The Chicago Tribune published an interesting article by Gerry Smith that described an unfortunate process of having to move around 1200 graves at the Bensenville cemetery to make room for expansion of O'hare airport.
The remains need to be exhumed and reburried elsewhere, but relatives say the city's effort to find the heirs is secretive and confusing.
Alice Ashley has 10 relatives buried at St. Johannes Cemetery, but she doesn't know where all of them will go next. As the city of Chicago relocates about 1,200 graves from the Bensenville cemetery to expand O'Hare International Airport, Ashley was allowed to choose where only two of her ancestors will be reburied, she said.
To her frustration, the others will be moved to undisclosed cemeteries, arrangements made by relatives she says she has never met and whom the city, in some cases, won't identify.
"If five people claim the same relative, how do they decide?" said Ashley, who lives in Florida. "I guess it is first come, first served. I didn't know it was a race to see who could get there first."
In some cases, relatives say, the city is withholding from them the identities of family members who make the relocation plans. Critics say this can spark confusion as well as fear that they will never learn the new location of their ancestors' final resting place.
City officials say they have worked with family members and the church to locate next of kin and made every effort to do genealogical searches, including hiring a board-certified genealogist to analyze original German church baptism, marriage and death records dating to the mid-1800s.
Complicating matters further is the fact that relatives must also get approval from another agency — the Illinois Department of Public Health issues permits for disinterments, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez said.
Before a grave can be moved, relatives must certify with the state that they are the closest next of kin and that other relatives with equal kinship don't object. But the state does not require all living relatives of the dead to be notified or give their approval, according to Rodriguez.
She said the city works with only the closest next of kin and does not release that person's name for privacy reasons, although she said the city does give other relatives the name of the replacement cemetery and plans to update its website — stjohnsfamilyassistance.com — with that information once a person has been reburied.
This seems problematic that the cemetery has been around and people burried there for 160 years so with going back so far and relatives having no contact with one another they are allowing whoever acts first and says everything is ok to move the individual to whereever they feel appropriate according to the article. In a probate there is a personal representative appointed and they would need to give notice to or get consents from all interested parties that are equally close to the decedent if there was no will naming who was entitled to act. The current process sounds like confusion and family disputes waiting to happen.
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