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URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) – Hundreds of people responded to a woman’s social media post showing a pile of dirt on her father’s grave. She said cemetery staff left it there, but one of the owners called it an “unfounded” claim.
“This isn’t what somebody wants to see when they come out here and spend time with their loved ones,” Resnee Smith said.
Smith usually finds comfort in visiting her father’s grave site at Woodlawn Cemetery in Urbana. But not last Friday.
“I was like – this can’t be right. Where is he? There’s a huge dirt mound,” she said.
She said the mound covered her father’s headstone and a few others.
“I didn’t know if he had been dug up, I didn’t know if he had been moved, if he had been re-placed somewhere. A thousand thoughts were going through my mind,” she said.
Her heart sank. What was supposed to be a peaceful family gathering turned out to be the opposite.
“We put out blankets, we do picnics out here. Just to see that he had been disturbed and he had just been dumped on top of – just really took me back,” Smith said.
Her father has been buried there since 1991, and Smith said she’s never had a problem like this. So she brought her concerns to the cemetery staff.
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“We went out, we inspected the site. There’s nothing at all wrong with the grave,” Thomas Battista, one of the owners, said.
Battista admits dirt from a recent burial was piled up several graves down.
“There was no dirt on her gravesite, first of all,” Battista said. “I suppose on occasion, it could happen during a burial where dirt might go on to [an] adjacent grave. They’re only three feet by 10 feet each. That didn’t even happen… Second of all, there are routine maintenance measures that take place at the cemeteries all the time.”
The headstone is clear now, but the area around it is muddy. Battista said the dirt from that recent burial had to be removed manually because heavy equipment doesn’t fit in the area.
“It took us a day to get it done. There’s not really much else to explain about that. It’s pretty normal,” Battista said.
To Smith, it’s not normal.
“My dad is all I had. I look up to him. Whether he’s in the ground or not, to me, he’s living. This is like his home. I expect his home to be clean,” Smith said.
Smith said she doesn’t want any money from this, she just wants to make sure the cemetery keeps her father’s – and others’ – final resting places clean.
