Anger, grief, uncertainty follows Whispering Maples abandonment

PLATTSBURGH — It was a storybook romance. 

Doris Mary Richards gazed across the dance floor at Wilfred Gonyea.

“I’m going to marry that boy,” Richards said. 

She did. 

The couple got hitched at St. Joseph’s Church in Mooers in July 1945.

The American dream followed. 

Wilfred took on a number of blue collar jobs to support his growing family  — mechanic, tractor-trailer driver, mine worker. The Redford native also joined a number of civic organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, the Trail Blazers Snowmobile Club and the Peru Rod and Gun Club.

Doris found joy in homemaking and raising their six children. 

Both were devout Catholics and deeply respected in the community. And like other sensible Americans, the couple made funeral arrangements long before they eventually passed away. 

Whispering Maples Memorial Gardens seemed like a good bet. 

The nonprofit, which was incorporated in 1980, had been advertising crypt space in a pair of new mausoleums in Plattsburgh and Ellenburg. 

Unlike traditional mausoleums designed for individual families, the Whispering Maples properties were grandiose affairs. The facilities featured manicured lawns, chandeliers and benches where people could sit indoors and pay homage to their loved ones, who were entombed in above-ground crypts behind ornate marble facades. 

Doris was afraid of water and didn’t want to be cremated. The mausoleum also seemed like a safe choice, Wilfred thought, because it could provide a place for their children to gather to pay their respects. 

Furthermore, making arrangements beforehand would spare the kids from funeral costs. 

Wilfred was sold. 

He purchased a tandem plot where he and Doris would be interred for eternity, head-to-head right on the ground floor.

“When one died, one could talk to the other in a comfortable environment,” said Theresa Goodman, the couple’s daughter. 

Doris passed away in November 2007. Wilfred visited her weekly. As his health began to falter, the trips became less regular. 

But he still ventured out with the help of his daughter, who recalled bundling him up as protection against the elements.

“He did that every chance he got,” Goodman said. “He wanted to be with her.”

SHOCK

Four months ago, Doris and Wilfred were reunited. 

They join about 600 other North Country residents currently entombed in the Plattsburgh mausoleum, located on a stretch of wetlands along Tom Miller Road as it winds west away from the city. 

Survivors and local officials are outraged and shocked at how the pair of facilities have been allowed to deteriorate since their construction in the early 1980s. 

A shabby-looking facade in Plattsburgh gives way to a damp, musty interior. Electric lights hum overhead, many of which are burned out. Wires hang from the ceiling. 

A stained glass window in the columbarium — where funeral urns are stored — is shattered and streaked with cobwebs. 

The departed keep watch from a bulletin board adorned with photos: 

A woman on a boat. Smiling couples sitting at kitchen tables. Glamor portraits. A man proudly beaming from a new lawnmower; all of them, snapshots of a particular time and place now fading into the landscape. 

The back of the building remains incomplete. Crumbling concrete walls, spiked with exposed rebar, are laid bare to the elements, while a patchwork of plywood, once intended to be temporary placeholders, have now become permanent, warped and weather-beaten with age. 

In Ellenburg, located 27 miles to the northwest, the carpet was soaked from a leaking roof as stale air lingered within. 

While state engineers have determined the buildings are structurally sound, they have been allowed to deteriorate for years.

More than 100 people attended a standing-room only meeting last week designed to provide answers to long-simmering questions. 

The room crackled with tension. 

Funds from the sale of each plot, including niches for cremated remains, were supposed to be reserved for a permanent maintenance fund, which has long-since been drained and declared insolvent by the state.

What happened? 

ABANDONED 

Whispering Maples Memorial Gardens was founded and incorporated as a nonprofit in 1980 by a local businessman named Peter Drown. 

Drown eventually founded a constellation of funeral homes across the North Country that went through a series of owners, including national mega-chain Service Corporation International, who sold them in 2008.

But Whispering Maples remained controlled by the family.

Drown passed away in 2000 (he is interred at the Ellenburg site alongside several other family members). The most recent incarnation of the board of directors consisted of three people — Brenda Drown, Patricia Black and Sharon Vann — with Drown, who was married to Peter’s late son, Stephen, also serving as the president. 

In February 2015, upon reports that the facilities, including a crematory in Ellenburg, were being neglected, the New York State Division of Cemeteries ordered Drown and Vann be removed from the board.

