Widow still distraught over husband’s ashes

Kim Smith

Thursday, March 29, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

Since Anita Hungerford was 15, she knew what she wanted to do: She wanted to spend the rest of her life and beyond with her first love.

For a long while, it looked as if she was going to do just that.

In April 1948 Anita King took Ray Hungerford's name. She was 17. He was 19. She waited for her husband, a member of the armed services, when he went to Japan and China. The couple had five children, and she followed him as a military wife.

The years flew by. Ray retired. They buried one daughter. They moved to Las Vegas in August 1993. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

Then, on Dec. 24, 1998, Ray Hungerford died of a massive heart attack. He was 70.

Anita, made strong from all those years as a military bride, did what had to be done. She had her husband cremated and made arrangements to have his remains shipped to Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio.

She then tried to get on with her life.

A month later she received the news. A box of ashes with Ray's name on it had been sent to Corinne Rohrbaugh, a 78-year-old Florida resident who opened the package expecting to find her brother's remains.

Richard Rohrbaugh, a Las Vegas resident, died two months before Ray Hungerford at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. And, like Ray, his remains were cremated by the Nevada Memorial Cremation Society. He also was buried with military honors.

Corrine Rohrbaugh's attorney shipped the box of remains to Anita, and the cremation society provided Rohrbaugh with her brother's remains.

But, not sure whether they received the correct remains, and devastated about the mix-up, the women hired attorneys, including Las Vegas lawyer Richard Dreitzer, and filed a lawsuit against the cremation society.

The lawsuit was settled earlier this month. As part of the agreement, the parties cannot disclose the amount.

Although she wanted a jury to hear the case, Anita, who now lives near Waco, Texas, says she had no choice but to settle because of a quirk in the law.

"I wanted people to know that this actually happened," Anita, 71, said. "I wanted them to know that it wasn't a movie script, that this was not a plot for a book. I wanted them to know that it happened to real people, and it devastated two families."

Dreitzer said the decision to settle the lawsuit was made by his client. However, he recommended the settlement because it would have been a difficult case to win.

Under Nevada law, people suing for emotional distress must prove there was a physical manifestation of that stress, Dreitzer said. They would have had to show they were forced to obtain psychiatric help or were suffering from sleeplessness or some other physical ailment.

Before Nevada's laws were codified, Dreitzer said lawyers generally accepted the concept that cases involving the mishandling of corpses were an exception.

After all, Dreitzer said, "Those circumstances are so horrible, how could they be faking" their symptoms?

However, there are no such cases on the books, and it is unclear as to whether the Nevada Supreme Court would uphold a verdict for the plaintiffs, Dreitzer said.

Given the age of his clients, if the cremation society was to appeal a favorable decision his clients might not be able to collect, Dreitzer said.

"Part of me wanted to put the ladies on the stand to tell their stories, but the law is the law, and I laid it out for them, and we felt this was the best way to proceed," Dreitzer said.

Anita also said she was told that if they lost their case, she and Rohrbaugh would have been responsible for attorney fees and court costs of more than $30,000.

Under those circumstances, Anita said she had no choice but to settle.

"They were supposed to call and say, 'I'm sorry, I made a mistake' and they didn't then and they still haven't," Anita said. "They seem to believe that since they are only ashes now they are no longer a person, they are garbage."

"All along it wasn't about the money," Anita said. "It was about making them understand they did something wrong and admit they had done something wrong."

To make matters worse, Anita said that when the ashes arrived at her son's home in Texas from Florida they were in a plastic bag with a twist tie inside a plastic box.

Somehow, she said, the twist tie had become loose and some of the ashes had spilled.

"I never thought of an urn being like a box," Anita said. "I thought it was a vase-like thing with a lid."

Dennis Prince, attorney for the cremation society, said he was "ready, willing and able" to take the case to court, and he would probably have won.

"We had a very strong defense and that is that this was simply a mailing accident that got blown extraordinarily out of proportion," Prince said. "When they went to mail the remains, someone grabbed the wrong box."

Because Richard Rohrbaugh died earlier than Ray Hungerford, there is no physical way the remains could have been mixed up, Prince said.

Had Corinne Rohrbaugh simply returned Ray's remains to the cremation society, the problem could have been resolved swiftly and without distressing Anita Hungerford, Prince said.

Instead, she immediately hired an attorney and began asking for an exorbitant amount of money, Prince said.

The case was scheduled to go to trial March 5, but the parties suddenly decided to settle because District Judge Ron Parraguirre was "less than impressed" with the plaintiffs' case during a settlement conference on March 1, Prince said.

As for the appellate process taking so long, Prince said the parties could have asked the Supreme Court to put the case on the fast track.

Prince said the parties involved could also have requested DNA testing but chose not to.

Anita said there isn't a juror alive who would not have been affected by the horrible experience she and Rohrbaugh endured.

Rohrbaugh did not return messages for comment regarding this story.

Anyone who has plans to have a loved one cremated needs to collect the remains immediately, Anita said.

Anita said she and Rohrbaugh will never be sure if they ended up with their loved ones' remains.

Perhaps Rohrbaugh didn't even have Ray's remains to begin with, Anita said.

"I had intended to have my ashes mingled together with my husband's because we spent our whole life together, and we thought we should spend eternity together, too," Anita said. "But now, I can't because I don't know if that's him."

"She does have the right ashes. That's for certain," Prince said.