At Cemetery, No End to Woes

Beckoning visitors along a rural stretch of California Highway 86, a wooden sign painted with rolling green hills and floating oak leaves stands at the entrance to Memory Gardens Cemetery & Memorial Park.

Beyond the sign, tufts of sun-scorched grass and weeds camouflage grave markers. Withering trees and skeleton-like sticks of white protrude from the stony ground, ghostly reminders of the oleander bushes and eucalyptus trees that once flourished under a groundskeeper’s watchful eye.

Imperial County officials have grown increasingly frustrated by the cemetery’s decades-long decline but say they have few means to compel the owner to clean up the place. Meanwhile, residents of nearby Imperial and Brawley have watched in frustration as the remaining patches of green had shriveled and died.

“I’m embarrassed,” said Jeff Green, who, like his father before him, once tended the grounds where his grandparents and nearly a dozen other relatives are buried. “People from San Diego, Riverside, San Felipe drive by this place, and I don’t want them thinking that’s the way we take care of our cemeteries.”

Memory Gardens, with 698 graves, is closed; no new plots have been sold since 1967. But burials continue for families who purchased plots long ago. Those families and others are trying to preserve what they can at the memorial park.

Linda Cooke, 51, of Imperial dutifully hauls a 100-gallon water tank in the bed of her pickup every week and a half to a scraggly eucalyptus ringed by turf she has nurtured. Her father and grandparents are buried nearby.

Cooke’s younger sister helped her plant the tree in 1995 to provide shade for generations who would visit in the future.

A few yards away, a mound marks the grave of Vicki Roberts, the cemetery’s newest occupant, who died in April at age 42.

“On her deathbed is when I promised her that I would make sure things would change out here. I don’t go back on my promises, especially to my baby sister,” said Cooke as she walked the length of the cemetery, yellow grass crunching underfoot.

The decrepit sight has caused Green to reflect more than once on the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, who said, “Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have.”

“It’s a reflection of the citizens of Imperial County,” said Green. “If we are not taking care of the place where our loved ones are laid to rest, what does that say about us?”

The 80-acre property has seen its share of scandal and neglect. The now-defunct State Cemetery Board licensed the cemetery in 1963, said Kevin Flanagan, a spokesman for the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, which now regulates state-licensed cemeteries.

Memory Gardens Cemetery lost its license in 1967 after the state attorney general’s office started investigating three former cemetery trustees who allegedly stopped caring for the property.

The cemetery’s decline prompted citizens to band together to pay the water bill, plant trees, mow the lawn and collect donations for grass seed and fertilizer.

An Imperial County grand jury later indicted one of the trustees on felony misuse of $50,000 in endowment funds. The trustee was fined $2,000 and received a suspended sentence because he repaid the money with interest. Property tax records show that the Imperial Land & Water Co., in care of U.S. Cemeteries Inc., purchased the property in 1989. U.S. Cemeteries is headed by mortuary magnate Maytor H. McKinley.

In 2003, electric bills had not been paid and the power was turned off, said Green, who said he stopped working at the cemetery. The county then brought in public works employees to water and maintain the property, County Supervisor Joe Maruca said. Supervisors decided to stop watering after they learned that the cemetery was private property.

In time, the power was restored and Green resumed his duties as groundskeeper.

Then, in 2004, attorney Joseph B. Finlay, representing Pistol River Properties Ltd., contacted Green to say that the Upper Darby, Pa., company had purchased the property. Records show that it was sold for $158,607.24.

Green said he mowed and watered the cemetery for seven months but was never paid. He wrote to Finlay in March to say he would no longer tend the memorial park until he was paid.

McKinley did not return calls and Finlay declined to comment.

Just what the county can do about the property is unclear, said Deputy County Counsel Thomas V. Barrington.

Barrington said he couldn’t say for certain who heads Pistol River Properties. Billing records indicate that U.S. Cemeteries was the previous owner. But in correspondence to the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau signed by McKinley in 1997, the letterhead lists Pistol River Properties and U.S. Cemeteries as both belonging to Oliver Bair Enterprises Inc. of Philadelphia.

The county has looked into possible health and safety code violations, Barrington said, but has found none.

“We are at our wits’ end,” Maruca said. The county, he said, “can’t sue someone just to sue them -- just because” the property “looks bad.”

In the meantime, wind and traffic on the four-lane highway have kicked up dust, which has settled over many headstones. To save graves from being lost, Cooke has recorded the names and dates on each legible marker. Some headstones may be already buried, she said. Several graves belong to World War II and Korean War veterans, Green said.

Cooke is determined to see that the cemetery is restored. She said she can remember when the grass was green and the trees were leafy.

“It was a place that you could go to and find a little bit of peace,” Cooke said. “What’s happening now, it’s the most disheartening thing I can imagine. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”