The facilities were declared abandoned and placed into a receivership. 

Interment at Whispering Maples was not cheap.

Crypts ranged from $5,930 to $12,030 depending on their location. 

By the time the state stepped in, 78 percent of the spaces in Plattsburgh had been sold; 66 percent in Ellenburg. 

But the proceeds appear to have vanished. 

In June 2015, the state determined Whispering Maples had failed to set aside adequate funds to cover the costs of pre-need sales of crypt markers and sales of rights of interment. 

The numbers were damning:

Total liabilities clocked in at $330,800.

The state determined Whispering Maples’ financial assets, including the permanent maintenance fund, pre-need trusts and general fund totaled $296,974.63. 

“Much of these funds are restricted, but even if they were unrestricted, they are inadequate to cover the cost of the pre-need liabilities,” read the report. 

Part of each crypt and niche sale was supposed to go to the maintenance fund. 

But the report determined not only was it underfunded, but the nonprofit failed to repay loans they were permitted to withdraw from the fund in 1992. 

The nonprofit also failed to make regular deposits even as proceeds from internment space and mausoleum usage continued to pour in. 

As of June 2015, the outstanding balance for the permanent maintenance fund was $212,399.

UP IN SMOKE

Authorities are baffled. 

Since January, Connie Goedert, the state-appointed receiver, is trying to piece together the past 35 years, meeting with employees and examining what survives of the record books.

“The financial picture is not incredibly clear,” Goedert said at last week’s meeting. 

A fire at the Whispering Maples records office in Ellenburg, which incinerated decades of files, has further obscured the issue, Goedert said.

The room groaned.

“How convenient,” a woman scoffed. 

At present, no arrests have been made. 

Financial investigations are ongoing, said David Fleming, a cemetery consultant brought in to aid the towns of Plattsburgh and Ellenburg. 

“If the money is not there, it is up to the communities to decide how to pursue those funds,” Fleming said.

The future of the facilities, which are still fully operational and are continuing to accept interments, are cloaked in uncertainty as the two towns grapple with a process that will almost undoubtedly lead to their takeover of the facilities. 

Fleming called the situation “extremely complicated.”

Mausoleum abandonment is nearly without precedent in the state. Officials could only recall one such similar scenario, a similar case in Ogdensburg last year. 

Not only are standalone mausoleums rare — only one other such facility exists in the state — but in this case, the assets will have to be split between the two municipalities. 

New York State Division of Cemeteries Investigator Leonard Breen said while his office typically conducts cemetery audits every 3 to 5 years, the agency seldom has the resources to conduct deep forensic audits.

“There’s so many cemeteries in the state, by the time you do the audit, it would take a few years to do the audit again,” Breen said.

State law requires cemeteries to hold annual lot owner association meetings where clients can review financial records. 

That never happened at Whispering Maples, said attendees.

“We’ve never heard of a meeting, ever,” Goodman said. 

The room agreed. 

Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman said he will advocate for a full audit and will pursue action to see if the nonprofit, which is still listed as active by the department of state, misappropriated resources. 

“We need to dig deeper and past those two years,” Cashman said, referring to the time period immediately preceding the abandonment.

‘A GOOD START’ 

The first priority, Cashman said, is to shore up the buildings, which were constructed using what Fleming referred to as “low-grade materials.” 

The facility in Ellenburg needs a new roof; Plattsburgh, wall repairs (The crematorium in Ellenburg is said to be running efficiently). 

A full report by a structural engineer is scheduled to be completed within the next two weeks.

While officials declined to cite exact repair costs, last year’s report pegged repairs at the Ellenburg facility at $99,619.26 and Plattsburgh, $46,849.58. 

The repairs, said Fleming, will be designed as long-term solutions. After that, he said, little maintenance will be required for their upkeep. 

State officials have already secured $300,000 from the state’s executive budget for the first round of repairs. Additional funds may be made available through the department of state, but the application process is expected to take at least a year. 

Assemblywoman Janet Duprey (R-Peru) said she hoped the money would be a recurring item in the state budget.

“I see the $300,000 as the first installment,” Duprey said. “It’s certainly going to be a good start.”

Goedert’s receivership, which is designed to give the towns a window to “clearly” and “effectively” design a plan to take over the facilities, is slated to end on June 5.

According to state law, abandoned cemeteries fall under the jurisdiction of municipalities. 

