Two readers sent me this article and news video from Minneapolis KARE 11 TV yesterday.  It concerns the 140 acre privately owned Crystal Lake Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Washburn-McReavy Funeral Home business owns 16 funeral homes in the Minneapolis metropolitan area and also a few cemeteries, of which Crystal Lake Cemetery is one.

Earlier this week, owner Bill McReavy offered to give the historic Crystal Lake Cemetery to the City of Minneapolis.  McReavy said to the City Council, “We take a loss, because we have to maintain the property.  We feel an obligation to do so.  It’s never going to make money.  That’s just the simple fact.  With cremation.”  According to the article, that loss is about $300,000 annually.

McReavy then told the council that he is willing to keep operating the cemetery at a loss even if the city took ownership of the land, he just doesn’t want to pay the huge assessment the city is charging for a neighborhood street project.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We have always looked at cemeteries with a glass is half-full type of attitude.  Generally, even with cremation there is the opportunity for niches, columbariums, earth burial of urns with markers and the like to be sold.  We’ve always seen that potential.

However, if funeral, cremation, and death care advocates including clergy cannot convince the general public that memorialization of their loved one for the long haul is valuable, then there is a lot of cemetery property, with a lot of upkeep out there, that has very little revenue base  — and a lot of maintainance costs that must be continued.

In this day of less and less earth burial, we have always advocated that it is imperative that final disposition by cremation should not end with the cremation and the remains being placed on a shelf, or worse yet, in a closet.

I think this action by the McReavy’s shows the future of some cemeteries if we cannot convince the public of permanent memorialization.

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