Vandals Strike in Wilmington Cemetery

Around mid-summer 2014, I was getting my car fixed at the Saab dealer in Wilmington, Delaware. After the sizable extraction of money from my wallet, I grabbed a burger and a Coke from a nearby fast food emporium. What better place to eat lunch than the nearby cemetery (its not just postal workers and cops who do this, you know). So I drove to Riverview Cemetery about half a mile down the road.

"Abiding faith and hope in a glorious reunion"

On entering the north side off Market Street (which is the newer half of the 1872 cemetery), I was a bit distracted by all the headstones that appeared to be knocked over, off their bases. I drove around to find some shade in which to park, and noted many more knocked-over headstones and small obelisks. Odd. I’d been in here many times before and would have definitely noticed this. Was it because the grass was cut so low that I’m seeing this? I’d been here before where the grass had grown kind of tall. Maybe I just never noticed them?

Doorless crypt

I stopped in the shade of some trees near a crypt which had its door removed; interesting stained glass window at the back. I ate my lunch and just got out of the car to photograph the stained glass when I realized a pickup truck was headed down the road toward me – I was blocking the road. There’s usually no activity at Riverview so it didn’t occur to me to pull off the road.

I moved my car to one side and then got out with my camera, to make it very obvious to the driver what I was doing there. Obviously the crypt had at one time lost its door to thieves so I didn't want anyone to think I was casing it out to steal the stained glass. Much thievery has occurred here over the years - you can tell by the blocked up doorways of the larger mausoleums. The truck stopped and the woman driving it looked at me and I said “Hi.” She asked if she could help me and I just told her I stopped to eat my lunch and take some pictures. I assumed she had some authority here so I wanted her to know that I was not up to no good. She probably assumed this, since I was driving a bright blue turbo Saab convertible – not the vehicle of choice for thieves and vandals.

Blocked up mausoleum

I mentioned to her that it appeared that many headstones had been knocked over. She told me this had only happened the previous week (July 15, 2014) – the work of vandals. Seventy monuments and other grave markers in all had been pushed off their bases. Given that horrible situation, I told her that it was great that she stopped me to see what I was up to. I introduced myself as a Board member of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Inc. in Philadelphia, an organization of which she was well aware. She was the Secretary on the Board of the Friends of Riverview Cemetery.

Cylindrical grave markers displaced from their bases

Security is a major issue when you have limited funds to protect your space. Neither Riverview nor Mount Moriah have intact fencing, gates, or security patrols. Volunteers are left to patrol the grounds when they can. Local police sometimes cruise through, or park for a while. I myself have stopped people at Mount Moriah and asked if I could help them. Usually, they are there for a good reason, but sometimes not. You don’t want to lock the cemetery up and prevent visitors from accessing their loved ones’ graves while you’re keeping out vandals, scofflaws, and ne’er do wells. It is a challenge. After I posted the photograph below (with my blue car in it) on Facebook, someone made the comment, "One day the idiots responsible will go to visit their mother's grave and find it like this. Then they'll know the true cost of their criminality." Couldn't have said it better myself.

We struck up quite a conversation, the two of us there in Riverview, seeing many parallels between the cemeteries and our Friends groups. At some point the woman said, “What are the chances we would run into each other like this?” I replied, “Well, actually the chances are pretty good that two cemetery nerds would be in the same cemetery at the same time.” So I’ll make a few introductions and perhaps the two Friends groups can share some ideas to their mutual benefit. Like they say, everyone you meet knows something that you don’t!

Vandalized headstones at Riverview Cemetery

I had actually written about Riverview Cemetery back in 2012 (click here to read), when I noticed that the place seemed to be having a lot more attention paid to it than I was used to seeing. I’d been coming here since the early 2000s, when I first started having my previous Saabs repaired down the road at Sports Car Service. Weeds used to be waist high, but then new management took over in 2008 and things turned around. The Friends of Riverview Cemetery was actually granted legal ownership of the cemetery and through the hard work of these volunteers, Riverview Cemetery continues to be an active burial site. This is a goal for Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia/Yeadon – to once again have active burials once the ownership situation is resolved.

