metro » o n the cover

Crossing The Line

Augustinus works on fixing his grandparents’ graves.

Fence
encroaches
on graves in
Chesterfield
cemetery.

Danny Schwartz
JN Intern

W

hen most of us envi-
sion a final resting
place for our loved
ones, we tend to think of well-
kept grass and colorful flowers
amid a tranquil cemetery — a
pleasant place to come and
spend some time.
We don’t picture what Norm
Augustinus, bestselling writer
of novels Cats and Dogs and
Bedbadger, saw in May when he
went to Union Cemetery with
his niece Rosie Augustinus to
visit the graves of his grandpar-
ents.
Norm found the graves of
Steve and Bessie Melnyk, his
Jewish grandparents, vandalized,

their headstones on the ground.
He looked around and realized
the entire cemetery had been
neglected.
Augustinus had gone to both
grandparents’ burials when he
was a kid and then didn’t visit
Union Cemetery again for some
time. “I was told by family mem-
bers that the cemetery appeared
to be abandoned from the late
1990s through 2012 or so,”
Augustinus said.
“I went there, only to find that
they were correct, the cemetery
had turned into an unmain-
tained, overgrown jungle — you
couldn’t even get to the grave or
even find a headstone as it was
completely buried in overgrowth
as were many, many others.
Booze bottles, beer cans, ciga-
rette butts were everywhere; it
had turned into a totally differ-
ent cemetery.
“A neighbor there recently
told me there were ongoing
‘out-of-control wild parties’ held
in the cemetery weekly. Family
members called and complained
again and again, and eventu-
ally the city chopped everything
down and it is what you see
now.”
Augustinus, a Michigan

Augustinus and his niece did the best they could to fix up the graves.

The city lifted the fence off the ground, the only thing they’ve
done so far.

native, graduated from Ferris
State University. He moved to
New York, then briefly lived on
Peaks Island in Maine before
returning to Michigan in May.

He now resides in Shelby
Township. He was recently nom-
inated for the Carnegie Medal of
Honor for pulling two children
from a smoking overturned

vehicle on I-75 last year.
“I went to work on my grand-
parents’ grave when the stone
was off and lying on the fence,”
he said. “Other headstones were
lying in wrong places as well,
and the weeds hadn’t been cut
and the grass was really high. We
did the bricks over; we removed
the stone.”
It was too much work for one
visit. He and Rosie left and came
back the next week to continue
working on the graves. As he was
leaving the cemetery, he realized
something disturbing: The fence
near the entranceway seemed
way too close to the headstones.
“As we kept coming and leav-
ing, I realized that many of
these people’s graves are on the
other side of the fence. Literally,
almost half their coffins are
under a fence,” he said.
Augustinus stretched out in
front of a headstone where the
casket would be near the fence
and used a tape measure to con-
firm his beliefs.
“A vault is 90 inches long,” he
said. “After I measured, I knew
the caskets were definitely rest-
ing under the fence.”
Ralph Zuckman, executive
director of Clover Hill Park

continued on page 16

14 August 18 • 2016