Families Sue Over Unfinished Graveyard Garden Of Memories Has Up To 40 Bodies In
Temporary Vaults
Submitted By N.O.V.A.
Times Picayune 	01- 6-1997


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Keith Toney and his mother thought it would be easier to plan ahead.

But when his mother died last May and Toney drove to the Garden of Memories
cemetery in Metairie to finalize her funeral plans, he found something he had not
planned for. The lawn crypt they had bought five years earlier for almost $4,000
did not exist. Their portion of the cemetery, known as the Garden of Gethsemane,
had not been built.

Toney said cemetery officials proposed two options: He could bury his mother in a
temporary grave until Gethsemane was completed or bury her in another part of the
cemetery, for an additional $3,000.

"I was like, 'Are you crazy?' " Toney said. "Wherever I put my mother at rest,
that is where she is going to stay."

Toney chose to pay. But it turns out his mother was not the only one stranded in
burial limbo by sluggish construction at the cemetery. At least 30 dead people are
in temporary vaults awaiting burial in the Garden of Gethsemane, and as many as 10
more await burial in other unfinished sections, cemetery General Manager Robert
Nugon said.

Toney has joined four families in a lawsuit against the cemetery's owner, Canadian
"death-care" giant Loewen Group International, and previous owner Security
Industrial Funeral Home Corp., which was sold to Loewen in March 1996. In the
suit, filed Dec. 19 in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna, they allege breach
of contract, fraud and violation of state law for not completing the crypts within
five years of purchase.

A local attorney for Loewen would not address questions specific to the lawsuit
but said, "The company intends to fulfill all of its obligations in good faith."

Nugon said the plaintiffs should have known that temporary interment was a
possibility when they bought the crypts in 1991, because they were sold in
Gethsemane before its development. That arrangement, known as "preconstruction,"
carries the risk of temporary interment, he said, but it can also save as much as
40 percent on the cost.

"The cemetery business is one of long-term investments, like buying a condo,"
Nugon said. "The only difference is that you don't want to use it. Unless you want
to die."

The state Cemetery Board, however, requires that a cemetery section be completed
within five years of the sale of the first lot. That rule has never been a problem
for cemeteries to comply with, board Director Lucy McCann said said.

According to the lawsuit, lawn crypts were being bought in the Garden of
Gethsemane as early as May 3, 1991, and so far, no one has been buried there.
McCann said extensions can be requested for "reasonable cause," and one was filed
on behalf of the Garden of Memories a week before the lawsuit was filed. It is
only the second extension requested since the board's founding in 1974, she said.
The board will consider the request at its next meeting, in April.

During a tour of the cemetery last week, Nugon stood atop a plateau of muddy earth
planted with rye grass for the winter and motioned to ground beneath him. It is
the first portion of the Garden of Gethsemane, he said, and it is 90 percent
complete.

"We're right on top of phases one and two," he said. "It will be finished by the
end of February."

Beside the small plateau, which is bordered by train tracks and the bustle of
construction on a mausoleum, 150 empty concrete burial vaults sit in a small
valley below, waiting to be planted. They are designated for later portions of
Gethsemane and the adjacent Garden of Honor, which will be built up with dirt,
drainage and the vaults themselves. When completed by the end of March, he said,
the vaults will be flush with the ground, "like a Yankee cemetery."

Given the speed of the present construction, Nugon cannot explain why it took more
than five years to get to this point.

"I don't think it's a question of not planning," Nugon said. "It's a matter of
decisions. Decisions I don't make."

Nugon said it was "an oversight" not to seek an extension until more than seven
months after the five-year deadline.

"There has been a period of slow" progress, Nugon conceded. "But now everything is
going ahead full-speed toward completion. And we're even building more than we
need."

That is little consolation to Michael Parrino Jr., whose father has been in a
temporary mausoleum vault since April 1994. Parrino dreads the moment when he must
inter his father a second time. Yet he has grown impatient for that time to come.

"When they sold him the plot in 1991, the salesman told him it would be ready in a
year," Parrino said. "When they put him in the temporary vault, they told me it
would only be for six months. What was that, almost three years ago?"

With his son at his side, Parrino walked down the long pink marble hallway of the
mausoleum's second floor. They craned their necks to look up, where on the fourth
tier a vault is marked with a simple temporary plaque: Parrino.

Parrino said it is difficult to visit his father here, for there is nowhere to lay
flowers and it feels impersonal.

"Oh, it's first class as mausoleums go, but it's not what Daddy paid for," he
said. "Daddy wanted to be planted in the ground, but he's here. Still up in the
air."