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Abundant sunshine. High 86F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear skies. Low 62F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
The reflection of Rock Solid Creations worker Logan Seidl is seen as he carries a granite panel to replace an old one at the Crystal River Memorial Park Cemetery mausoleum Friday, Sept. 23. Both the white marble and black granite blocks will be replaced.
The condition of the Crystal River Memorial Park Cemetery mausoleum is being improved as white marble panels with family names and dates are being replaced with black granite slabs engraved by Rock Solid Creations.
Crystal River City Logo / Seal
The reflection of Rock Solid Creations worker Logan Seidl is seen as he carries a granite panel to replace an old one at the Crystal River Memorial Park Cemetery mausoleum Friday, Sept. 23. Both the white marble and black granite blocks will be replaced.
Crystal River is paying respects to its dead with a $75,000 project to reface the mausoleum tombs at the city’s Memorial Park Cemetery.
Work began the week of Sept. 19 at the burial grounds off of West Venable Street, across from the Crystal River Airport, to replace the white, deteriorating marble slabs covering 96 aboveground graves with black, reflective granite.
“The marble’s too soft,” Kevin Lemieux, the Crystal River’s capital project manager, said, “and, with the Florida heat, they actually warp.”
Daly & Zilch, the project’s Lecanto-based contractor, subcontracted with Rock Solid Creations out of Inverness to engrave and install the granite slabs by the end of October, Lemieux said.
Along with upgrading the tomb faces, workers will also pressure wash the 1,100-square-foot mausoleum, and stain its surrounding concrete flooring.
“That black just looks so beautiful over there,” Lemieux said about the granite faces, “now the concrete that’s old doesn’t quite look good enough to be there.”
The condition of the Crystal River Memorial Park Cemetery mausoleum is being improved as white marble panels with family names and dates are being replaced with black granite slabs engraved by Rock Solid Creations.
Improvements don’t disturb those interred because remains are walled in with either a concrete block or composite panel behind the tomb’s decorative face.
“When it’s sealed, it’s sealed,” Lemieux said. “What we’re doing is replacing the marble faces with granite.”
Lemieux said 26 of the mausoleum’s 96 tombs were either vacant or unmarked. So far, one tomb contained two urns, and another was occupied without an identifying marble face.
“Sometimes people don’t have the money to get the face engraved, or it gets forgotten and never done,” Lemieux said, adding the city had to research funeral records to find a name.
Crystal River City Logo / Seal
Memorial Park Cemetery was deeded to Crystal River in 1961, and is a perpetual care cemetery, with its grounds, graves and mausoleum indefinitely mowed and maintained by a trust fund.
According to the city, and the mausoleum was built in the late 1960s but no official record of its making can be found. Mausoleum ownership went to the city last year, before the building was reroofed.
“Everyone involved with its creation either went out of business or has since passed away; it kind of fell into oblivion,” Lemieux said. “It basically fell on us to take care of it and maintain it.”
Contact Chronicle reporter Buster Thompson at 352-564-2916, bthompson@chronicleonline.com or visit tinyurl.com/yxn2ahso to see more of his stories.
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