Woman Says Cemetery Lost Her Father's Grave

[matcom]

<snip>

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. --Mary Hurst wants to honor her 80-year-old dying mother's wish: to be buried aside her husband, Hurst's father, who died of cancer nearly four decades ago.

Problem is, officials at the cemetery where she says he was buried say they can't find his grave.

Hurst says she attended the burial for her father, Dragoljub Ilic, at St. Sava Cemetery in Libertyville on Nov. 10, 1966. But when she recently called the cemetery from her Fort Worth, Texas, home, she was told the grave site cannot be located, she said.

"Just think about what they've done. You have my mother's last wishes, which can't be taken care of," Hurst said. She said she called to inquire about having her father disinterred and moved to Texas so her mother could be buried alongside him.

Cemetery administrator Sasha Nedic said he has looked several times for Ilic's grave site. He said it's possible the grave either is unmarked or was moved in 1979, when a change in ownership resulted in some graves being moved to a property in nearby Grayslake.

"If he was buried here and nobody wrote it down, there's nothing I can do. She doesn't have any documents, and we don't either," Nedic said.

Ilic's death certificate says he was buried in St. Sava.

Hurst said the family paid $245 for a vault and $150 for a reserved grave for her mother to Muzyka & Sons Funeral Home in Chicago, which handled arrangements. But she said she has no record of a grave marker.

Margaret Muzyka, owner of the funeral home, said a book lists Ilic's funeral and burial in St. Sava. But she said the home's records from 1966 were destroyed in a flood and there are no records of a tombstone.

"(Hurst) has no proof" of a grave marker, Muzyka said. "With all the years that passed, nobody went to visit or can remember where his is?"

Hurst said she and her mother saw the grave marker when they visited the cemetery three months after her father was buried. The family moved from Illinois a few months later and never returned to the site, she said.

http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2005/07/31/woman_says_cemetery_lost_her_dads_grave?mode=PF

[DS1]

1. Keep the presses rolling, Brother Newsman matcom!

:yourock:

[izzie]

2. Maybe she has the wrong place.

When I go to my mother's grave I always have trouble as there are three cemeteries side by side and two are set up about the same. Stone gates and house and it always fools me as even the names are some what a like.

[bleedingheart]

3. That's why my crazy family takes pictures of tombstones...