Garden of Peace Mausoleum

Never imagining the tragedy to come, Denise Kumor’s parents bought side-by-side mausoleum crypts at the Good Shepherd Memorial Park on Westminster Road because the cemetery was beautiful and they didn’t want her to worry about fussing over graves.“They never wanted me to have any burden,” said Kumor, who lost her father, Carl DeNunzio, in 1991 and mother, Alice, six years later.Instead, their final resting place has turned into an all-consuming source of stress for Kumor.Condemned in 2015, the mausoleum is structurally unsound and plagued with leaks. Abandoned by prior owners, the 6.08-acre cemetery is now officially orphaned with no governmental entities willing to take on the liability and responsibility for its upkeep.Kumor said she doesn’t have thousands of dollars required to remove her parents, which would not include the cost of purchasing new burial spots with vaults and a headstone.Setting aside safety concerns, she can’t bear to visit them anymore.“I don’t go there because I get sick to my stomach and cry all day,” Kumor said. “It’s horrible — horrible.”HistoryArea residents familiar with the situation say the cemetery’s significant decline started when Larry Deminski took charge.Deminski, who identified himself as a pastor of Unity Light of Christ Church in Pittston Township, said the cemetery had been donated to the church, according to county paperwork associated with his unsuccessful 2001 assessment appeal.However, ownership of the cemetery was never officially recorded under Deminski or the church, property records show. Laflin-based Westminster Memorial Garden Inc. took possession of the property in 1983 from Westminster Associates, also based in Laflin. Both Westminster entities are defunct, according to published reports.Deminski told a Times Leader reporter in 2003, a year before his death, that money set aside in a perpetual care fund for the crypt and plot maintenance was gone, claiming someone forged his signat...

Gardens of Gethsemani has started construction on a multimillion-dollar project to expand the space available for Catholics to bury their loved ones.“It is carefully prepared with the community in mind,” Catholic Cemeteries director Peter Nobes said in an interview.The mausoleums will be as large as some small residential homes, with 195 crypts and more than 2,000 niches to be added to the cemetery in Phase 1 alone.Although it is one of the cemetery’s biggest expansion projects since Archbishop Duke bought the land in the 1950s, Nobes said Gardens of Gethsemani will maintain its peaceful, park-like setting.“We love for it to be a place of peace, a place of remembrance and reverence,” he said.The project is inspired in part by the Cedar Grove cemetery at Notre Dame University, where Gardens of Gethsemani staff attended a recent Catholic Cemetery Conference.Rather than building one massive stone structure for thousands of crypts and niches, Nobes believes the “village” concept will give the sacred grounds a more intimate feel. There will be walkways, statues, a water feature, and landscaping with plenty of new trees.“There is a lot of careful planning that goes into cemetery design,” he said. An aerial view of all four phases of the Holy Angels Mausolea and Columbaria. (Submitted)Gardens of Gethsemani needs the expansion project. Outreach coordinator Terry Whiteley said there is a growing waiting list of people requesting glass-fronted niches (which hold urns), and a limited number of crypt spaces (which hold caskets) left.“In the early days, your parish had a cemetery outside the door,” she said. Now, members of all 77 parishes in the Archdiocese of Vancouver rely on Gardens of Gethsemani.“It is a huge development for families,” said Whiteley.The massive construction project, which will be built in four phases, is taking the name Holy Angels Mausolea and Columbaria.“I love the name,” said operations manager Marcia ...