Riverview Cemetery chapel

It really is quite a nasty blow to Wilmington's Riverview Cemetery to have had all this damage done; the estimated repair cost is about $20,000, i.e., to reset all the stones and monuments. The owners, the Friends group, barely has enough money to cut the grass. I guess one of the useful things I did learn from this travesty is that so many grave markers, by design, merely sit on a stone base, without actually being attached to it. Perhaps modern headstone carvers should make headstones with steel dowels that fit into the base, to secure the stone. I have seen this with older marble headstones.

Anyone with information about the vandalism at Riverview Cemetery, please call the Wilmington police Confidential Tip Line at (302)576-3990.

References and Further Reading:
Riverview Cemetery website
Vandals damage 70 tombstones at cemetery
70 Headstones Toppled At Wilmington Cemetery

And the Dead Shall Rise

It’s still dark this morning, and raining lightly, two days after Hurricane Sandy left the east coast of the United States. With New York City’s subway tunnels filled with water and the Atlantic City boardwalk washed away, I consider myself (in Philadelphia) quite fortunate to have suffered nothing more than a potted plant blown off my garden wall. Alright, extremely fortunate.

With all this focus on property damage, you would think someone would mention a cemetery here or there. That’s where I come in. It happens to be Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, see link below) as I write this (hence the sugar skull cake in the photo above – hey, cakes rise, don’t they? Get the clever irony – “And the Dead Shall Rise?” … all right, that was pretty weak).

Coffin rising from the ground, Crisfield, MD (ref)

At also happens to be the Christian All Souls Day. As Hurricane Sandy’s waters recede, the U.S. death toll continues to rise. Let’s remember those fifty-five souls today - along with the sixty-nine people who died in the Caribbean prior to Sandy making landfall in the United States.

So, as I was mentioning, cemeteries, like any other property, can incur storm damage. Note the expelled coffin rising out of the ground in the photo above, from Crisfield, Maryland. The image was borrowed from the news article, “Hurricane Sandy forces coffins of the dead to rise up from the ground” (www.dailymail.co.uk). "Coffins of the dead ...?" As opposed to coffins of the - living? Whoever wrote that is being a bit dramatic, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, cemeteries suffer damage right along with the rest of us. I imagine that Atlantic City Cemetery looks much worse right now than it did this past summer when I took the photo above. (Ironically, a mausoleum might be the safest place to be during a hurricane!) A storm had obviously ripped through the place, which one might assume happened just before I arrived. Truth is, such damage may go uncorrected for quite a while. Under some circumstances, cemeteries, like any other business or private entity, must wrangle with their insurance companies to be paid for storm damage! 

Toppled headstones

I was in Pittsburgh’s (Pennsylvania) wonderful Allegheny Cemetery back in 1990, and was amazed to see dozens of giant fallen trees – some out in the open, some crushing dense clusters of tombstones and monuments. I mentioned this to someone in the office who told me that a hurricane hit six months prior and toppled fifty trees. The cemetery was slowly cleaning up, at its own expense − having so far removed half the fallen trees. I asked, “Don’t you have insurance for this?” I was told, “Well, since the weather service declared it a ‘tropical cyclone’ as opposed to a ‘hurricane,’ the insurance company wouldn’t pay.” I was actually put in the exact same position last year by my own insurance company, Allstate, after Hurricane Irene – I mean ‘tropical storm’ Irene – ripped a hole in the back of my house.

Notes:
The headstones in the photo above were not toppled by Hurricane Sandy. I just inserted the photo for effect (so how did they fall?).

The "sugar skull" cake at the beginning of the blog was in window of Brendenbeck's Bakery, Chestnut Hill, PA (http://www.bredenbecks.com/). Looks luscious, doesn't it?
Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead