Winter Garden neighbors protest church's plan for wall of dead remains

By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel

8:06 p.m. EST, June 19, 2012

Lydia Cummings is creeped out by an addition her neighbor is planning: a brick wall for holding cremated remains of the dead.

Cummings and her husband, Jay, are fighting a proposal by First United Methodist Church of Winter Garden to erect a columbarium ? a wall with "niches" for human ashes ? that would face the front yard of their home on Lakeview Avenue in the city's historic district.

She said her oak-shaded neighborhood, which frequently serves as a backdrop for TV commercials and sits a block from Winter Garden's reborn downtown, is inappropriate for what she calls a "cemetery." She fears her twin toddlers will be exposed daily to death and sadness.

"It is criminal for them to think that they can come to our neighborhood and leave their dead remains and then go home and live peacefully and happily while we are left with their dead," Cummings said. "We simply will not agree to carry their souls for them every day of our lives."

But this month, the city's planning-and-zoning board unanimously rejected those arguments and granted the 90-year-old church an exception to build the structure, which would contain 110 niches and cost about $50,000. Niches would be sold in pairs at a cost of $1,000 for two.

Tim Keating, chairman of the church's trustees, was dismayed that the church's closest neighbors were upset.

"One hundred percent of the time, you can't make 100 percent of the people happy. But I'm truly sorry she feels the way she does," Keating said of Cummings, who is among a small group of neighbors opposed to the project. "I think we've been good stewards of our church grounds."

Hoping to appease neighbors, the church, which has about 600 members, amended its plan by increasing the height of a garden wall that would shield the columbarium from view.

Church members, including several who live in the neighborhood, defended the project in letters to the planning board. According to the correspondence, the congregation has long wanted a meditative garden with perpetual space for members who want their earthly remains to be held close to the spiritual center of their lives. Others said the garden will provide an area to "seek God there when we have life decisions to make."

Andrea White, who joined the church in 1997 and wants to be laid to rest there, wrote that the columbarium was a way for church members to "stay connected for generations to come." She also wrote: "We do not believe that the folks resting in the columbarium will rise up as ghosts or evil spirits that will haunt or scare anyone."

Not all niches would hold urns and ashes, Keating said. Some may hold wedding rings, sentimental letters and other keepsakes that the deceased held dear, he said.

City officials say they do not fully understand the controversy. City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said the stone, brick and gated entrance to the proposed columbarium must match the church's front. He said he has seen no credible evidence that the project will harm surrounding property values, as a cemetery might. The niches will not be visible outside the brick wall.

"If someone did not tell you what it was, you wouldn't know," he said. "It will look like the church."

Bollhoefer said a few neighbors have mischaracterized the project with inflammatory language, calling the columbarium a cemetery. An opposition ad in a weekly newspaper called it a "wall of death."

Steven Jett, who bought the ad, said city and church officials are splitting hairs.

"A rose is a rose is a rose," he said. "It's a place to store what is left of dead people. Would you want it in your neighborhood?"

He said the neighbors bought their homes knowing they would be close to a church that has a bell tower, a preschool and occasional rummage sales. He said neighbors understood that there would be weddings and funerals, too.

"But we didn't buy into a constant reminder of death," Jett said.

Nationally, proposals to build columbaria rarely ? if ever ? encounter opposition, said Barbara Kemmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America. She said that more commonly, people express concerns about plans for crematories, the incinerators where bodies are turned into ashes.

In Florida and across the U.S., people are opting more and more for cremation because it offers a more economical alternative to burial, Kemmis said. The cost of cremation and a basic urn averages about $1,750 nationally, less than a quarter of the cost of burial ? even before figuring in the cost of the graveside, burial vault and headstone.

The industry figures that about 36 percent of Americans who died in 2009 were cremated, a number expected to reach 46 percent by 2015. Nearly 57 percent of people who died in Florida in 2009 were cremated.

Kemmis also said that as some religions become more tolerant of cremation, houses of worship are adding columbaria to their grounds.

Churches aren't the only ones building final resting places. The University of Florida, for instance, will present its board of trustees with a plan in September to build a columbarium near Ficke Gardens on the shores of Lake Alice, said Janine Sikes, a spokeswoman for the university.

Some alumni want to be around fellow Gators forever, she said.

Foes of the Winter Garden columbarium must persuade the City Commission to overturn the planning board's decision ? an unlikely prospect, some neighbors acknowledge. But Kaye Gerding, who owns a house on Lakeview where her daughter lives, said she was disappointed that the church ignored neighbors' request to look elsewhere.

"You know, the Bible says do unto others as you would have done unto you and love thy neighbor," she said. "We're not feeling that at all."

shudak@tribune.com or 407-650-6361

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