Sisters Campaign to Fix Up Cemetery : Tujunga: Hills of Peace closed after 1978 floods washed bodies from their graves. Pair whose father is buried there want conditions improved.

Hills of Peace Cemetery has been anything but tranquil over the years.

Heavy rainfall eroded the unstable hillside of the Tujunga burial ground in 1978, sweeping a gruesome collection of unearthed caskets, mud and bodies into neighbors’ yards. Then the cemetery went bankrupt and became the only one of more than 2,000 graveyards in California to be taken over by the state.

Now, two Orange County sisters whose father was buried there in 1967 have mounted an aggressive campaign to improve what they say is the graveyard’s still wretched condition.

Pitted with sunken graves and overgrown with weeds, the 10-acre graveyard off Parsons Trail Road is a world apart from the manicured green vistas of nearby Forest Lawn. A potholed driveway leads to a rundown caretaker’s cottage, where children’s underpants flap on a clothesline. A rain-damaged mausoleum overlooks the steep, rocky hillside where 3,400 people were buried before the cemetery was shut down following the flood.

“I don’t expect it to be a Forest Lawn,” said Greta Wick, 37, one of the sisters trying to upgrade the graveyard. “But I do want the state Cemetery Board to take their responsibility seriously and fix this place up.”

At one time, weeds grew so high that the sisters could not even find their father’s grave marker, Wick said.

“Right now, my mother gets nightmares and sick to her stomach when she comes up here,” she said. “She’s been cheated out of visiting my father’s grave.”

At Wick’s request, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) has asked the Cemetery Board for a report on the situation, including a full accounting of how the trust income from the cemetery has been spent since 1984, when the board took over.

“Anyone who had relatives buried there would find it disturbing,” said Beth Groves, Bergeson’s spokeswoman.

But John Gill, executive director of the Cemetery Board, defended the board’s stewardship of the cemetery, saying limited funds prevent it from making major improvements, including putting in a lawn. The regulatory board, which oversees the state’s 2,000 cemeteries, is composed of four lay people and two industry members appointed by the governor.

“We’re here trying to make the best of a bad situation, but realistically it’s always going to be a bad situation,” Gill said.

Under state law, cemeteries are required to pay a fee into a trust fund each time someone is buried or cremated, Gill said. The income from the trust fund is used to help maintain the graveyard, he said, but burial revenues must be tapped too because the interest never covers the full cost.

The trust income from Hills of Peace fluctuates widely depending on interest rates, but has recently averaged about $9,000 annually, Gill said. Revenues are stagnant because no one has been buried there since the late 1970s.

The board has spent some of the interest money on insurance for and repairs to the caretaker’s cottage and mausoleum, Gill said. It also has put about $9,000 aside in anticipation of lower interest rates this year, he said.

Gill acknowledged that some of the $9,000 set aside could be used for repairs, such as repaving the driveway, which he promised would be done early in 1993.

The board has depended largely on resident caretakers to maintain the graveyard and keep vandals out, Gill said. But it had to evict the previous caretaker five years ago after neighbors complained he was dealing drugs, he said.

Since then, caretakers Frank and Sharon Gatti have lived rent-free on the grounds with their four children in a tiny, one-bedroom A-frame without a telephone.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Pete Weinzierl, senior lead officer for the area, said the Gattis’ presence helps keep out teen-agers and other potential vandals.

But Greta Wick expressed disappointment with the caretaker couple, saying they should do more to maintain the property.

Sharon Gatti said it is not their fault.

“Before we came in, this place looked like a junkyard,” she said. “I don’t understand why anyone is complaining. If we weren’t here, this place would have been totally destroyed.”

Gatti said they have had trouble recently in getting authorization from the board to buy equipment because the state inspector responsible for cemeteries in Southern California retired this summer. Gill said state cutbacks mean he will be unable to fill the inspector’s position until January.

Wick and her sister Arlene Herrera, 39, are not satisfied, though. Last week, they decided to move their father’s casket to a different cemetery so that their mother can someday be buried next to him.

But they plan to continue their crusade on behalf of the dead in Hills of Peace, many of whom were indigents buried there under a contract with the county.

“It’s a matter of principle,” Wick said. “The condition of this place is totally uncalled for.”