YOUNGSTOWN Siblings voice grave concerns

Family members say the situation will bother them until they know for sure it's their brother in that grave.
By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Joe Lantz remembers going to visit his brother's grave site in Calvary Cemetery on South Belle Vista Avenue and sitting next to the flat marker bearing Patrick's name.
It was the closest he could get to the brother he had for only three years, but sitting there gave him a sense of comfort and peace.
Now, almost 30 years later, the Youngstown resident isn't sure if it really was Patrick's grave he was visiting.
Trying to fulfill the final wishes of their father, William Lantz, Joe and his sister, Sherry Lantz of Youngstown, petitioned Mahoning County Probate Court to have their brother and sister, Jody, moved from the children's section of Calvary Cemetery to new sites on each side of their father. William Lantz died in 1999.
Patrick and Jody Lantz each died at age 3 from a rare genetic disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy, which causes muscles to waste away and is always fatal. Jody died in 1969; Patrick, in 1974.
The siblings expected no problems with the move, but three years later, they are still wondering who is really under Patrick's grave marker.
Headstone question
"I got a call that day saying they were making the move, if I wanted to come and check things out," said Sherry as she sat in the living room of her home, only a block from the cemetery.
"I guess curiosity made me go. I figured everything was on the up and up, but I am the type of person who likes to make sure things are done with no mistakes."
When she arrived at the cemetery a few minutes later, workers informed her that her sister's vault and headstone were already moved, but she may want to get a headstone for her brother because he didn't have one.
"I said, 'What do you mean, he doesn't have one? I was just here last week, and it was there,'" she said. "When they showed me where they were digging, I told them I hoped they didn't think that was his grave, because he was actually down several plots."
For 25 years, Patrick's headstone was situated in the middle of one of the rows in the children's section. The plot workers were digging at the end of the row, directly under a tree.
"We would have remembered if the cemetery had told us he was buried right underneath a tree," Sherry said. "You don't forget something like that. Where the headstone is matches where my mother was told he was buried."
Their mother, Edna Carder, who now lives in Fort Myers, Fla., explained that the family didn't go to Patrick's grave site until a few days after the burial. They attended services that day in the cemetery's chapel and left immediately after.
When she returned two days later, workers told her where she could find Patrick's grave, covered in the same flowers that rested on top of his coffin. That site, Joe said, is the same one he visited for years.
"It makes me angry," he said. "I went to that site hundreds of times over the years, talked to my brother, said prayers, [then they] tell me it wasn't him in there all along?"
Company's records
Joe and Sherry said they checked with Daily Monument, the company that provided the headstone for Patrick. Their records show he was buried in Section 40, Plot 1440. Cemetery officials told the Lantzes that Patrick was actually buried in Plot 1455, at the end of the same row.
Jack Hamilton, an employee at Daily Monument, said that when families request a headstone, they must fill out an application from the cemetery to install one. The information is forwarded to cemetery officials, who approve or deny the request.
Once the application is approved, cemetery workers supply the section and plot number to the monument company. That number is engraved on the marker; in Patrick's case, his flat marker has the number 1440 engraved in the lower right corner.
"In the case of flat markers, they are dropped off at the cemetery, and cemetery workers install them," Hamilton said. "If this particular stone has the number 1440, then that would have been the number the cemetery gave us when the application was submitted."
In the children's section of Calvary, infants and children are buried chronologically. According to that practice, the child in Plot 1440 would have died sometime between April 4 and July 4, 1974; Patrick died in October.
The Lantzes said Don Goncy, superintendent of Calvary Cemetery, informed them the only mistake made was that Patrick's headstone was installed over what was to be the unmarked grave of an infant.
Trying for confirmation
Joe said he understands mistakes happen, but he wants to know for sure that Patrick is now buried where he is supposed to be, next to their father. And he is getting "zero satisfaction" from officials at the cemetery, he said.
The Lantzes said that when the problems arose three years ago, Goncy suggested they have DNA testing done on the body. The testing runs $5,000 -- money the brother and sister say they just don't have.
"They told us that if we got the testing done and it showed that really isn't Patrick, then they will pay for half of the testing," Joe said. "If there is no mistake anymore and it is him, they won't pay for anything."
Goncy would not comment on the allegations, saying he and his supervisor, Joe Kun, director of cemeteries and superintendent of Resurrection Cemetery in Youngstown, were notified through an attorney for the cemetery that the case is closed.
The Lantzes said they were informed that cemetery workers will not reopen the grave next to their father, where Goncy said their brother is now buried, without a court order to do so.
"I was told when all of this came up that the only comment I could make was that the case was closed at this point, but we understand it could reopen at some point if the family decides to pursue it," he said.
Kun could not be reached to comment.
A long effort
Joe and Sherry have spent the past three years working with attorneys to determine their options, as well as to find out if there are any precedents in their case.
For most of that time, Sherry said, they were told to "wait and see" how similar pending cases played out in the court system. The siblings are actively pursuing the case again now, they said, because they want the issue resolved.
In the meantime, Joe finds himself unable to visit the cemetery without feeling animosity, and Sherry visits both grave sites.
There are still physical reminders in the children's section of the whole problem: The plot the cemetery says was Patrick's all along still has an outline from where it was dug up three years ago to move the vault next to their father, and the spot where his headstone was located sinks down about 2 inches lower than the ground surrounding it.
"It's so simple," Joe said. "All they have to do is check to make sure it is Patrick."
"This is going to continue to bother us until we find out for sure," Sherry added.
slshaulis@vindy.com