Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati is calling for the removal of the headstone of slain Iraqi war veteran Sergeant Kimberly Walker. The monument in question is a 7-foot, $13,000 SpongeBob statue that is dressed in an Army uniform displaying Walker’s name and rank. Spring Grove management does not believe that it is appropriate for their historic grounds, according to usnews.com.
Walker was an avid collector of SpongeBob SquarePants paraphernalia since childhood, her sister Kara Walker told WCPO Cincinnati, and the Walker family wanted to memorialize Kimberly with something she would have loved. The gravestone was recently finished and placed on location Oct. 10, but it was removed the next day, according to wcpo.com.
Spring Grove Cemetery president and CEO Gary Freytag said in a statement that the design was chosen “with the guidance of a Spring Grove employee who unfortunately made an error in judgment. The monument does not fit within Spring Grove Cemetery guidelines, was not approved by senior management and cannot remain here.” He also claims that the cemetery is “working with the Walker family and are committed to design a solution, at our expense, that will properly memorialize Kimberly within the context of Spring Grove’s historic landscape and guidelines.”
The Walker family is distraught by this decision, partially because the cemetery had a hand in designing the monument in the first place. Kara told reporters at 9 On Your Side that it was a Spring Grove official’s decision to make the monument seven feet tall, not the family’s.
“I gave them a drawing and said, ‘Can you accommodate this drawing?’ They said yes. They came back and said this is how tall it’s going to be. This is how wide it’s going to be. This is the price,” Kara said. Deborah Walker, mother to Kara and Kimberly, told reporters “You can’t keep blaming it on an employee. That employee represented that whole cemetery and when they do wrong, you’ve got to make it right. Put SpongeBob back up.”
Kimberly, who is 28 years old and a two-time war veteran, was found beaten and strangled to death in a Colorado hotel room on Valentine’s Day of this year, reports theprovince.com. Deborah Walker wants to uphold the wishes of her deceased daughter and feels that the cemetery is not respecting that. Kara Walker feels that the cemetery is not respecting Kimberly’s service in the military.
“My sister served our country and most people try to accommodate veterans and try to take care of them. For them not to accommodate and respect what my sister sacrificed, not only for my family, but for everyone else in this country, really bothers me,” Kara said, according to washingtonpost.com.
The unexpected loss of a loved one is difficult, and the mourning process is often long and painful. I believe that Kimberly’s wishes, military service, and memory should be respected, and I can only imagine how frustrating and heartbreaking this ordeal must be for the family. However, I also believe that Spring Grove Cemetery is doing all they can to correct the situation.
Kara herself told reporters that “One of their proposals was to actually keep them in the cemetery. It’s just that they wanted to do different things with them,” according to wcpo.com. Spring Grove is not trying to remove the headstone entirely, just modify the design or even adjust the way they are positioned on the lot.
Because there are restrictions and guidelines on headstones for the historic cemetery that should have been known to the family before they bought plots on their grounds, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the management to ask for the large and nontraditional headstone to be altered–other families with members buried there who were asked to follow the guidelines also have to be respected, and most families with loved ones buried at Spring Grove chose the cemetery for its historic look and feel.
Freytag’s solutions include “creating new, more traditional headstones bearing a smaller SpongeBob likeness, or laying the original headstones flat on the ground after redesigning the lot,” all at the expense of the cemetery, reports washingtonpost.com.
The employee’s decision to allow this monument to be constructed in the first place is unfortunate and shouldn’t have happened, but it did. The cemetery has the right to assert that it has the final say on what kind of monuments may stand on their property.
Spring Grove is being more than reasonable with making changes to the headstones, even though their existence in the first place is the cemetery’s fault. Freytag is “willing to do whatever the family thinks is best, other than installing the monuments back as they were,” says washingtonpost.com