The fir tree that Armilde Maar planted beside her mother’s grave in 1950 still stands watch over a small corner of the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park.
Last week, that towering tree was just about the only way that Maar’s daughter, Anne, could find her grandmother’s resting place.
The small headstone marking the grave was obscured by thigh-high grass and weeds in the cemetery, which has been unable to keep up landscaping since filing for bankruptcy in December.
“The condition of the cemetery is just horrible,” said Anne Maar, a Melrose Park resident who last week brought out her own lawn mower to cut back grass encroaching on the graves of her mother, father and grandmother. “It is totally disrespectful to the people buried here.”
The 132-year-old cemetery, once considered one of Chicago’s most prestigious burial sites, has been plagued for years by financial and management troubles, culminating in its winter bankruptcy filing.
But only recently-as the grass grew into something resembling a hayfield and as roads and headstones fell into disrepair-did the relatives of those buried at Forest Home begin to see just how serious the cemetery’s problems are.
“This is all a very complex, unfortunate situation,” said Robert Ralis, the attorney representing the cemetery in bankruptcy court. “There is a long history here of several owners who have had problems with this cemetery.”
Ralis said the 220-acre cemetery’s troubles, including debts up to $9 million, began when a previous owner invested a portion of the cemetery’s care fund in a real-estate deal that failed.
As the cemetery’s financial woes worsened, maintenance at Forest Home gradually declined, said Wayne Straza, director of the Cemetery and Burial Trust Department for the Illinois comptroller’s office.
The problems came to a head last month after a bankruptcy court judge appointed a trustee to oversee the cemetery’s finances, Straza said.
In such cases, the trustee is charged with paying off the most pressing bills, such as taxes, utility debts and the payroll. Cutting the grass was not among those priorities, Ralis said.
As Memorial Day approached, however, the comptroller’s office warned the cemetery that its “state of disrepair” was no longer tolerable, Straza said.
The cemetery persuaded a judge to release $30,000 in emergency funding for the trustee to purchase lawn mowers and begin cutting the grass. The emergency money is expected to last through the fall, Straza said.
But relatives of those buried in Forest Home say the mowing is proceeding too slowly-and that the weeds never should have been allowed to grow out of control in the first place.
“They’ve now managed to clean up the very front of the cemetery, so people can’t see how bad it looks from the road,” said Dorothy Sissors, who has 14 relatives buried in Forest Home. “But the further back you go, the worse it gets.”
Sissors, of Mt. Prospect, said her grandfather purchased a 12-grave plot in Forest Home in 1875. Her mother, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and several aunts and uncles are buried there.
“I remember when this was a beautiful, prestigious place,” Sissors said. “It was like a park. To let it get where it is now is a disgrace.”
Others have complained that lack of money has led Forest Home to slacken security, leaving the cemetery easy prey for vandals.
On a recent afternoon, Maar pointed out two graves that had been stripped of bronze markers, and mausoleums that had been broken into.
“Somebody has got to step in and help these families,” said Bob Van Staalduinen, a funeral director at Knollcrest Funeral Home in Lombard. The funeral home has hired a private landscaper to take care of two small sections in a corner of the cemetery, Van Staalduinen said.
With the grass at least being mowed, Ralis said he and the owners, one of whom is San Diego businessman Carl Hunking, are looking for a way to infuse “a large amount of cash” to keep the cemetery running.
The owners also are trying to resolve Forest Home’s many debts, Ralis said.
In the meantime, people like Jeanette Mumbower are left to wonder about the future of their loved ones’ resting place.
“I doubt they’ll ever be able to fix all of this,” said Mumbower, whose mother and father are buried there. “People don’t have any respect for life anymore; why should they respect the dead?”
