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Cemeteries can move tombstones at will - but bodies are a different story

Posted on July 24th, 2009 – 10:56 AM
By James Shiffer

emeryedeburn.jpgMy story today about two Brooklyn Center widows’ outrage about the movement of their husbands’ headstones gave me a crash course in cemetery regulation in Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Health’s Mortuary Science Section has these duties: “Licenses funeral homes, crematories, morticians, funeral directors and oversee cemetery regulation.” David Benke, the section manager, told me that his office wouldn’t get involved in questions of markers and monuments.

“In Minnesota, cemeteries are allowed to make their own regulations,” Benke said. “If they were doing a disinterment without any proper authorization to do so, that would be a concern. Moving a marker or monument, even in terms of moving a body within a cemetery, there’s some latitude that cemeteries actually have.”

While the dispute at Mound Cemetery doesn’t approach the outrage at Burr Oak Cemetery in Chicago, every tiff in a graveyard is a serious matter for the image-conscious industry. Ron Gjerde, who works at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis and is also an official with the Minnesota Association of Cemeteries, urges families with graveyard gripes to contact him at (612) 822-2171, if they can’t work it out with the cemetery.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Buyer beware, Complaint sagas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Cemeteries can move tombstones at will - but bodies are a different story”

  1. Wasteofspace Says:
    July 24th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Oh please. Another non-story, much ado about nothing.
    No laws were broken, no ‘rules or regulations’ were
    broken. The graves were not touched or disturbed. All
    the cemetary did was to correct a mistake, and make room
    for another plot owner. Where is the crisis here? As I
    have previously posted, Whistleblower is becoming a joke.
    PLEASE go back to doing REAL stories with REAL injustice,
    instead of giving space to a bunch of whiners.

  2. Frank O. Says:
    July 25th, 2009 at 8:37 am

    Like you, Wasteofspace.

  3. Tom Sparkmanq Says:
    July 25th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    How do I contact someone to get
    an obituary from 1915.

    Tom Sparkman
    Lee, Florida

  4. vette07conv Says:
    July 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Obviously some commenters have never dealt with loosing a loved one. Can’t believe comments made. The manager of this cemetery made a bad situation worse. Saying some people think they are above the rules. The old manager screwed it up not the widows. Then the new one insulted them. He should be making sure the owners of the cemetery move all 4 graves so the men and their wives can be together and the cemetery should foot the bill. You buy a piece of land with a certain idea in mind, they sell it to you knowing that and when it’s their fault, they should make it right. All they want to do is make money. My father just passed away a year ago. The cemetery was going to charge $200.00 for the plot and $100.00 to “open” the grave for burial. We are talking about a 1 foot square hole as he was cremated. They would not let any of our family dig the grave. My father dug many graves during his lifetime for friends families (and were talking the big graves before cremations and lots were in frozen ground) and never charged a dime. People did this out of respect and love of neighbors and friends. Anyway, my father is still with us in his urn. Someday he will be on the land he was born on and farmed his whole life which is a much more fitting place than a cruel heartless cemetery as these 2 lovely ladies are dealing with.

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