But officials from both towns indicated they felt uncomfortable with the pending responsibilities — including the operation of a crematory — that put them firmly in uncharted waters, especially under the state-mandated tax cap. 

“I don’t necessarily want to sell the open crypts,” said Cashman. “And my rationale is the state of New York hasn’t been right by us. The rules have changed in the past five years.”

Fleming noted towns need to strike a balance between fiscal responsibility and the emotional needs of surviving family members. 

But transferring the facilities to another private cemetery group isn’t immediately an option, he said, because the law contains safeguards to prevents the collapse of two nonprofits by taking one under disrepair and “placing it around the neck of another.”

Funeral homes are also prohibited from operating crematories under state law. 

Under the receivership, business is operating as usual, said Goedert, and funeral directors are honoring pre-sale arrangements.

Goedert, who serves as the cemetery superintendent for the town of Queensbury, said those agreements would continue once ownership is transferred to the towns.

“The towns will fulfill all the contracts,” Goedert said.

Plattsburgh and Ellenburg will also have to determine if they will sell the remaining crypts and operate the crematory, which can act as a possible revenue source, said state senator Betty Little (R-Queensbury).

“The operation in Queensbury works well,” Little said.

Cashman said both towns were working on an inter-municipal agreement. 

NO ACCOUNTABILITY 

For the living family members, open questions, including what they perceived as lax code enforcement structures that allowed the buildings to deteriorate, remain. 

Many disagreed with the state’s contention that most of the damage at the mausoleums had been incurred between 2012 and 2015.

Complaints had been voiced to Whispering Maples for years about the poor conditions of the facilities, said meeting attendees.

“There’s no wall on the back of the building,” Goodman asked. “How was that allowed to happen? Where does the responsibility lie there?”

Lyn Corron said she called Brenda Drown, the board president, numerous times to complain about the burnt-out lights and musty conditions.

She even offered to clean:

“It didn’t happen,” Corron said. “I begged her.” 

Others had concerns about the removal of personal items, mementos and flowers from the facility without notice. 

Following her mother’s internment eight years ago, Goodman said she regularly called the Ellenburg office and left voicemails to complain about the conditions, including a soggy carpet stemming from spring flooding.

A Whispering Maples representative told Goodman the foundation had cracked and promised they would make repairs. 

The nonprofit even purchased new carpet, which remained rolled up on the floor unused long before the facility was abandoned, Goodman said. 

Officials admitted oversight was lacking.

“The oversight no doubt was an issue,” said Cashman. 

“I’m not going to place blame on anyone, but the system broke,” Fleming said.

Little said she would explore possible legislation to prevent a repeat of the situation in the future. 

“We are going to correct that,” said Little. “We don’t have all the answers, but we do have the means to make amends for what happened here.”

Moving forward, the towns said they would work to create a notification process to keep survivors updated on future progress — which is critical, say family members, because they do not own the plots — as well as creating a new “friends and family”-type support group. 

Some remains have been already been exhumed and reinterred elsewhere at the request of surviving family members, said Trevor Rabideau, of R.W. Walker Funeral Home in Plattsburgh. 

For some, this isn’t possible. 

“What do we do if we need to take them out of there?” asked Goodman. “We’re not people of means.”

Corron’s husband pre-paid for his plot. Total costs came to $15,000.

Upon revelations of the misuse of funds, Corron asked a funeral director about exhumation and cremation costs. 

Estimates clocked in at $1,900. 

“If I knew yesterday what I know today, my husband never would have been put in there,” Corron recalled saying to the funeral director.

State law permits the sale of crypts on the open market, but only after they are first offered back to cemetery in writing.

Elected officials said the grief hits close to home. 

Ellenburg Supervisor Jason Dezan said his parents and brothers are interred in his town’s facility, while Cashman is continuing to grieve the recent loss of his stepfather to brain cancer. 

“My heart absolutely breaks for you folks,” said Cashman. “It’s absolutely disrespectful what has occurred.”

Goodman said the state needs to assume all costs because of their lack of oversight. 

“We have great respect for our family, living and dead,” Goodman said. “It’s heartbreaking because you’re defending people who are deceased.” 

It’s been four months since Wilfred passed away and Goodman is finally done settling his estate, including closing out accounts and settling debts. 

“I haven’t even grieved yet,” Goodman said.

Sharon Vann, Patricia Black and Brenda Drown did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.