Las Vegas Sun

February 12, 2012

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County’s poorest children have death without dignity

Macabre IDs, no headstones for county’s wards, indigents

Image

Sam Morris

Donna Coleman uses a map to find the unmarked graves of unknown infants at Woodlawn Cemetery near downtown Las Vegas. The bench was donated in the name of Adacelli Snyder, who died of starvation in 2005.

By (contact)

Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Beyond the Sun

A granite bench capped with a small statue of an angel hugging a cross overlooks the section of Woodlawn Cemetery where Clark County’s abandoned or most-impoverished children are buried.

Residents raised money to buy the bench and a headstone for 2-year-old Adacelli Snyder, who starved to death in a filthy room in a trailer in northeast Las Vegas four years ago.

Her grave marker is one of 29 in that section. On some, people have left reminders of the childhoods cut short or never started — toy dinosaurs, cars, a snowman, a cookie.

As sad as those graves are, most of the tragedy remains hidden.

Below the surrounding surface are the remains of at least 81 more children.

“Baby Boy Charles” was killed by one of his foster mothers in 2006, but only recently got a headstone, thanks to another foster mom. It is engraved with a baby holding a teddy bear and the dates that bookend the boy’s seven months of life.

Donna Coleman, a longtime children’s advocate, attended the installation of the marker and took a long look at the headstone over Snyder’s grave.

“It dawned on me that the community got together and bought that stone, too,” she said. It left her wondering: “Was it possible that children are buried here without stones?”

She was heartbroken to learn her hunch was right — and the number was far greater than she imagined.

Most of the children’s graves in this area of Woodlawn are identified on a cemetery map as A. Doe or B. Doe — “A” and “B” because they are buried two to a site — followed by an ID number and date of death. Others are given macabre names: “Skeletal,” “Half Skull,” “Ice House,” “Alta (Drive) Bones.”

Some of the graves lack markers because the babies were abandoned. In other cases, the families couldn’t afford to mark the children’s graves. A Woodlawn Cemetery spokeswoman guessed that 10 to 15 had been wards of the county when they died. Coleman said Clark County Family Services Department is trying to verify those numbers.

However they ended up in Woodlawn and whoever they were, the children deserve, at the very least, to have their graves marked “to acknowledge that they lived, they were on this Earth. Though some had an obviously very unhappy time on Earth, they were still here,” Coleman said. “They were still people and should be acknowledged for future generations for anyone who wants to find them.”

Seeking ways to do that, Coleman found Garden of Innocence National, a group started 10 years ago in San Diego County that voluntarily buries abandoned children and provides headstones. The group also has a branch in San Francisco and is working on ones in Seattle and St. Louis.

Two years ago Elissa Davey, Garden of Innocence founder, said she tried but failed to get Clark County officials interested in her group.

Davey wanted to handle memorial services for Southern Nevada’s abandoned and indigent children. In San Diego County, Garden of Innocence conducts services for children prematurely born who are 20 weeks or older and for those up to 7 years of age, although the oldest so far has been 3.

Although Davey found sympathetic ears in the county’s Social Service Department, she said county administrators weren’t interested.

“We had a lot of other states interested, and (Clark County) just didn’t seem to want to work with us, so we moved on,” Davey said.

Nancy McLane, Social Service director, said one problem was Davey’s group didn’t want to simply provide headstones; they wanted to take custody of the bodies.

“They wanted to do everything, and they are not a mortuary,” McLane said, so the county decided not to work with them.

The way it works now, McLane said, Clark County “has a long-standing relationship” with local mortuaries that are on a rotating list to provide burials or cremations for the indigent or abandoned. It’s not free. Taxpayers pay $425 per adult and $175 per child for cremation, while burials cost $1,827 per adult and $507 per child.

The cost does not include headstones.

In the first four months of this fiscal year, the county paid $150,000 for 298 cremations and 16 burials. McLane did not have the deceased broken down by age.

In 2008-09 the county paid local mortuaries $415,000 for 863 cremations and 41 burials; the year before that, $343,000 for 712 cremations and 29 burials.

In San Diego, Garden of Innocence keeps small caskets, blankets and toys in a storage area. All materials are donated. Boys’ caskets are lined with blue; girls’ with pink. When Davey picks up a child from the morgue, she takes two blankets and a toy. The body is taken to a mortuary that voluntarily stores the body until the day of the service.

Everything is donated, including money to pay for headstones, which in San Diego are $220. In San Francisco they are $250.

A price sheet at Woodlawn lists its 16-by-8-inch flat granite headstones at $470.74, including installation, endowment care and tax.

Coleman figures two names could fit on one headstone to reduce costs. She is seeking a lower price from cemetery managers.

She has contacted Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, to see if legislation might be the way to force the government to pay for headstones for children who were government wards.

Reached at a conference in Washington, Cegavske said she “choked up” when Coleman told her about the babies and saw the “emotionless” names meant to identify them.

“I didn’t know about these babies at all,” she said. “And who came up with this verbiage, these names? Who thought that was a sensitive way to do it?”

Cegavske introduced legislation in 2001 to allow parents to leave children at fire stations, police stations or other places without fear of arrest for abandonment. At the time Palm Mortuary donated 130 burial plots for indigent or abandoned babies and erected a monument with the babies’ names engraved on it. But no babies have been buried in those Palm plots yet, and the monument bears no names, a spokesman said.

“They have that available,” Cegavske said. “I’m not sure why no one is using them.”

The spokesman for Palm Mortuary said the reason is “the county takes the children to Woodlawn.”

But Palm, which is in the county’s rotation of mortuaries, has never raised the matter with the county.

As for Garden of Innocence, Davey said if the snag is that the county insists only mortuaries have custody of the children’s remains, that’s not an obstacle. “We’d be fine with that,” Davey said.

“Our concern is the dignity of that child,” Davey said. “They are human beings. They deserve simple headstones and a service, to have somebody there who cares.”

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