Even In Death, Budget Cuts Take a Toll

Communities have long provided simple burials for the indigent or unidentified, but cash-strapped jurisdictions from North Dakota to Arizona are trimming subsidies, raising fees or switching to cremation. The deliberations over such changes underscore that in an era of austerity, governments have to face issues that touch on both the economic and the moral.

"Do we continue this benefit for those who are deceased, or do we divert [resources] to those who are living?" said Robert Lamkey, director of public safety for Sedgwick County, Kan., which is paying for such burials out of its general fund after the state ended its support.

Toledo, Ohio, is running out of burial funds and space in city-owned Forest Cemetery, Parks Commissioner Dennis Garvin told the City Council this month. So city leaders have proposed adopting cremation as the default option for indigent people, unless their religion bars it. The remains would then be commingled and poured into a double-deep vault. City Councilman Steve Steele asked Mr. Garvin whether the vault was like a "mass grave."

"If we believe that there is a certain sacredness and sanctity of human life that extends after death, then what we do when folks can't afford the increasing cost of a decent interment says a lot," said Steve Steel, a council member who worries about cremation as a default option. A vote on the proposal is set for next week.The change would save Toledo $600 per body and tens of thousands of dollars a year, according to the Parks and Forestry Division. The city buried 38 people last year.

Pauper's burials, as they were once known, are financed differently across the U.S., and national statistics on such services are scarce. Some states and counties provide funds to help defray the cost of burials, while charities are the only source of assistance in other places. New York City does more than 1,000 such burials a year, while smaller cities and counties report a few dozen.

The end to state funding in Kansas left county administrators and funeral homes scrambling to cover the costs. Some counties have put in place new surcharges on cremations to help fund indigent burials; in Harvey County, it's $35 per cremation. In some counties, officials scrutinize a family's finances before offering aid for a burial.

Funeral director W. Ashley Corzine said that at some point, society must bear the cost. "We're talking about human life," said Mr. Corzine, president of Broadway Mortuary in Wichita. "I feel like we do have a moral obligation to take care of people. You can't say we're going to just cut this out of the budget and it is going to take care of itself."

In recent years, Illinois and Virginia also attempted to end their subsidies for burials, only to reverse themselves after outcry from funeral directors and county governments worried the expense would fall on them.

Catholic Social Services helps fill the gap in Charlotte, N.C., where there is no state or county support. "For us it boils down to the dignity and value we place in the value of life," said Sharon Davis, director of the program. "It isn't just the homeless population. We work with families burying children, children burying parents; families that find themselves unable to pay."

Catholic Social Services charges $1,100 for a burial compared with costs that can be as high as $8,000 for a simple funeral. The charity's burial includes a basic casket, a short service and a plot provided free by the county cemetery.

Some counties facing land and budget crunches have already made cremation the preferred option. Chip Ammerman, the social-service director of Cass County, N.D., said his county switched to cremations last year after the number of indigent burials came in at 71, compared with an anticipated 45. Yuma County, Ariz., a small county on the Mexico border, buried about 70 indigent people a year before switching last year to cremation. "We are getting very close to not having any land left," said county official Candy Wheeler-Ruby. "It was a fiscal consideration, but also a room consideration."

Cremation can bring its own concerns. Cremation rates rose to 37% in 2009 from less than 15% in 1985, according to the Cremation Association of North America, a trade group. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit the practice.

In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, state budget cuts have allowed the medical examiner's office to bury only half the number of bodies that need to be buried each year, according to Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the office. Mr. Samuels said he has about 185 bodies in storage.

Once Mr. Samuels uses up his annual budget of $30,000, he has to stop burials. "Bodies are still coming in," he said. "I get into a hole after a while."

So Mr. Samuels struck a contract with a local crematorium allowing him to cremate an additional 50 bodies last year. The cremations cost $170 each, compared with $750 for a burial.

Meanwhile, he is working to submit the paperwork to the state for five corpses that have been in his morgue since 2008.

"It's not like I can bury these people and then get money from the state. So the body stays here in the freezer while I wait," Mr. Samuels said. "We want to give these people a resting place with some dignity."

Are You Giving Away Your Personal Information?

Would you give a stalker the street address of your home? Would you give a pedophile the precise location where your children play? If you have posted a picture online, you may have already done that.

