city of lowell

Personal mementos disposed of at Lowell, Mass. cemetery

(NECN: Ally Donnelly, Lowell, Mass.) - The city of Lowell, Massachusetts is apologizing to families of people buried at a city cemetery.

The city recently removed all personal items from graves at the Westlawn Cemetery and threw them out.

Joan Metropolis lost her brother Greg suddenly to an aneurysm four yrs ago. He was just 36 yrs old. She says, "It hurts, it hurts. This is the only we can, um, I see him, I talk to him. I miss him."

She visits his grave at Westlawn Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts every week. Last month she was stunned to see the edging, solar lights and ceramic angel she had nestled among the flowers -- gone.

"It was an angel that was left there for four years that they threw away, it was watching over him," she says.

The cemetery commissioner recently had workers round up the trinkets and mementos that are against cemetery policy -- rules that were never enforced before now -- and haul them away in trash bags.

Irene Ryan says, "We were all for it. We said it's about time." She and her husband Joe tend a number of family graves at the city-run cemetary. They point to graves nearby where people have left everything from plastic butterflies to beer cans. Says Joe Ryan, "It was starting to look kind of gaudy, ya know?"

The worst part of all this for many of the people we talked to was the city never reached out to them, never gave them a chance to take away the things they cared about, themselves.  "It kills me, it kills me," says Metropolis. "It didn't bother anybody, it wasn't on top of the stone, it wasn't gaudy."

City Manager Bernie Lynch says the cemetary did put an ad in the local paper and reached out to loved one of people who had died recently, but, still he admits..."We should have done a better job. It's a sensitive issue."

He's put a stop to any memento clean up for the time being so the city can come up with very clear guidelines that everyone will know about.

The city of revere reminds me a lot of lowell.

i like to drive in Lowell my home city and the home of Micky Ward

Lowell is like the wackest city in the history of cities & i keep finding more & more people i been following for MAD long stay here ?

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