Now that his father finally has been buried after a three-week ordeal, Kenneth Finfer says he can try to get on with his own life.
”The man is finally at rest,” Finfer, 50, of Northbrook said Tuesday.
”I can really concentrate on my inner feelings now. The outside ones are behind me.”
William Finfer, 87, died Jan. 1, but his burial was delayed for 19 days because of a bitter fight between 130 striking gravediggers and 23 area cemetery owners. The dispute, which began Dec. 20, held up the burials of 350 to 400 people at 23 area cemeteries.
”They refer to these bodies as a backlog, as if it`s a manufacturing order,” Finfer said. ”I don`t see the parallel. I was thinking that my father, had he seen what was going on, he`d have turned over in his grave-if he`d been in his grave.”
On Sunday, Finfer finally buried his father in the family plot, which was bought in 1979, at Shalom Memorial Park in Palatine. Once, on Jan. 15, Finfer was prevented by the cemetery`s owner from getting to the site, and he was allowed in only after Cook County Circuit Judge Edwin Berman issued a contempt order against Shalom Thursday.
”There was a tremendous amount of anguish in not knowing what was going to happen,” Finfer said. ”I`m exceptionally angry. To go through this additional mental anguish is exceptionally frustrating.”
The dispute that delayed William Finfer`s burial began when area gravediggers from Union Local 106 called a strike against four cemeteries. In retaliation, the Cemeteries Association of Greater Chicago banned workers from entering 22 other cemeteries, preventing any burials.
Three of the cemeteries have since settled separately with the workers. But workers and owners from the other 23 still are far apart, and made little progress at a meeting Monday night.
Still, burials have begun again, under guidelines issued Friday by a supervisor appointed by Berman. And in a few days, cemeteries have been able to cut the number of unburied bodies to about 275.
”People are getting buried, and I don`t know if it`s fast enough for His Honor, but I think it`s going faster than it was,” said the coordinator, Don Massaro, executive director of the Catholic Cemeteries Association.
Under the guidelines, the striking gravediggers have signed contracts with a Lansing company, Action Personnel Services, which is then hired by families to conduct burials.
Jewish people are to be buried first, because the lawsuit that led to Massaro`s appointment as an overseer of the burials was brought by the Chicago Rabbinical Council, Massaro said. The council had sued to gain access to plots owned by Jews.
Other people will be buried in the order in which they died, Massaro said, meaning that people dying now still face a wait before interment.
Burials at four cemeteries-Acacia, Clarendon Hills, Mt. Auburn and Mt. Hope-are being handled by workers who returned this weekend as a sign of good faith. Union officials decided to return to the four cemeteries after the cemetery owners lifted their lockout Friday at the other 19 cemeteries.
Wayne Beal, the office manager at Acacia, said the return of his seven workers and the scheduling of extra burials could help the cemetery catch up by the end of the week.
Still, with union leaders and cemetery owners scheduled to meet again Wednesday night, neither side was sure when they might reach a settlement, or how long the two sides will abide by the compromise.
”That`s a pretty iffy situation,” said Tom Moriarty, executive director of the Funeral Director Services Association. ”That`s a big if out there. And I don`t see the situation just waffling along for another few weeks. Something`s going to happen.”
