I agree. From a Cpaitalist point of view, this pet cemetery family IS ripping off the ‘consumer’ even though all indications are that the woman who ran the place was half nuts to begin with.
I can see why the heirs are running for cover...and most likely lawyers. ;)
Same author, same story from one year ago; people were assured that their pets’ remains would stay put:
Thistlerose Pet Cemetery may live on
Posted: July 15, 2008
Jim Stingl
Now the owner of defunct Thistlerose Pet Cemetery and Crematory in Greendale is telling people to hold off on digging up their dogs and cats.
When I wrote about this two weeks ago, Yvonne Hanson was saying the property is for sale, and she encouraged removal of the remains buried there. She estimates that 25 graves have been emptied by owners since then, and animal caskets moved elsewhere.
Put down the shovels for the time being, because Thistlerose may live on right there at the corner of S. 68th St. and W. Loomis Road.
The plan now is to divide the 1.8-acre parcel into two pieces and sell the cemetery portion of the property to another pet cemetery that’s willing to keep it going.
The rest of the land, which holds a house and dog kennels, would be sold separately, possibly to the owner of a nursing home next door, said Warren Klaus, a lawyer representing Hanson and six other grandchildren heirs of Eleanor Jolly, who ran Thistlerose for half a century. She died in February.
The animal graves will never be destroyed, Klaus vowed.
“It just can’t happen as long as we represent them,” he said. “The last scene that we want to be part of, as a law firm or as a family, is to have the Journal (Sentinel) or the TV have a production out there where there’s a yellow Caterpillar bulldozing over Fifi’s headstone.”
It took Thistlerose a while, but it sounds like they’ve come up with the right answer. You don’t just close a cemetery — pets or people — and say tough luck. Plus, someone’s bound to sue you. Hanson said some people have cussed her out.
“Up to this time,” Klaus said, “we have not been able to find any state statute, any case law, that says there are inherent rights to keep these (pet) cemeteries into perpetuity. But that doesn’t mean morally that somebody ought to go out there and start forcing people to move graves of pets.”
I’ve been hearing from folks who unearthed pets in recent days rather than risk the bulldozer scenario.
Alex Johnson of Sheboygan had help from his son digging up three dogs that his now-deceased parents buried in the 1980s and 1990s.
“It was not a fun task,” he said. “It took the two of us about one and a half hours to unearth the dogs on a hot and muggy day.”
They took the three caskets to a pet cemetery in Sheboygan and paid $400 to rebury them.
Marion Hintz of Oak Creek was all set to rebury her cat, Fufu, on some land that her daughter’s friend has. Then she spoke to Hanson, who said, “Don’t move him. The cat can stay.”
Kathleen Cudahy wrote to me from New York. She said her 84-year-old parents are worried about the dachshund, Pretzel, they buried at Thistlerose in the 1960s.
“Anyways, here I am in Manhattan trying to figure out how one exhumes a dachshund that died 44 years ago, cremate whatever and rebury same,” she said.
Pretzel was buried at Thistlerose about the same time as Jayne Mansfield’s dog, which died while the Pamela Anderson of her day was visiting Milwaukee and performing in a play. Efforts were made on Thistlerose’s behalf earlier this month to contact Mansfield’s daughter, “Law and Order” star Mariska Hargitay, to see if the family wanted the grave moved. So far there’s been no response.
But now the question appears to be moot. If the sale works out as planned, Mansfield’s Chihuahua and hundreds of other pets of less renown can stay put.