Family upset over burial cost, 'teddy bear' suggestion

Rob Winner - rwinner@kcchronicle.com Mary Johnson, of Geneva, wants the cremated remains of her late husband, Wayne, to be included in her casket when she dies. After she balked at a cemetery's price - $650 - the cemetery employee suggested she pull the stuffing from a Teddy bear, replace it with her husband's cremains in, put it in the coffin and not say anything. Johnson said she was shocked. 12/12/2008 (The husband, Wayne, is the man in the photographs behind Mary, and yes, she is holding his urn filled with his cremains)

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GENEVA – Years ago, Mary and Wayne Johnson prepaid their funeral and cemetery expenses, buying two plots at River Hills Memorial Park in Batavia.

Wayne died first, on July 5, 2001. He was cremated and his remains are in an urn at her apartment in Geneva. Mary Johnson, now 88, wanted her husband’s urn to be with her when she would be buried, so she turned over the right of burial in the second plot to her son and daughter.

Shortly after she filed a permit for them to use the second plot, an employee of the cemetery came to her apartment to upgrade their records.

“She knew I had two burial lots and wondered where Mr. Johnson was,” Mary Johnson said. “I said he was cremated. And she asked where is he going to be buried. I said I would put it in the casket with me when I pass away.”

Mary Johnson said the employee told her it would cost $650 to include her husband’s urn with her. She said the employee, identified only as Leslie, told her the charge was a state law.

When Mary Johnson balked at the additional cost, she said the employee told her how to avoid any additional cost.

“She said, ‘Or, you could take a Teddy bear with a zipper on it and put his remains in the Teddy bear and put that in the coffin and nobody would know it,’ ” Mary Johnson said. “I said I don’t intend on doing that. I wasn’t going to put his remains in a Teddy bear.”

Mary Johnson’s son, Wayne Johnson Jr. was livid about the cost and the Teddy bear. He called the family’s lawyer and filed complaints with Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Kane County State’s Attorney John Barsanti and with Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes, whose office has oversight of the cemetery and funeral home industry. Spokesmen for those offices said they were looking into Johnson’s concerns.

“This is financial exploitation of the elderly,” Johnson said, disputing that River Hills has the right to charge that much to include his father’s remains in his mother’s casket when there is only one grave being opened.

“Gutting the stuffing out of a Teddy bear and filling the Teddy bear with my father’s ashes from inside the sealed urn – what a chilling kitchen project for my 88-year-old mother,” Johnson wrote in his letters of complaint.

The employee did not return messages seeking comment. But Daniel Rheaume, vice president of Troost Cemeteries Inc., said the Teddy bear comments might be a misunderstanding. 

“I have no idea about the Teddy bear,” Rheaume said. “None of us other than Leslie and Mrs. Johnson were present, so it could have been misconstrued. Certainly, we would not condone putting it in the casket and not telling anyone about it. We need it for our records and memorialization.”

Troost Cemeteries, Inc. owns eight independent cemeteries including River Hills. Rheaume would not provide Leslie’s last name.

As to the $650 charge, Rheaume said it is half the cost of a full casket burial. The price is not governed by state law - as Mary Johnson said Leslie told her - but set by the company to meet its expenses and a trust for the continuing maintenance of the cemetery and burial records, he said.

“If he were already buried there, it would not make a difference in price,” Rheaume said. “She wanted to be in the same grave; it’s the second right of interment. It is our charge.”

As to Johnson’s charge that he could not get a price list from the cemetery, Rheaume said it is available from funeral homes and when people come in to discuss a burial. Rheaume said Johnson’s position as executor of his mother’s estate did not give him access to information about her cemetery spaces while she was still alive.

Attorney Harold Saalfeld said he could understand the fee if the cemetery had to reopen a grave to add another person’s remains.

“It’s a unique industry,” Saalfeld said. “The public should know what the true costs are. If you go to a barbershop, they post the fees.”

The Johnsons’ desire to have two buried in the same plot is becoming more common, said Robert Fells, an attorney for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association.

It is also as common for people to be angry about the fee for a second interment, he said.

“We are seeing this more and more,” Fells said. “The basis of this is the sale of a burial space. You have one casket, you have a cremation urn to be buried in it, there is a new burial right charge. Those are two burials, not one.”

Vickie Hand, legislative chairwoman and treasurer of the Illinois Cemetery and Funeral Home Association, said much of the public is confused about burial fees.

“You do not own a plot; you buy the easement right of burial,” Hand said. “If they bought the land, they’d be responsible for property taxes. When you bury cremated remains in a casket or next to it, the same responsibility is still there for maintaining grave locations and using roads and the maintenance of the cemetery. If the cremains are inside the casket, the cemetery is still responsible from here to eternity for every person buried there.”

Mary Johnson’s solution to the brouhaha is to do nothing.

“I’m just going to forget about it,” she said. “I’m going to give his remains to one of the kids. What the kids want to do after I’m gone is up to them. Bury him in the other lot or pay the fee and have him buried with me.”