Bob CollinsBack in the day, it probably wasn’t much of a chore to serve on a town’s cemetery board. Beyond headstones and a few flowers, and the need to mow on a constant basis, there wasn’t much to the job running the cities of the silent.
That clearly is changing because our cemeteries increasingly are full shrines to the departed. Confict is sure to follow.
And it has in Cottage Grove where the family of Adam Fournelle, who died two years ago, is pretty upset that his belongings, including a hockey stick and fishing rod, have been thrown away, KSTP reports.
A Cottage Grove family is upset because they say cemetery staff threw away mementos at their son’s gravesite.
Tonight on @KSTP an emotional father shares his frustrations with the cemetery association. pic.twitter.com/d9yU2qwQga
— Brett Hoffland (@BrettHoffland) June 14, 2018
“This is a gravesite, people come here for a lot of reasons,” Adam’s father, Dave Fournelle, tells the station.
“When we came out here, it just gave us really nice comfort.”
They did get a letter a month ago telling them that things not approved by the cemetery board would be removed on June 9, but Fournelle says only bushes and shrubs were listed as items not specifically allowed.
“We’re kind of looking around the cemetery here, saying there’s a lot more people who have a lot more stuff than we do, and we kind of figured that because we had verbal approval to put the hockey stick up that we would be okay,” Fournelle said.
Members of the cemetery board didn’t comment.
