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Saginaw County, Michigan (WNEM) -- A local woman is remembering the pain of having to move her late husband because of the condition of his grave.
His grave was located at Eastlawn Memorial Cemetery in Saginaw County’s Blumfield Township.
“If I would’ve known that that cemetery flooded there would have been no way in hell my husband would have been laid to rest there,” said Melissa Alex.
She is furious after hearing there hasn’t been a fix to an ongoing problem more than 12 years after it first started.
Her husband, Eugene Alex, was a staff sergeant in the Army. He was killed in action on Sept. 2, 2006. He was laid to rest nine days later in the veteran’s section of Eastlawn Memorial Cemetery.
Melissa says she was never informed the cemetery had flooding issues, but she quickly found out when she returned with her kids soon after the burial.
“The cemetery looked like it was a pond. My daughter screamed. Her screams made me think that can never happen again. I could never bring my kids out to the cemetery and then not be able to reach their father’s grave,” Melissa said.
After no resolution with the owners, Melissa said she refused to leave her husband there and spent more than $4,000 to exhume his body and relocate him to a different cemetery. The process was like pouring salt in the wound.
“It was bad enough I had to bury him once, I had to bury him twice,” she said.
Fast forward 12 years. Melissa was watching TV5 and saw several families are dealing with the same thing at the same cemetery.
“They need to make it right. They need to fix it,” Melissa said.
She said she has had enough.
“I’m infuriated, and I was up quite a bit last night after seeing the broadcast and I made some phone calls. And I am not going to stop until they get this fixed,” Melissa said.
One of those phone calls was to State House Rep. Jason Wentworth. He said they have been in contact with the parent company located in Canada.
Wentworth said a representative is being sent to come up with a plan to fix the issue. That should happen by Jan. 2.
In the meantime, he said you may soon be notified if you have a loved one buried in the veteran’s section of Eastlawn.
