The Andriani family has grave concerns a proper resting place for a relative will be sacrificed by officials more focused on the construction of a new exit ramp.

The family of Leonardo Andriani (pictured left), a laborer and longshoreman who died more than half a century ago, says they may want to rebury him in the picturesque Adriatic Coast town of Molfetta, Italy, where he was born.

The family says it would restore respect for the man who is now buried in Secaucus, N.J.

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The problem is locating a small, now-covered-over stone that marks the man's specific burial spot before the N.J. Turnpike Authority relocates all of the cemetery's estimated 1,200 bodies. Removal to a mass grave somewhere else is planned to pave the way for a new highway off-ramp.

"It would be very, very difficult, virtually impossible, to figure out hat remains belong to any family," said Michael Lapolla, executive irector of the N.J. Turnpike Authority.

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Grave Concerns

However, Patrick Andriani, grandson to Leonardo, disagrees. "It's very -- reasonably speaking -- very easy for these authorities to help me, and to find my grandfather, and do the right thing," he said. "And then, progress can take place."

Patrick Andriani has been searching half his life for a relative many in his own family didn't know much about. What he found in government and family files is that Leonardo first came to the United States in the 1920s, and he worked as a laborer and longshoreman, living mostly in Hoboken, N.J. But in 1948, Leonardo became mortally ill with heart disease.

After shipping clothes and some money back to Italy, he died Christmas Eve in a hospital, yards from where the Turnpike would soon be constructed.

With no known relatives in America, Leonardo Andriani was laid to rest a half-mile away.

For decades after it opened in the late 19th century, the Hudson County burial ground was a final home to the area's indigent and unidentified -- bodies with nowhere else to go.

But no one's been buried here for the last 40 years.

So by the time Andriani's grandson and 72 year-old son discovered the cemetery, it was long since overgrown with garbage -- landfill from construction projects, and other debris.

"He's alone. He's been alone his whole life," Patrick Andriani said. "He had a very hard life. He worked a long time in America by himself. His family was in Italy. And I feel like it's time to not have him be alone anymore."

"They would be moved to a cemetery," Lapolla said. "There would be a general marker or remembrance for them where, there are family members who would like to pay their respects, they would have a place to go, as opposed to underneath the Turnpike."

It's a solution the Turnpike Authority said is both caring and practical -- given cemetery records often no more specific than "unknown skeleton" or "still birth."

But for Leonardo Andriani -- his family says -- it will be no place like home.