Families Told They Will Have To Move Remains From Memorial Garden In Watertown

April 27, 2010|By JOSH KOVNER, The Hartford Courant

Jean and Carol Herman are devout, tough and resilient people.

They had to draw hard on their faith when their daughter, Kristina, 13, a freshman at Litchfield High School, was struck and killed while crossing the street to her bus stop on a rainy, winter morning in 1989.

The couple's adoption, five years later, of three children, one with special needs, helped replenish their reserves. A close-knit, cheerful family, they sell fish out of a spotless, white-tiled industrial kitchen in the basement of their otherwise comfortably cluttered stone house in Torrington.

But lately, they've had to draw deeply from their spiritual well again.

Kristina's ashes, buried for the past 21 years in the memorial garden of Christ Church in Watertown, will have to be disinterred.

The Episcopal church, hurt by defections and struggling financially, is being sold to The Taft School. The peaceful, lushly green memorial plot, with the cremated remains of between 40 and 50 parishioners, including Kristina and Jean Herman's mother, Madeliene, is not being preserved as part of the sale.

The Hermans, who left Christ Church with other congregants in 2007, say they are deeply disappointed by the decision of the diocese. They don't understand why the memorial garden, with its stone bench and circle of evergreens, can't remain.

"That's our first question — why?" said Jean Herman, standing with Carol in the garden on Monday afternoon. "We buried Kristina's ashes and we didn't plan on disturbing them."

"Take away the bench," he said, "cut down the trees. Plant flowers, but leave the ashes where they are. They have gone back to the Earth. Let them stay."

In Connecticut and throughout the country, Episcopal churches have been losing congregants who disagree with church doctrine and policies. The Hermans said they left not because Episcopal churches have ordained openly gay men and women — a policy they say they have no problem with — but because they felt the diocese was straying from the teachings of the Bible. The couple helped form a new parish, the New Hope Anglican Church, led by the Rev. Bryan Bywater of West Hartford.

Faced with having to disturb Kristina and Madeliene's ashes, the couple said they found it difficult to return to Christ Church, even for a visit to the garden.

The Rev. Stanley Kemmerer, pastor of Christ Church, said the diocese made a business decision.

Hat tip: Fr. Bryan Bywater