The experience with the Union Mausoleum in Waukegan begs the question: Is there a safe place to be dead?
The answer ultimately may be no. Many ancient Native Americans probably would have laughed at the absurdity of that question, but their remains have ended up on display in museums.
No one can guarantee that over the passage of time, especially lots of it, our remains won’t end up to be of archeological interest or even as a handy Halloween prank. Or the final resting place may simply become too valuable as property for another purpose, so remains may be moved.
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But Lake County funeral hoyme and cemetery operators do have some suggestions, and keep in mind that since the 1940s, the State of Illinois has been heavily involved in cemetery regulation. It’s the old granddaddy cemeteries and mausoleums that escaped strict regulation.
“You pick a larger place where there are a lot of burials,” said Phil Dane, owner of Burnett-Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville. “It’s safer, because they have to go to each of the families if they want to relocate bodies. In a little family cemetery with 12 burials in it, that’s an easy job.”
Another factor with smaller cemeteries involves urban sprawl. “Every once in a while I’ll have a burial where there are 50 people in the cemetery and there are malls on each side of it,” he said. In this case too there is safety in numbers simply because the larger the cemetery, the less likely it is that there will be a convenience store parking lot within litter-throwing distance of a grave.
Gene Morani, manager of the Marsh Funeral Home in Waukegan, which took care of relocating bodies from the Union Mausoleum, agreed with Dane’s opinion that when it comes to cemeteries, bigger is better. His advice: Go for the corporate-owned cemeteries. “Your chances of a big cemetery going out of business are smaller,” he said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”
Victor Barcroft of Barrington, owner of three large Lake County cemeteries and majority owner of a fourth, the 78-acre Northshore Garden of Memories in North Chicago, added, “The cemetery of today has legislation that requires us to put aside 15 percent (of a plot price) to be placed in trust so that when the cemetery no longer has inventory to sell, there is a substantial trust fund earning interest that would pay to have the grounds maintained. Its intention is ad infinitum.”
But the bottom line is this: In death, just as in life, there are no guarantees.