PIONEER VILLAGE, Ky. — Cemeteries are often serene, quiet places, where people go to mourn and remember. At the Holder Family Cemetery that peace is paramount, in fact, the desire for peace is what pushed the plot into existence.
"I should've been able to bury my son on July 10 and start closure. Start the healing process. To have some sort of peace,” Glenda Holder said. "But that's not possible. It's not possible."
Peace is something Brian and Glenda Holder said they've never experienced at the Brookland Cemetery in Pioneer Village, where their 21-year-old son, Shawn, was buried last summer.
"People in the bereavement business shouldn't be behaving themselves this way,” Attorney J. Andrew White said.
'Just a dirt mound.'
Shawn died one day shy of his 22nd birthday. It was an unexpected death that rocked his parents' world. They planned a funeral, picked a cemetery plot that was already paid for by family and mustered all their strength to bury their boy.
"When the service was complete Brian and I stayed at the grave with Shawn until they lowered his coffin, put the lid on his vault,” Glenda Holder said through tears.
The day after the funeral, the parents packed up flowers that had been mistakenly delivered to their house, to take them back to the cemetery. They said they placed the items on the grave and returned several hours to find everything gone.
“There was nothing on Shawn's grave. It was just a dirt mound. I thought that was really strange, but I wasn't thinking right. I thought well its July, it's really hot, maybe the flowers died so they removed them. So, we left, came back the next day and put some fake flowers out," Glenda Holder recalled. "I'm like… why? Why would somebody be taking this stuff?"
The heartbroken mother didn't have to wait long for an answer. That afternoon, she found a letter in her mailbox from an attorney representing Brookland Cemetery.
The letter was addressed to Glenda and Brian and read in part, "your guests greatly disrespected the cemetery's quiet…ignored requests to stop…created a public nuisance…and damaged the property."
The cemetery demanded more than $2,000 to repair pavement damaged by tire marks left behind by one of Shawn's friends after the funeral.
“There's a lien placed on Shawn's grave, a grave that had been paid for since 2011, ten years prior to Shawn's death. And no memorials would be allowed on Shawn's grave until my husband and I paid to have their parking lot resealed due to the squeal marks that was left by someone else at Shawn's service,” Glenda Holder said.
She said the family hired an attorney and sent a letter back explaining they could not be held responsible for someone else’s actions. She said the cemetery never responded.
During this time, every item left on Shawn’s grave would be removed, according to the family. They even caught the act on camera, sharing photos with WHAS11 showing people they identified as cemetery staff members carrying flowers and decorations from the grave.
The Holders would then find the items in other areas of the cemetery or in a staff member’s car.
"The young man who done the squealing of the tires, he hired an attorney and then he paid the cemetery the money that they asked for. So, I was hoping at that point that we were done,” Glenda Holder said.
She said once the payment was made, they were able to leave items at the grave, but it wasn’t long before another issue came up.
Monument denied
The Holders started looking for a monument to mark their son’s gravesite. It was something they weren’t ready to think about until months after his funeral. But once they were ready, Glenda Holder said they walked through Brookland Cemetery, looking for options.
“My husband and I went through the cemetery multiple times. We walked the whole cemetery, took pictures of ideas we liked that we were going to incorporate into Shawn's," she said.
They settled on a monument that could include several different pictures and would stand tall on the plot. The Holders saw an example in the cemetery and contacted the cemetery's owners to find out which monument business installed it.
"They said they couldn't tell me. I told them I would call the person myself. She told me only approved vendors could place monuments in the cemetery so I asked if we could get a list of approved vendors, and she advised me they don't have a list. Her only guidance was that she sells headstones,” Glenda Holder said.
At a loss, she decided to contact the family who laid the headstone she liked most. The family told her they used Keith Monuments on Dixie Highway. Glenda Holder set up a meeting with the company, signed a contract and started designing the headstone.
"We wanted Shawn's monument to represent him. So, when you come through the cemetery as a guest, you don't know Shawn but when you see his monument, you know exactly who he is," she said. "You know what he looks like, you know that he was an avid hunter/fisherman, that he had a family, Shawn was loved. He had a son."
Once the dimension draft of the monument was complete, a representative from Keith Monument’s sent it to Brookland for approval. The cemetery denied it. The Holders said the cemetery wanted to see the complete design before granting approval.
"We started designing the stone, getting our pictures together, seeing how they would fit on the stone and got that done in February,” Glenda Holder said.
Once that was complete, she said the monument company took it back to Brookland for another try at approval and they informed him it needed to be sent through certified mail.
"He submitted it through certified mail, and they refused it a second time. He reached out to them through email asking if they could meet and they told him they will not meet with him in person, that if he needs a meeting that he needs to contact their attorney,” Glenda Holder said.
WHAS11 contacted Keith’s Monuments, who confirmed Brookland denied a meeting to discuss why the monument was denied. They said they were instructed to contact the cemetery’s attorney.
'Outrageous behavior.'
For the Holders, the repeated denials for their son's monument were the final straw and the moment a lingering thought in the back of their mind took center stage. They decided to create a private cemetery on family land and went to Bullitt County Planning and Zoning for approval.
Once approved, they filed paperwork with the state to receive a permit to move Shawn’s body from the Brookland Cemetery to the Holder Family Cemetery.
The permit was approved in April and within weeks the Holders said they had hired a funeral director to oversee the disinterment, paid the Brookland cemetery disinterment fee and planned a move for early summer.
Then, the family received a contract from Brookland's owners, and after sharing it with their attorney, decided they could not sign it.
"As an attorney I would never advise a client to sign this agreement the way it's written because it presumes so many things that are not correct,” Attorney J. Andrew White said. "It gives them a pass on so many areas of ordinary liability."
He pointed to one specific line in the contract that reads, “…the cemetery reserves the cemetery’s right to stop all work, clear the Cemetery, increase the Cemetery’s cost and services to the Holder family, amend this Disinterment Agreement and reschedule…”
White is now representing the Holders in a new fight in court. He's filed a lawsuit accusing the cemetery and cemetery owners of abuse of process, extreme emotional distress, invasion of privacy and outrageous conduct.
"This is outrageous behavior in my judgement," he said. "When you're trying to grieve, you don't need this kind of interference."
WHAS11 called the cemetery, asking to speak with Stephen or Karen Brooks, who are both listed in the lawsuit. An attorney returned our call and said the Brooks would not be answering any questions.
“Brookland Cemetery has been helping people in difficult moments for over 40 years. We have never had issues like this with anyone," the cemetery's attorney said in a statement. "We will have no further comment while the litigation is pending.”
According to court documents, the defendants deny the allegations and maintain “the cemetery had the authority to enforce its reasonable rules as set forth in the Brookland Cemetery Rules and Regulations.”
The cemetery is also requesting a judge dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought to court again. Brookland has also filed counter-claims against the Holders and are requesting the Holders cover “legal fees and costs expended in defending against this frivolous lawsuit”, according to court documents.
There is no trial date set in this case.
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