leave that tombstone there. We’ve got to do something with it,” Dan Luce from the Elks Lodge said.

The Elks moved the tombstone to its Garden of Remembrance hoping one day the mystery would be solved.

With help from the Veterans National Cemetery, 11 News learned there were no records of Sgt. Preston buried there or at any military cemetery in the country.

But then came a break from an 11 News viewer.

“I sing in a male chorus for the Brookhaven Baptist Church and we were out singing one night, and I came in and my wife says they found Mr. Preston’s headstone in Stafford,” Kenneth Joel Byers, Jr. said.

He called the Elks.

“I came by the club to look at the stone and I saw it.  And I said yes, this is the right one, this is his,” Byers said.

Byers knew Sgt. Douglas, and knew some amazing things about him too.

“This is the school right here, and this is some of the student council and faculty members… and this is actually him right here,” Byer pointed out.

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It turned out Sgt. Preston was a principal at Clemons, an all black school near Brookshire. It was one of the last segregated schools in the Houston area.

Byers took the Elks to the gravesite near Pearland where Preston is buried next to his wife. There is a double headstone there.

But everyone agreed the tombstone discovered last month needed to be there too.

After all, Preston is a war veteran, and certainly a hero to some.

“There were probably not a whole lot of black sergeants in World War II. For him to obtain the rank of sergeant in World War II, I am sure that is another story,” Luce said.

And at last, the mystery has been solved.