wfn.org | A mournful mission

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Note #7074 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

01-March-2002
02084

A mournful mission

Church near corpse-strewn Georgia crematory is suited to the challenge 

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has sent $10,000 to a Presbyterian church near Noble, GA, where authorities responding to an anonymous tip have found more than 330 bodies strewn about a 16-acre crematory site.

Chickamauga Presbyterian Church, of Chicamauga, GA, which is about seven miles north of Tri-State Crematory, will use the money to train counselors to help some of the hundreds of families dealing with grief, anger and stress caused by the desecration of their loved ones' remains - the victims of what PDA has termed a "human-caused disaster." So far, fewer than 100 of the bodies have been identified.

Authorities have charged 28-year-old Brent Marsh, the crematory owner, with hundreds of counts of theft by deception. They apparently intend to file two for each body recovered - one for taking money for cremations never done, the other for failing to return the proper ashes to the families of the deceased. Many of the families have discovered that the "cremains" of their loved ones are actually concrete dust, pebbles or dirt.

Georgia law does not provide serious penalties for the desecration of corpses. All the charges against Marsh are misdemeanors because cremation costs less than $500. Georgia officials have said the work of recovering the bodies and cleaning up the site could take as much as a year and cost $10 million.

More than 3,500 families have inquired about loved ones they presumed had been cremated at Tri-State Crematory, which received bodies from more than 25 funeral homes in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Officials said some of the bodies may have been discarded 10 years or more ago.  

The Rev. Edward C. Langham, pastor of the 85-member church, said his congregation is "still in a state of shock over this, and dismay," stunned that such a thing could happen in what he calls "the nicest place you'd ever want to live - this whole northwest Georgia area."

"There's a lot of anger in our community now," the pastor said, adding of Marsh, the crematory owner: "His life on the street is not worth a plugged nickel. There have already been death threats."

Langham said one family in his congregation is awaiting word on a woman who "was supposedly cremated" at Tri-State. He said the deceased woman's former husband and their children "are having to deal again with grief they experienced many years ago," and have given blood samples to authorities in hope that DNA-matching tests might determine whether her body is among those found in the past two weeks. "They're just in a waiting period right now," he said of the families.

It is providential that Chickamauga Presbyterian is so close to the crematory site. The congregation has been deeply involved in a grief-counseling ministry for five years. In fact, it has turned its manse over to a group called Sunrise at Midnight, which runs a grief-recovery program certified by an institution in Los Angeles, CA, called the Grief Recovery Institute (GRI).

That something like this should happen in the Chickamauga church's back yard is "something that is amazing us right now," said Langham, adding that Walker County officials have been giving the local church community daily progress reports on the investigation.

A member of Langham's congregation, Nancy Martin, is a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who serves as GRI's director for the Southeastern United States. Langham, himself a trained grief counselor, is a member of the Sunrise at Midnight board and is its current president. The organization offers a 10-week group-counseling program intended to help people not merely to "cope" with grief, but to understand it and move beyond it. Martin, who formerly worked for a hospice program, created Sunrise at Midnight to address a need she thought was not being met.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, Martin helped train counselors in suburban New York and worked as a consultant and advisor to the Presbytery of New York City.

Langham, who became Chicamauga's interim pastor seven years ago after retiring as pastor of a church in nearby Ooltewah, TN, said Sunrise at Midnight was helpful to him when he lost his wife, a daughter and a sister over a recent five-year period. While GRI is "not particularly a Christian organization," he said, Sunrise at Midnight is a ministry in which his church has been deeply involved. Chickamauga takes up an annual special offering to support the organization, he said, and offers prayers for its every week.

Langham said the group hopes to train 20 to 30 new counselors - "people right from the community" - and will begin doing so shortly after Easter. 

At the moment, he said, short-term crisis counseling is the only kind being offered to the grieving families in Walker County. He said Sunrise at Midnight will offer longer-term services of a kind many survivors are likely to need. He said he expects to lead one recovery group himself.

"This thing has affected our whole community," he said. "It's not something we asked for, or expected to happen - but I'll tell you, our whole community has awakened."
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