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State takes over DeKalb cemetery

By Jared Felkins
The Times-Journal

Published June 24, 2009

A thin sheet of weathered tin is all that stands at the heads of graves of two DeKalb County veterans with few answers coming as to the whereabouts of tombstones ordered nearly a year ago.

Janice Gilbert buried her husband, Ronnie Gilbert, on May 31, 2008 and her father, Roy Bobo, on Aug. 1, 2008 in Mountain View Memory Gardens. Since that time, Gilbert has been able to find out little about $4,000 she spent on tombstones and other items to mark their graves.

“I got nothing,” Gilbert said. “These are veterans and are loved ones. This money was not easy to come up with, making those payments to Memory Gardens. I have grieved over this, so much that it made me sick. I will get a tombstone down.”

On Tuesday, Gilbert and others got some answers as DeKalb County Circuit Judge David Rains placed Mountain View Memory Gardens and Mausoleum between Fort Payne and Rainsville into state control due to financial troubles.

The Alabama Department of Insurance advised the court that the cemetery does not have the money to pay for merchandise or services for which it has about 500 contracts with people.

“The number of people involved is probably less than 500, but it’s not far off as to the number of people involved,” said Ragan Ingram with the state Department of Insurance.

These include opening and closing of graves, vaults and markers or monument purchases.

“At this point, it is likely that persons who paid for merchandise and services described in pre-need contracts or have otherwise ordered and paid for merchandise such as markers or monuments will not receive those merchandise and services,” Denise Azar, chief of the state receivership division, said in a release. “It is also likely that there will not be funds available for any significant refunds of amounts paid in the past on unperformed contracts or for undelivered merchandise.”

And for Gilbert and her brother, Lamar Bobo, it’s unwelcome news.

“There are a lot of people involved in this situation,” Bobo said. “We paid for something and didn’t get it, and to me that’s fraud.”

According to court records, the cemetery was willed to sisters Linda Kohn, of Rock Hill, S.C. and June McCormick, of Warner Robbins, Ga. after their mother, Jeanette Mince, died in November 2008. Records show the owners violated the Alabama Pre-need Funeral and Cemetery Act by failing to deposit about $52,000 into a merchandise and services trust and about $12,000 into a cemetery endowment care trust.

“Basically there’s not enough money to meet the obligations,” said Ingram. “The cemetery has effectively been abandoned.”

David Dodd, a Fort Payne attorney representing Kohn and McCormick in the case, refused comment on Wednesday.

Azar advises that anyone who has contracts with Mountain View to cease making payments immediately.

She said those who can document that they have paid for a grave space or a mausoleum crypt will have those rights honored.

Those needing assistance to locate their spaces, and arrange for interments should contact Keary Chandler at Rainsville Funeral Home at 638-2122.

“Until it is sold, we will be responsible for marking off the graves and digging them,” said Hope Etherton with Rainsville Funeral Home. “If someone passes away who would be buried there, they would be sent to us. No one will be at the Mountain View office anymore.”

Ingram said Kohn and McCormick also own Fort Payne Memorial Gardens. He said the case with Mountain View Memory Gardens does not affect that cemetery.

“There is no jurisdiction for us, because there were no pre-need contracts sold by Fort Payne Memorial Gardens after 2003 to our knowledge,” Ingram said. “Any that were sold prior to that, we don’t have any authority to enforce or to regulate those.”

Azar said the Mountain View property will remain open to the public, but those entering the cemetery do so at their own risk.

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