FILE – Headstones in a rural cemetery.
In Florida’s Fort Lauderdale city, officials are contemplating an unconventional proposal that involves shutting down schools and utilizing them as burial grounds amid insufficient cemetery space concerns raised during an April meeting of the Cemetery System Board of Trustees. According to local reports, Mike Watson, a District 1 representative on the board, urged commissioners at their conference last week to consider repurposing closed county schools for this purpose by 2025 as Superintendent Peter Licata announced his retirement and recommended specific school closures that would be put before the Broward County School Board in June. The move follows growing apprehensions regarding insufficient burial spaces, a concern that gained momentum during last month’s Cemetery System board meeting when they voted 4-1 to request commissioners consider transforming closed schools into cemeteries as part of their expansion plans. Meanwhile, the parents of actor Josh Gad have filed a lawsuit against Eternal Light Memorial Gardens in South Florida over allegations that it sold them an already reserved grave space and allowed another party’s remains to be buried there without notifying them directly or rectifying the situation despite repeated requests from the family. The Schwartz couple, who purchased four adjacent spaces for themselves and Susan Gad Schwartz’s parents – Holocaust survivors Evelyn and Joseph Greenblat- claimed that Eternal Light Memorial Gardens sold Stanton Schwartz’s plot to another party without their knowledge or consent causing significant distress. The lawsuit accuses the cemetery of failing in its moral as well legal commitments towards the family while emphasizing the need for them to be held responsible.
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