(Note: This story was originally written on Oct. 6, 2010)

At the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn on Wednesday, the scene couldn’t be more peaceful. Koi swam gracefully across a crystal clear pond, the faint sound of falling water filled the air, the sun shined down upon hushed onlookers; bells rang out in the distance.

And a funeral was taking place for a woman who died 44 years ago.

Eugenia Farrar, who in 1907 became the first person in history to sing over a wireless radio broadcast, finally was laid to rest in a memorial, organized by the Green-Wood Historic Fund in conjunction with the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Farrar died in 1966, but her ashes have moved from place to place in an old container ever since. They have finally found a real home.

Born in Sweden under the name Ada Eugenia von Böös, Farrar made radio history. The man on the other end of the broadcast was Oliver Adams Wyckoff, a civil engineer on the deck of the USS Dolphin in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and a member of the DeForest Pioneers, a radio organization.

“At the time he was just a 19-year-old Navy man, a radio operator,” said Nancy Smith, Wyckoff’s granddaughter, who was in attendance with her family. “And of course all of the guys teased him. ‘You’re hearing things!’”

The DeForest Pioneers were named after Lee DeForest, the man who broadcast Farrar’s voice. After the broadcast, Farrar, who was also a member of the radio group, kept in touch with Wyckoff over the years. When Farrar died, in accordance with her wishes, the ashes were sent to Wyckoff and the Pioneers.

“My grandfather was the secretary treasurer,” said Smith. “He received a cardboard box, he knew what it was. He didn’t open it. It sat on the shelf in his office until he died.”

This was the end of Wyckoff’s story, but it would not be the end of Farrar’s. After Wyckoff’s death, the Pioneers didn’t know what to do with Farrar’s remains, so they were shipped to Wyckoff’s wife. Before moving to Hawaii a few years later, she passed the remains of the woman the family affectionately called “the Madame” on to Smith, her daughter.

This generational passing would continue: Smith passed the ashes on to her son, Douglas, who passed them on to his uncle. Once he died, he left the ashes to Smith’s grandson, Adam.

“The Madame is a part of us,” said Smith. “She’s been our friendly ghost for many years.”

Eventually Adam’s mother, Sharon Loving, decided enough was enough.

Loving contacted Daniella Romano, an archivist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in 2007.

“Ever since then I’ve been researching Eugenia quite often,” said Romano, who helped organize the memorial. “I’ve definitely felt a personal identification.”

That’s where the ashes of a radio legend sat: tucked away in storage, in an old can that no one moved for fear of spilling its remains.

It wasn’t until a January article in the New York Times about the Navy Yard mentioned Farrar that the cemetery took notice. Green-Wood President Richard J. Moylan was reading the paper as he does every morning, contacted Romano and immediately began making plans to lay the singer to rest.

At the end of the ceremony on Wednesday, Moylan was the one to tuck away Farrar’s urn, created by local artist Aaron Davidson, in an elaborate hall within the cemetery’s Serenity Garden. The urn, glazed in porcelain, is etched with the grooves of her recording, the song “I Love You Truly.” No longer would she be confined to an old tin can—the Madame would be wrapped in her own voice forever.