The "closed" signs on the gates of Burr Oak Cemetery have finally come down after all hell broke loose last summer.
That was in July, after workers at the historic African American cemetery were arrested and accused of digging up graves and reselling plots.
FEW IMPROVEMENTS
Since then there are a few improvements -- a repaired main entrance gate, potholes filled and drainage improved.
What family members will notice the most will be some 3,000 two-by-four stakes sticking out of the ground throughout Burr Oak's 105 acres in Alsip, a suburb of Chicago. Each stake is painted with a kind of graveyard address and serve as a location marker to help family members who are trying to find the final resting place of their loved ones.
Grave markers are permanent installations in most cemeteries; however, at Burr Oak there aren't any really. This makes it difficult and confusing. But, everyone wants to know if their family member's grave was one of those that were violated.
NO GRAVESTONES FOR MOST GRAVES
Here's the big problem: there are 140,000 graves in Burr Oak Cemetery and only 43,000 headstones.
Don't forget the cemetery's records were destroyed through both time and suspected intent. Now there is a newly-created database of burial records, plus the temporary wood stake markers. Many with family members buried at Burr Oak were poor and so the majority of families could not afford to mark the graves.
COMPLICATED VISITATION
This week they are re-opening the cemetery, but only for family-members. And it's not a particularly easy process. You can't get in unless you have a "ticket" with the location of the grave you want to visit. To get that ticket, you must go to the new Burr Oak cemetery Web site. A bus will drive you to the cemetery, from a transportation center, and you must have that ticket to get on the bus. No drive-in or walk-up traffic is being permitted.
Another way the Burr Oak officials are trying to control the reopening is to limit it to specific cemetery sections daily.
Although officials will try to keep people at a distance from the crime scene area -- where investigators this summer found human remains sticking out of a dirt pile or mass grave dumping site -- people can walk right up to the spot along the cemetery's north border.
That's something that curious sightseers might do, but I doubt many family members would want to take that risk -- the risk of seeing something the mind can't easily erase from memory.
TOUGH REGULATIONS NEEDED
Following all the investigations, are Illinois citizens going to be so weary of the topic that they let the funeral and cemetery industry off-the-hook? Or, will they demand of their state legislators tough new laws to protect the people from an industry rife with abuse and few, if any, regulations.
TO READ "BURR OAK CEMETERY: MAMA WHERE ARE YOU, THEY'VE ROBBED YOUR GRAVE" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "WHERE IS EMMETT TILL'S COFFIN, WHERE ARE THE BABYLAND GRAVES?" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "EMMETT TILL CAN FINALLY REST IN PEACE: COFFIN SAVED FOREVER IN SMITHSONIAN" CLICK HERE.
CLICK AND READ "BURR OAK CEMETERY, EMMET TILL'S BURIAL SITE, TO BE SCANNED UNDERGROUND."
CLICK AND READ "FAMOUS BURIALS AT CHICAGO'S BURR OAK CEMETERY
by Sharon McEachern
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