The Powell Chat

Palm Grove Cemetery, from its inception, much like many things in Liberia, was not managed properly. Like many other Liberians, much of my family are buried there in a family plot. I am very glad to see true clean up work that is currently ongoing. Thank you mayor John-Charuk Siafa!

Unfortunately, as emotionally difficult as it is, and given the current state of the cemetery, there has to be a pragmatic approach to how to manage this moving forward. Given our history, we can safely say that MCC is not and will be budgeted to do this on its own going forward.

1) Turn the property over to private management. No cost for land.

2) In exchange, the management has the following responsibilities:

a) where existing graves are still in tact, create a perimeter around the grave and task the families of the deceased to spruce up the structure within a specified period.

b) where existing graves have been broken, demolish all broken graves. Create an area within the cemetery where individual headstones can be placed for existing broken graves. Where there are still remains, allow families to relocate the remains to another site if they so chose. For those who chose not to, transfer the remains to the flat headstone site. Where there are no remains, create a flat headstone.

c) charge the family a nominal annual fee for the maintenance of the site around their loved one’s graves.

d) create small monuments at gravesite of former presidents.

e) hold a mass memorial service to honor those whose graves were broken and relocated. Keep this as a tradition moving forward and do this on each decoration day.

f) convert the remaining grounds where graves have been relocated from into a combination of tomb graves and standing burial grave. Meaning no large above ground tombs and much smaller spaces between headstones. Charge a high premium for tomb burial and a lower rate for standing burials going forward. Create burial grid so that all future burials follow a logical site pattern and size restrictions. The amount charged will include maintenance.

Now, I totally understand that these suggestions do not completely encompass the emotional component of honoring the dead BUT considering the current situation we are faced with, the decision boils down to coming up with a pragmatic solution vs allowing our emotions to keep us from making decisions.

“If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.”
~ Alexandre Dumas