All of the cemetery photographs were taken by Michael Jeffords

Grave Matters
By TERRY BIBO

For some Illinoisans, finding a place to bury a loved one has become a nightmare

Sixty-five-year-old Don Clark planned to spend eternity near his brother Bill and three of his sisters in the mausoleum at Peoria's Springdale Cemetery.

His oldest sister, Aletha Glossick, had purchased a crypt there. Her husband is buried there. And the idea appealed to the Clark children so much they had Bill's body moved from the southern Illinois cemetery where he'd been buried in 1965. The family had been appalled by the deteriorating conditions around Bill's grave in that cemetery. Don still gets agitated when he recalls the way the badly sealed casket opened and leaked water as it was taken from the ground.

"The memory of him coming up out of the ground is never

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going to go away," he says.

Don and his sisters thought those days were behind them when they bought crypts in Springdale. But conditions are just as bad or worse. In front of Bill's crypt, facing a long-broken stained glass window and struggling to avoid slipping in the pools of water that pock the marble floor, they express feelings of betrayal. In fact, almost a decade of complaints from many who have relatives at Springdale has not improved conditions there. "I don't understand why it has been taking so long," says Imogene Kavanaugh, 69. "It's been years. Years."

It took years to create the problems at historic Springdale Cemetery, and it may take years to fix them. At 140-plus, the 226-acre Springdale is the oldest continually operating cemetery in the state, and the second-largest. It is the final home of 170,000 people, including several Peoria mayors, state Rep. Prescott Bloom, Octave Chanute of Chanute Air Force base fame and Illinois Gov. Thomas Ford.

That prestige is one of Springdale's few remaining assets. Although almost 80 acres have yet to be developed, the cemetery has wallowed in financial troubles for more than a decade. Waist-high weeds and unkempt gravesites have attracted vandals. Teens have inscribed Satanic symbols on tombstones. Multiple-murderer Joseph Miller dumped the body of his last known victim, 88-year-old Bemice Fagotte, at Springdale in 1993.

Relatives of those buried at the cemetery have heaped abuse and complaints onto state and local officials. (The city of Peoria briefly levied $200-a-day fines against current owner Larry Leach for high weeds in 1994.) But there are few remedies to be had.

Under the Illinois Cemetery Care Act, the state comptroller has responsibility for licensing cemeteries and monitoring the trusts established for their care. Currently, that office audits the trusts for 850 licensed cemeteries, as well as other cemeteries that do not require a state license. Fraternal, religious and municipal cemeteries are not included in that total. Neither are the hundreds of small rural and family plots.

Under the law, cemetery owners are required to put a percentage of the funds generated from burials in a trust. The income from the trusts is used to provide ongoing maintenance. Those cemeteries that generate more than $50,000 for the trust are audited by the state every year. Others are audited every three years. The comptroller's office charges $100 for the work, and those dollars go back to the state's general fund.

The department that oversees cemeteries and burial trusts has a staff of about 17 people and a $1 million budget to oversee $537 million in trusts. At the same time, the state has no authority to muscle recalcitrant or incompetent cemetery owners into keeping the public's trust. "There's nothing the comptroller's office can do to compel a cemetery to play its role," says John Stevens, the comptroller's chief counsel. Officials in the comptroller's office are currently reviewing some of the state's decades-old laws covering cemeteries, but for the time being, the comptroller is limited to overseeing finances, not the maintenance of cemeteries.

The cemetery has wallowed in financial troubles for more than a decade

Still, of the 850 cemeteries licensed by the state, officials estimate just a handful — 1 percent or less — are troublesome. That includes Forest Home Cemetery in suburban Chicago and cemeteries in Venice in the Metro-East area and Sesser in southern Illinois. And it most definitely includes Springdale.

The cemetery has been through four owners in the last 15 years, and has been snarled in legal entanglements with every one of them. In 1993 alone, the local branch of the Illinois Attorney General's office fired off written warnings to all of the owners, the comptroller's office put Springdale into receivership and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency filed two citations against it for illegal dumping.

"There are other cemeteries in the state with various problems, but Springdale is in a class by itself," an employee of the comptroller's office said in late 1993.

A year later, current owner Larry Leach was fully licensed, but Springdale's troubles were far from over. Leach is under some tough restrictions. Springdale's trust monies are frozen, which means Leach can use only the interest — less than $5,000 a year — to maintain the properties. With about 80 acres left to develop, he could obtain fees for up to 80,000 gravesites. But it has been estimated that it will take as much as $1 million to restore the cemetery before any new owner makes money.

Unless new legislation is proposed, which isn't expected in the immediate future, the comptroller's office is limited in what it can do. Yet, operating under the current laws, it did help the town of Princeton handle a similar problem earlier this year. Princeton annexed the 15-acre Elm Lawn Memorial Park, assuming the $100,000 trust fund, but limiting its responsibility for lots that had been sold twice.

"It was ultimately our sign-off that allowed the deal to go through," says Stevens.

A similar deal doesn't seem likely for Springdale. So far, the city of Peoria has indicated no interest in assuming the more complex problem at Springdale, which is nearly 20 times the size of Elm Lawn — and has a smaller trust fund.

"It really has never been discussed, and it certainly is something that would cost money," says city spokeswoman Cathie Pipkins.

This won't be a comfort to those who have loved ones at Springdale. Don Clark has begun to avoid the place.

"I'm even half-afraid to go out there and see if there's been any progress on it," he says.

Terry Bibo is a columnist for the Peoria Journal Star.

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