In the past year and a half or so, I've attended three funerals and know at least 5 others who have died homeless, poor and damned near anonymous. All of them but one are buried at Bordeaux Cemetery. Many thanks to Danny Hubble and all the co-workers at the cemetery who watch over their remains and keep our dead brothers and sisters safe and comfortable in their long sleep....
| City burial program helps the indigent rest in peace |
| By: Nate Rau, nrau@nashvillecitypaper.com
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| Posted: Monday, September 8, 2008 2:13 am | |
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It was a tradition established in 1985 when Metro began operating its first indigent burial grounds, Bordeaux Cemetery, situated along County Hospital Road between a water treatment plant and a propane gas company.
The notion of someone being laid to rest without any friends or family present didn’t sit well with the gravediggers from Metro Public Works.
So Danny Hubble and his co-workers would gather around the gravesite to say a brief prayer and read from the Book of Psalms. It was an impromptu funeral service for an indigent person who died alone and wound up buried in Metro’s modest cemetery site.
A memorial stands erected in the middle of the Bordeaux Cemetery, which reads, ‘Rest with us at this stone where poverty and suffering are not now known.’
Hubble said the message espoused in that saying is what led him and his crew to treat each indigent burial as if it were one of their own family members.
“I never approached it, ‘Just let it go, nobody’s here,’” Hubble said of his job burying Nashville’s indigent. “We would never let it go at that. Everybody deserves a decent burial and the Lord is always thinking about whoever is being buried.
“If somebody is being buried, you’ve got that spiritual thing going on — ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You really think about it a lot.”
Since its inception 23 years ago, Metro’s indigent burial program has buried or cremated more than 1,100 people. The program, run by Metro Social Services, offers a modest headstone and burial plot to those who can’t afford them elsewhere.
But just how Metro’s burial program moves forward in the future is somewhat up in the air.
Since Bordeaux reached capacity, Metro has been purchasing plots one at a time at the private cemetery, Hills of Calvary Memorial. According to the program’s director Carol Wilson, the cost of a burial for a child is $1,200 and about $1,600 for an adult.
There’s an item in the capital budget recently passed by Metro Council to purchase more burial land. Metro Director of Finance Richard Riebeling is still working on the capital spending plan, which dictates which projects receive city funds, and didn’t know if purchasing more burial grounds would be included.
Metro is required by charter to provide its burial services, but Wilson said it was her hope Nashvillians would be grateful for the program.
“I would hope the public would say, ‘We are happy the indigent have a place whether it’s Metro-required or not,’” Wilson said.
Still, the tradition of an impromptu burial service for those without friends or family has been continued by Hills of Calvary staff.
At a burial last week, two gravediggers gathered with two Metro social workers and two employees from the funeral home to lay an indigent man to rest. The group bowed their heads as Hills of Calvary owner Greg Beard said a brief prayer, just as Hubble had done hundreds of times in the past.
Beard said he doesn’t use the word indigent to refer to those who are buried in his cemetery.
“We don’t call them indigent. We call them good people who fell on bad luck,” Beard said.
Beard knows the personal stories of many of those who are laid to rest by Metro at his cemetery.
“We’ve had a doctor’s wife, all sorts of people,” Beard said. “Anybody can end up homeless. You could have a storm or a flood wipe out your house. It could happen to anybody.”
The Metro-bought stones at both Bordeaux and Hills of Calvary are plain and modest. Most say only the person’s name along with the years of their birth and death.
One individual at Hills of Calvary passed away without authorities being able to properly identify him. His headstone reads, “Unknown White Male,” with the years 1947-2007 inscribed to match his estimated age of 50.
Linda Shelton is one of the five Metro Social Services employees who work for the burial assistance program.
“At first, I didn’t want any part of this line of social work,” Shelton said. “I had recently lost my father and it was difficult. But it changed.
“I can’t relate to them on the level of not having the money to pay for a burial, but I can relate to them on a grief level.”
Shelton said the number of indigent requiring Metro burial services increases in the winter when the weather turns cold. Even then, according to Beard, about half those buried as part of Metro’s burial program don’t have any family or friends who attend the service.
“People are very appreciate,” Beard said. “I can’t tell you how many times they’ll run up to me afterwards and throw their arms around me and give me a hug. I tell them I’m just doing my job.
“And we always use a shovel to bury them. We could use a machine and just cover them up real fast, but there’s something healing about seeing that last shovel-full of dirt. You know it’s over.”
Hubble worked on the Public Works crew in charge of Bordeaux Cemetery for more than 20 years. When Bordeaux filled up and Hubble put his gravedigging days behind him, he said a strange thing happened. He missed it.
“It’s just something we knew, rain or shine, it was a duty we had to do,” Hubble said. “We just saddled up with armor and did what we had to do. You tend to miss it. You get in a rhythm of doing something and in a sense I miss it somewhat.”