Pictures taken with GPS-equipped digital cameras usually embed the GPS coordinates within each picture. Most cameras have an option to turn this capability on or off, but the default setting usually is ON. Unless you have taken action to specify otherwise, the camera probably is recording the exact location of every picture you take, plus or minus 10 feet to perhaps 50 feet.

Did you take a picture of your children playing in the back yard? That picture probably contains the exact location of that back yard, plus or minus a very few feet. The same is true for the pictures taken at the Little League ballpark, at the school play, or most any other place. Did you take a picture of your fancy new car sitting in the driveway? Yes, a car thief now knows where to find it.

Not all digital cameras are GPS equipped although most "smartphones" do have both cameras and GPS capabilities. Do you have an Apple iPhone? An Android phone? A Windows Phone? If so, I'd bet money that you are including precise locations with every picture you post online.

NOTE: I might lose a few of those bets but I'd win the majority. I only bet on sure things.

Social networking sites are notorious for sharing personal information from people who do not realize how much privacy they are losing. Did you snap a picture with your cell phone  and post it on Facebook? Or on any of the photo sharing sites? Facebook Places is especially bad, perhaps the worst. I bet that I or anyone else can tell you precisely where you took the picture. Again, I only bet on sure things.

Luckily, there are several easy solutions. Probably the best solution is to turn off the inclusion of GPS data with the metadata of the pictures. The exact instructions will vary from one camera or cell phone to another. See the owners manual or perform a Google search for your phone to find the exact instructions.

Another solution, although not nearly as convenient, is to use a photo editing program to edit your photo before you upload it. Programs like Photoshop Elements can erase metadata, including GPS latitude and longitude. Since I am a rather devious person and would enjoy sending thieves and perverts on a wild goose chase, I'd rather CHANGE the information than erase it. I'd prefer to change one or two numbers in the coordinates rather than erase them. Now the photograph points to a location several hundred miles away.

Not all photographs need to have the info deleted or altered. When I write a newsletter article about a genealogy conference held in Mesa, Arizona, I don't care if the accompanying photographs indicate a location in the convention center. However, if I take a photograph in my own living room, I might want to obfuscate that information.

Please think about the implications before you upload.

Combustible Microfilm Forces Evacuation at LDS Church History Library

Microfilms do not last forever. In fact, older microfilms can self-destruct in the best "Mission Impossible" manner imaginable. Yesterday, a microfilm from the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City was taken to a landfill and detonated after patrons had been evacuated from the building.

NOTE: This happened at the LDS Church History Library, not at the nearby LDS Family History Library that is used by tens of thousands of genealogists.

Two floors of the LDS Church History Library were evacuated Wednesday afternoon as a precaution because of decomposing film that posed an explosion risk.

Salt Lake Fire Captain Michael Harp said an alert archivist noticed deteriorating 72 mm film inside a canister at 2:30 p.m. The film contained an unstable element called cellulose nitrate, which Harp says can be flammable or even create a small explosion.

Patrons on the third and fourth floors of the library were escorted out while the film was contained in an archival room.

From there, a company specializing in the removal and transport of such materials picked up the film. After waiting several hours for downtown traffic to taper off, Harp said the film was taken to the local landfill where it was detonated.

New York Genealogy PDF files

I have started to collect New York Genealogy PDF files and these cover several counties, New York City and other things related to genealogy. Over the next several months, I will be adding more PDF files, so check back at least once a week.

.http://www.mediafire.com/?wy5u7tuowvu90

Dorothy Lange Marsh 1923-2010

Dorothy Mae Lange was born 16 April 1923 in Calumet, Minnesota. Dorothy was the youngest child of Earl Lange and Ruth Finnerud, who were immigrants from Norway. She was a graduate of Greenway High School in Coleraine and worked for Dr. O. C. Braun in the early years.

She married John Preston Marsh 22 June 1946 in Nashwauk, Minnesota. They lived in Splithand Township, Grand Rapids, Minnesota, from 1947 to 1961.

In 1961 the Marsh family moved to Fort Pierce, Florida. Dorothy was looking for something to do and purchased a small pet shop. Happyland Pet Shop sold household pets, as well as exotic animals from South America, such as monkeys, baby skunks, lizards, turtles and snakes. The pet shop prospered and had to move to a large location. John Marsh left Vaughn & Wright Auto Parts in 1966 to join his wife in the pet shop business. The pet shop soon became a complete family business, with all of the children working at the store after school and loving it. Dorothy clipped and groomed dogs in the back of the shop. She and her family also enjoyed raising Miniature Schnauzers and Irish Terriers.

