A Baltimore family is upset after a brother and sister visited a cemetery in northeast Baltimore and found toppled headstones.
According to management, the Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery stretches some 60 acres and has 70,000 people buried on its property.
Buried among the plots are five generations of Marguerite Stiemly’s family.
“We were fortunate that out family wasn’t affected, but I have friends and they have families and they need to know this,” Stiemly said.
And that’s why Stiemly is upset; it’s not so much the “what" of the story but the response that came after.
The damage was first discovered by her brother Monday afternoon. Stiemly followed and pulled out her cell phone, snapping photos with video along the way, but when she called the cemetery’s management office, she said the response she was given about repairs was less than ideal.
“I saw where other graves had been desecrated, and the way they were ‘fixed’ was the stones were just propped up against the bases,” Stiemly said.
ABC2 also spoke to cemetery management, though it’s director declined to speak on-camera. He said it was just 12 monuments knocked over and that it’s never happened before.
Police were notified, he said, but no surveillance video exists of the incident because there are no cameras.
Stiemly wanted families of those in their final resting place notified of damages, an assurance she said was not given over the phone.
“I would have liked something more than ‘Oh yeah, we know about it,’” she said.
Though Stiemly is not satisfied with the response, she said she has no plans to stop burying her family here.
