Cemetery woes spur meeting

Nina Bair doesn’t believe state officials fully understand the maintenance concerns area residents have about Lawrence’s Memorial Park Cemetery.

So the Lawrence resident has organized a meeting next month to drive the point home. From 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. May 15, Bair is inviting people with concerns about the cemetery to meet at the Lawrence Memorial Hospital auditorium.

Participants will be able to air their concerns and sign a petition. The petition will be sent to the Kansas secretary of state and attorney general.

“They’re not understanding what is going on,” Bair said. “We hope that we can make the state see that it is not being kept up and that somebody in town needs to be appointed to oversee it.”

The cemetery, 1517 E. 15th St., is owned by Houston-based Mike Graham & Associates. Problems at the cemetery first came to light in August when about two dozen people told the Journal-World that the cemetery was mowed infrequently and roads and trees were not properly maintained. Throughout the summer and fall, complaints also were leveled that graves were being left unmarked for extended periods because the company was not installing tombstones in a timely manner.

On Friday, officials with Mike Graham & Associates declined to comment.

Signs of improvement

But earlier this month, the state attorney general’s office announced a settlement had been reached with the company that would pay approximately 15 individuals, on average, $3,000 each to settle issues related to the untimely delivery and installation of tombstones. The settlement checks are expected to be mailed to individuals in the next two weeks, said Whitney Watson, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Phill Kline.

The settlement did not specifically cover maintenance issues. Watson said his office had sent agents to view the cemetery on several occasions. They determined it did not meet the standards to be considered legally abandoned.

Nina Bair is organizing a meeting where she plans to start a petition asking state officials to transfer oversight of Memorial Park Cemetery to a local organization. Bair's husband, Floyd, is buried in the cemetery at 1517 E. 15th St. that has been the subject of complaints in the past year. Bair is pictured with a flag that was presented to her by the American Legion and a letter from President Clinton thanking her husband for his service in World War II.

“We were at the cemetery as recently as last week,” Watson said. “There were signs that it needed painted and weed control probably could have been better, but the grass was being mowed. The belief is that it is far from being physically abandoned.”

Crews were mowing the facility Friday.

But earlier this year the cemetery’s maintenance fund was found to be out of compliance with a state law that requires private cemeteries to deposit 15 percent — or a minimum of $25 per plot — from burial plot sales into a permanent maintenance fund. Watson said company officials at the time of the settlement assured his office the fund would be brought into compliance.

Officials with the secretary of state and attorney general’s offices are auditing the company to determine whether the fund is still out of compliance. If the fund is found to be out of compliance for 90 consecutive days, the property can be placed in receivership, which would allow the care of the facility to be transferred to the city or county.

Watson said state officials were reluctant to take that step.

“I think the belief is that getting the current owners to rectify the situation is the better course of action than putting it into the hands of the city or the county,” Watson said.

Big crowd expected

That’s not what critics of the cemetery want to hear.

People who have concerns about Memorial Park Cemetery can attend a meeting from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. May 15 in the auditorium at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 325 Maine.

“It isn’t going to get any better if they try to do it that way,” Bair said. “You have to go out there and raise the devil to get anything taken care of now.”

Bair, who is 77 and has a double pacemaker, said she recently had to spend two hours at her husband’s grave cutting grass and pulling weeds to make it look presentable.

Bair said there are others with similar problems. Based on conversations, she said she was expecting a good crowd — perhaps more than a hundred people — to attend the May 15 meeting.

Roy Pennel, a Lawrence resident who has a daughter buried at the cemetery, is glad Bair is organizing the effort. He said he also would like to have the property put under local control, but said that it at least needed to be forced to spend money to improve its maintenance equipment.

“They need to have equipment in there that will get the job done,” Pennel said. “The bottom line is that it needs to look like the name implies — a memorial.”