John and Dorothy Marsh retired from the pet shop business in 1983 and, much to the disappointment of their children, moved to Mena, Arkansas, in 1983. In her retirement Dorothy made a number of lovely quilts for her family, all hand pieced and hand quilted. She was known for her expert bread and bun making, including her famous Norwegian Christmas Bread. Dorothy still had a love for animals, especially dogs. Dorothy Marsh passed away on the evening of October 19, 2010.

Cemeteries Field Worried Calls

Cemetery directors across the Midwest have been bombarded with anxious callers worried that a ghoulish scandal in a suburban Chicago burial ground isn't an isolated incident.

Authorities recently arrested four employees at Burr Oak Cemetery, alleging they dug up and dumped as many as 300 corpses to resell the used burial plots. The gruesome details have unnerved families as far away as Milwaukee and Kansas City, who have then flooded cemetery directors with concerns. So far, no other deception has turned up.

"We've been inundated with visitors trying to find loved ones that are buried here," said Vickey Hand, president of Washington Memory Gardens outside Chicago. "People are walking in here, one after the other, who haven't been here in 40 or 50 years, with this look of apprehension on their face."

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart learned of the alleged grave-reselling scheme about two months ago, when Perpetua Inc., the Arizona-based owner of Burr Oak, saying that the company was concerned about financial irregularities there, contacted his office.

Sheriff Dart said that when detectives initially went to the cemetery, they discovered a pile of bones from more than 100 bodies decomposing above ground in a fenced, overgrown area. He said the corpses were dug up so that their plots could be reused. He estimates the scheme generated about $250,000.

Burr Oak, founded nearly a century ago, was one of the first predominantly African-American cemeteries in the Chicago area. Among the historic figures buried there are civil-rights icon Emmett Till, blues legend Dinah Washington and heavyweight boxing champion Ezzard Charles.

On Friday, sheriff's deputies continued to scour four sections of the cemetery, which holds about 100,000 graves. They are searching for additional remains and trying to match discarded headstones to burial plots. Disintegrating and incomplete interment records and maps have slowed the process.

Since news about the cemetery broke, Sheriff Dart said he has been flooded with more than 55,000 requests from families looking for information about loved ones buried there. He said he isn't optimistic all the human remains will be identified.

"That will be very, very difficult," Sheriff Dart said Friday. He compared the process to identifying victims of a plane crash, but without the passenger manifest. "We don't even know who the universe of people are."

Illinois lawmakers this week considered additional regulation to require the exact location of interments on death certificates. But the legislative session expired before any action was taken.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, a Detroit Memory Gardens employee said there has been a small influx of people who have come by to inspect their family plots. In St. Louis, Richard Lay of the Bellefontaine Cemetery said he has "heard a couple of comments that were joking in an offhand way, and I took it offensively," he said. "There are a lot of upset families, and I take it very seriously."

Harvey Lapin, general counsel of the Illinois Cemetery and Funeral Home Association, said cemetery owners around the state have been peppered with calls from different parts of the country asking, "You're not doing anything like this, are you?"

Linzay Kelly, an amateur genealogist in Houston with relatives buried in Burr Oak, said he has been concerned that something like this might happen for some time.

"There's just a panic out there that this isn't the only place this was happening," said Mr. Kelly, who has unsuccessfully tried to track down the graves of several family members who died in the 1940s and were buried in Illinois. "I've been to cemeteries where entire sections aren't there. It makes you suspicious."

Paula Everett, president of Mount Greenwood Cemetery, which isn't far from Burr Oak, said she has received about 150 calls and visits from anxious relatives since the news broke on July 8. "I can understand why people are nervous," she said. "I tell them to come down, we have every record back to day one in 1879."

Information provided by Douglas Belkin and Carrie Porter from the Wall Street Journal.

Albert Leo Sullivan 1922-1942

Sullivan, Albert Leo, S2, was born on July 8, 1922 and died on November 13, 1942
American Military Figure. Son of Thomas and Aleta Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa, he was serving as a Seaman Second Class, United States Naval Reserve, on board the USS Juneau when it was sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Also serving on the Juneau and also lost in the sinking were his four brothers George, Frank, Joseph and Matt. They are buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (ABMC) in Manila, Philippines. There is no know grave, names is listed on the Tablets of the Missing.