13 November 2012

Vandalism in Cemeteries Seems to be Running Rampant -- What Can We Do?

I was sad to read a Facebook post by Judy G Russell (The Legal Genealogist) about this ...

Officials in Alabama are searching for unknown vandals who they say overturned or broke nearly 70 gravestones in a cemetery sometime last week, al.com reported.

Limestone County Sheriff Capt. Stanley McNatt told NBC News that the desecration affected nearly 70 percent of the tombstones at Hatchett Cemetery in Tanner, Ala.
Members of the Little Ezekiel Missionary Baptist Church, which maintains the cemetery, suspect the incident occurred sometime between Wednesday and Friday of last week.


Sadly, this is more common than I would have thought!  This isn’t the only cemetery recently vandalized!  Here are other articles, all in the last month, about vandalism at cemeteries around the country!  These are articles about “unique” acts of vandalism.

Now I’m just mad!

There are probably more articles and by this time, it was evident that cemetery vandalism was pretty common!

What can be done to prevent this from happening at other cemeteries? 

How do we “instill” respect for our ancestor’s final resting spots in our society?


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1 comment:

  1. We are reminded by a blog post on Mocavo that vandalism is NOT the only source of damage in cemeteries -- Nature plays a hand also, http://blog.mocavo.com/2012/11/our-legacies-in-stone

    ReplyDelete