NJ Senate president wants to restore unmarked graves of people with mental illness

From The Star-Ledger in N.J.:

MORRISTOWN, N.J. -- The small concrete cylinders (pictured) are buried at Morristown’s Evergreen Cemetery, virtually impossible to see until you are almost standing on them.

Each is marked with a four-digit number etched into its flat top, like a bar code for the dead — fading markers into past lives of indigent state psychiatric patients long ago placed shoulder-to-shoulder in the ground in body bags or pine boxes.

They were people once, with names and lives and families. But as many as 6,000 former state patients rest in mostly anonymous graves in Morristown and in potter’s fields near state psychiatric hospitals in Glen Gardner and Marlboro, Winslow Township and Trenton. In some instances, with markers sunk underground or inexplicably removed, the history of these patients dating back as far as 150 years ago has been lost.

Now, that may change.

State Sen. President Richard Codey, who as a youth picked up the dead at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital for his family’s funeral business, has embarked on a crusade to find identities of these people and restore their dignity in death.

"This is all these former patients have to show for their lives — a number,’’ Codey said as he pulled up a piece of glass embedded in the ground next to a virtually hidden numerical grave marker at Evergreen Cemetery last week. "This is a stark reminder of society’s attitude towards the mentally ill at one point in our history.

"It was like these people committed a crime. They were treated in life and death like they did something wrong.’’

Codey, a longtime advocate of the mentally ill, wants to restore the grave sites and create an electronic registry of the dead indigents from Greystone, Hagedorn, Marlboro, Trenton, Ann Klein and Ancora state hospitals who were buried mostly in anonymity.

Under his plan, relatives of deceased patients could contact the state Department of Human Services and get access to files that could lead to the burial places of their loved ones or ancestors.

Also, Codey wants the state to provide a "modest sum of money,’’ but he said he doesn’t know yet how much money it will cost to help reclaim the grave sites, which could include landscaping, digging up and restoring numerical markers and erecting monuments to acknowledge who is buried in these fields.

Officials at the Department of Human Services, which runs the state hospitals, said they have not seen Codey’s proposals. But spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy said the agency "supports efforts to give patients the dignity they deserve.’’

Evergreen Cemetery is tucked into a 60-acre tract off Martin Luther King Avenue, about a mile from the Morristown Green and five miles from Greystone. Established in 1855, the cemetery is the final resting place of many prominent people, including New Jersey Governors Theodore Fitz Randolph and George Werts, who have impressive monuments to their past existences.

Just down the hill, in cemetery section 16, it’s a different story.

Codey and others, accompanied by Evergreen historian Kemper Chambers and cemetery officials, last week explored this peaceful, wooded area looking for Greystone graves.

The entourage literally was walking over graves of hundreds of people on a hillside Chambers used to sleigh down as a kid.

"We had no idea. It was just a good place to play,’’ said Chambers, who has authored a book on the cemetery’s history.

More than 3,000 patients were buried here from 1877 to 1966, with just numbered markers. While no names are attached to those slim cylinders, each number chiseled on them corresponds to listings in cemetery log books meticulously maintained by cemetery manager Jill Edwards.

Those records detail the names, birthplaces, ages and marital status of Greystone’s indigent dead, and also each patient’s medical doctor, date of death, cause of death and name of the mortician who handled the burial.

According to records, the first indigent Greystone patient buried in a "free ground’’ donated by Evergreen Cemetery was Edith Muhrehgen, a German immigrant who died on Oct. 7, 1877, of what the registry book lists as "hemorrhage.’’ Another German immigrant, Heding Pfotenhauer, was buried about the same time, dying from "general chronic exhaustion.’’

"I’m often amazed we have so much information,’’ Edwards said.

Relatives of patients sometimes reach out to the past, trying to find ancestors and what happened to them, said Bob Davison, executive director of the Essex County Mental Health Association. He said a burial registry would be a welcome tool for these people.

In one instance, thanks to cemetery records, orphaned children of a former Greystone patient tracked down the fate of their late mother, recalled Glenn Coutts, vice president of trustees at Evergreen. Now, a grave marker with the name Concetta Bruno sits in the middle of a restored field of some 2,000 anonymous, numbered graves.

Codey says this search demonstrates exactly why such a registry would be invaluable to relatives.

"There may be husbands or wives or grandchildren of former patients who may want to know what happened to their loved ones,’’ Codey said. "Some people may want to find out about ancestors. This may be a way for them to reconnect and to bring some closure to their lives.’’