I don't know about you guys, but I've heard very little about this on the
news. I heard the report of one person about a casket floating around and
that is it. I do limit my intake of the news though - I just get too
emotional with this stuff!
Denise
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ltlsis <ltlsis(a)midsouth.rr.com>
Date: Sep 2, 2005 3:24 AM
Subject: [STATE-COORD] Cemetery
To: STATE-COORD-L(a)rootsweb.com
From Mark Washburn:
Even the dead were not spared by Hurricane Katrina.
Above-ground crypts at the beachfront Southern Memorial Park in Biloxi were
clawed open by the storm surge and the remains of 131 were displaced.
"Twenty years in the business and I've never seen anything like this,"
Dewayne Helleson said Thursday.
Helleson, of Waco, Texas, is among the workers brought in by the cemetery's
owner, Bridges Funeral Co. of Knoxville, Tenn., to recover remains and
return them to their mausoleums.
Of the 4,500 graves in the 60-year-old cemetery, only one in-ground vault
was partially unearthed. But above-ground tombs, in five mausoleum
buildings, did not fare as well.
Katrina's surge tore walls off the honey-comb style crypts closest to the
ocean and the retreating tide left caskets and remains along the beach
highway.
Tim Shavers, cemetery superintendent, found the ghastly scene in the waning
hours of the storm and set about immediately to recover the disinterred.
"People came up and asked how they could help," said Kim Powers, a partner
in the Bridges Funeral Co.
"He said, 'I need to get these folks back'."
After a day of recovering remains, Shavers remained at the cemetery,
sleeping in his pickup truck overnight to guard the park.
By Thursday, the caskets and remains that had been recovered were resting in
an undamaged masoleum.
"Our goal here is return every loved one to their final resting place as
quickly as we can," Powers said. "We're handling this recovery with dignity
and respect like it's the first time."
Not all the missing remains have been found. It is all but inevitable some
were swept away.
Powers is a woman who sees the funeral business as a somewhat sacred
calling. It's a job, she says, that involves helping people through the
worst times of their lives.
Southern Memorial Park is one of three local cemeteries -- Floral Hills and
Gulf Pines are the others -- that Powers and her partner Dennis Bridges
owns. Southern Memorial, with its Gulf view, stately trees and manicured
grounds, was lovely, she said.
"People would come and bring flowers to their loved ones, come every day and
talk to them," said Powers, who took over Southern Memorial Park on Nov. 30,
2004.
She wept when she arrived Wednesday from Tennessee and saw the damage.
"Anyone who has a relative here, I know how it makes them feel because I
know how I feel," she said.
Mayor A.J. Holloway inspected the cemetery Thursday, both a professional and
personal journey. He went solemly to this father's crypt. "It's gone,"
he
said.
A special mortuary team from the National Funeral Directors Association will
be asked to help identify remains. The location of each displaced casket was
diagramed, one of the clues experts will use to making identifications.
The damaged crypts will be rebuilt, Powers said, and relatives with a
damaged burial spot will be contacted. Though the cemetery's office was
swept away, workers found records Thursday that will aid identifications,
Powers said.
SHIRTTAIL -- To contact Bridges Funeral Co. in Knoxville: (865) 523-4999.
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