Grave discovery: Linwood workers take flowers, photos, mementos from headstones and throw them in the mud

By Shawn Regan
Staff Writer

July 01, 2008 12:53 am

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HAVERHILL — American flags and VFW hats. Framed pictures of deceased family members. Toy fire engines and other remembrances to dead firefighters. Catholic crosses, angels and other religious symbols. Lots of potted plants and colorful flowers.

They are among the memories and mementos taken off headstones at Linwood Cemetery and discarded like garbage in a pile of mud near the cemetery's main garage.

The apparent culprits? Cemetery workers.

"It was very painful and very disrespectful," said Judy Livingstone of Seabrook, N.H. "We called the office, and the cemetery people said that's the policy and if we put anything else up, they'll throw that out, too."

Livingstone and her son Barry Sargent said they were distraught with what they saw during a recent visit to the final resting place of her father and his grandfather, Peter Brooks, a World War II veteran and lifelong Haverhill resident who died a year ago at age 83.

She said some people's mementos were placed inside a garage, but most, like her father's, were tossed in a heap next to a large dirt mound.

"They have a list at the cemetery of what you can't put up, but it doesn't say anything about no memorabilia," Livingstone said. "We did it last year, and it was fine. We take the stuff down for winter. Everyone does it. They said they put something in the newspaper about taking the mementos down, but we didn't see it. We were never told anything. It was a total shock."

A receptionist who answered the phone at the Linwood Cemetery office yesterday refused to provide her name or comment for this story. She said only the cemetery superintendent could answer questions, and that he was unavailable. She said she would give a message to the superintendent, whom she also would not identify. The phone call was not returned yesterday.

Sargent, a firefighter in Seabrook, said he was especially upset at the sight of American flags, firefighter flags and a Greek flag laying in the mud.

"That's my job and my heritage they are messing with," said Sargent, who is part Greek.

He said the family was able to locate a framed photograph of his grandmother and grandfather in the large pile, but could not locate other mementos that had been placed at the gravestone, including a G.I. Joe collectable figurine holding an American flag, symbolizing his grandfather's WWII service in the Navy. Many of the mementos were hauled away this week, most likely to a landfill, Livingstone guessed.

The 45-acre, 163-year-old cemetery is on John Ward Avenue off Route 97, near the banks of the Merrimack River. It runs along Water, Mill and Boardman streets near the Schwinn bicycle shop.

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