For years, Pearl Buck’s daughter was buried in an unmarked grave in New Jersey. One fan made it his mission to change that.

It’s a long way from Vineland to Birmingham, but an unmarked grave hidden behind a thicket of ancient South Jersey pines was something David Swindal couldn’t put out of his mind. He hadn’t seen it. He didn’t have to.

The man from Alabama knew that Carol Buck was buried there, daughter of celebrated author Pearl S. Buck, whose beautiful words had inspired him and brought him joy since he was a boy. Her overgrown grave was part of the cemetery of the former Training School of Vineland, a facility for the mentally disabled where Carol had lived most of her life before she died at age 72.

“I just couldn’t believe this child’s grave had gone unmarked,” said Swindal, 69, a landscape artist whose palette is gardens.

He longed to make things right. It turned out, other people did, too.

And on April 9, they did.

Under a blue sky, over 40 people came together at the old Training School cemetery to finally dedicate a gravestone for Carol Buck, who died of cancer in 1992.

“I really do think there’s more connection between heaven and earth than we realize,” Swindal told those gathered that day. “I’d like to think Carol knows she’s not forgotten.”

On her grave, they laid flowers. Yellow for remembrance.

Swindal, 69, purchased the inscribed granite marker and, with his assistant and driver Michael Reyes, transported it the 885 miles from Alabama to Vineland. South Jersey Cemetery Restorations and the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society, also on hand, are partners in restoring the old cemetery. The historical society’s initial effort, manned by volunteers, began a few years ago when there was only a tin marker on Carol’s grave. Eventually, even that went missing.

But six months ago, out of the blue, Patricia Martinelli, the historical society’s curator, got a call from a lifelong fan of Pearl Buck, a certain gentleman from Alabama.

“I’m a firm believer in trusting my instincts when I deal with people,” said Martinelli. “I could tell right from the start how sincere he was about putting something there.”

To Swindal, the gravestone is a way of thanking both mother and daughter.

“Pearl Buck started writing to figure out a way to take care of Carol,” said Swindal. “If it had not been for Carol, her mother might never have turned out all those novels.”

Raised in Tuscaloosa, Swindal learned to relish the written word from his great-grandmother, who taught him to read at age 4 from the family Bible.

It was the summer after the fourth grade when he picked up his older sister’s eighth-grade literature book and, lo and behold, discovered Pearl S. Buck, winner of both the Nobel and Pulitzer prize and a Bucks County resident. Intrigued, he got a copy of The Good Earth from the public library about a week later.

“I must tell you, so much of it was over my head. I was 10 years old,” he said. “But I could tell even then it was practically as beautiful as the King James version of the Bible. The way Miss Buck put words together. She has given me a lifetime of fabulous literature.”

In addition to the luminous prose, Swindal was captivated by Buck’s storytelling, the way she saw the world.

“Almost nothing seems to be by chance,” he said. “Almost everything has a destiny to it.”

The same could be said of his path to Carol Buck’s grave.

Swindal said he was at a dinner party in New York City about two years ago when he met a couple from Cherry Hill. He already knew his literary heroine’s daughter was buried at a former school in New Jersey. But he was shocked to learn her grave was never granted the dignity of a proper marker.

“It’s almost like it was set in motion that night.”

Indeed the sadness stayed with him. Then last fall, returning from a business trip up north, he visited the Pearl S. Buck House, the author’s former Bucks County home and now a National Historic Landmark. She is buried there, as is Janice Comfort Walsh, one of Buck’s adopted offspring. It reminded Swindal that Carol Buck, the author’s only biological child, was buried alone and nameless.

So he sought out the Vineland historical society. He found his chief ally, curator Martinelli, who secured the necessary permissions to install the gravestone.

Pearl Buck was a strong advocate for humanitarian causes, including civil rights and cultural understanding. She ultimately adopted several children and fostered others. The author also created a foundation, now called Pearl S. Buck International, which serves over 85,000 children and families in eight countries.

In her lifetime, care options for people with intellectual disabilities in this country were very different than now. Carol Buck was born with PKU syndrome (phenylketonuria), a rare condition that is now treated successfully with dietary changes. In Carol’s time, little was known, and children like her suffered irreversible harm.

According to the foundation’s website, Pearl Buck got little or no support from Carol’s father or her doctors when she suspected Carol was having intellectual difficulties. Like many parents of her day, she sought out a residential facility. Her first novel, East Wind: West Wind, and subsequent writing was to help pay for Carol’s care at the Training School.

In The Child Who Never Grew, Pearl Buck wrote about being the mother of a mentally handicapped child — an openness almost unheard of for a parent at the time.

“So by this most sorrowful way I was compelled to tread, I learned respect and reverence for every human mind,” Buck wrote. “It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights.”

Buck foundation president Anna Katz had kind warm words for Swindal’s initiative.

“By his actions to restore Carol’s grave site,” said Katz, “Mr. Swindal lived out the words of Ms. Buck, who once wrote, ‘I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.’ ”

That faith was rewarded.

Not long before Carol’s stone was to be installed, the Vineland historical society got word that the land where the old cemetery is located had been sold to Prime Rock, a Wayne equity firm. To Martinelli’s relief and delight, she said the developer assured her they intend to preserve the cemetery as a historic site.

“I’m absolutely over the moon that we have been able to save this small part of our local history,” she said.

Back in Alabama, David Swindal can rest easier, too. While he has no children of his own, he has a godson, Joseph David Marchinares, 18, whom he loves dearly. Laying down Carol’s gravestone was his attempt to make things right for child and mother.

“I hope Miss Buck realizes that in marking that child’s grave,” Swindal said, ”that beloved child that caused her mother to have this eternal spring of beautiful words, it’s our way of saying, ‘Thank you, Miss Buck. Thank you for what you gave us.’ ”