At the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe, many of the grave sites are taken care of by the deceased's families, as there are only four groundskeepers for the entire cemetery. One complaint is that many of the headstones, like the one above, are settling under ground level.
Forgotten graves
Maintenance problems plague
the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery
Some veterans call the state cemetery in Kaneohe a disgrace -- with exposed sprinkler lines, uprooted Norfolk pines, a cracked columbarium, a leaking sprinkler system, and sinking grave sites and stones, says state Rep. Ken Ito.
"The military can spend millions of dollars for ammunition. At the least, they could bury their dead in an honorable way," Ito said. "It needs to be upkept. It needs to be improved. It needs to be maintained. ... (Anything) short of that is disgraceful."
But Ed Cruickshank promises the cemetery "is going to look great" by the time Gov. Linda Lingle delivers her Memorial Day address at the cemetery in Kaneohe tomorrow.
The state Office of Veterans Services director knows the cemetery still needs a lot of work.
"All we've been doing is Band-Aid work since 1988," Cruickshank said.
The hill above the columbarium is eroding, exposing sprinkler lines and uprooting some trees.
Work crews recently repaired a large crack to the columbarium and applied a new coat of paint this week.
The rainy weather has increased the number of sunken grave sites and stones. The sprinkler system leaks.
And because relatives have been planting their own grass on their loved ones' grave sites, "when you look at the grass, you see all kinds, all different colors, like a quilt," said Ito (D, Kaneohe-Heeia), who lives across Kamehameha Highway from the cemetery.
The Office of Veterans Services opened in 1988. The Kaneohe cemetery opened three years later. Federal funds helped build the cemetery, but the state pays for all of its maintenance and repairs.
When people ask him why the Kaneohe cemetery is not as well-kept as Punchbowl, retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Dan Bolin said he reminds them that Punchbowl is a facility backed by federal money, while Kaneohe is a state cemetery.
One site is neatly maintained, while some surrounding sites are not.
There are four groundskeepers on staff to maintain the cemetery's 123 acres. One of them is a tractor operator. A fifth groundskeeper is on temporary disability."That's crazy," said Miles Okamura, cemetery operations manager.
"We asked for more people," he said. "I put in the paperwork."
The cemetery is authorized to have six groundskeepers and a supervisor. But as workers leave, their positions go unfilled because of a state hiring freeze.
In contrast, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl has a staff of 15 to maintain the facility's 112 acres, said Gene Castagnetti, cemetery director.
The Kaneohe groundskeepers mow the lawns between rows of graves once a month and are not able to get in between the gravestones on the riding mowers, Bolin said. His wife Eleanor is buried in the cemetery and he visits her grave every day, he said.
Okamura said inmates from the Oahu Community Correctional Center's Community Service Work Line and Youth Challenge cadets trim trees, pull weeds and cut grass when they are available.
"We would probably be worse off if they didn't come," he said.
Maintenance workers from the state Department of Defense helped spruce up the cemetery this week for Memorial Day, Okamura said.
The problems at the Kaneohe cemetery are not new. The Star-Bulletin's Kokua Line looked into the same complaints of sinking gravestones and poor maintenance in 1998 and last year. Cruickshank's predecessor, Irwin Cockett Jr., attributed the poor conditions last year to underfunding and understaffing.
Cruickshank, who has been director for less than a month, said he is taking steps to address the cemetery's longstanding problems. He said an announcement of those measures will be made after Memorial Day.
Okamura said he walks the grounds of the cemetery every day. In December, he said, he identified 150 sunken gravestones. There are 5,600 burials at Kaneohe.
"Other cemeteries have sinking, but not on the scale that we have it," he said.
To even the height of the gravestones, workers have to lift the sunken ones to put more dirt underneath. Repairing sunken graves can be as simple as putting sand over the grass or as delicate as lifting up portions of grass and putting more dirt under the strips of turf.
Okamura suspects the type of dirt used to fill in the low spots of the cemetery when it was constructed might have something to do with why some sections of the cemetery sink. He said soil samples taken in 2001 suggest that the fill came from different parts of the island.
An engineer is scheduled to do an assessment of the grounds this summer.
The sprinkler system leaks could be due to ground shifts. To determine that, Okamura said all the sprinkler heads need to be replaced to find out whether there are any broken lines.
Bolin said he planted a different variety of grass on his wife's grave because he wanted it to look special. He also noticed the groundskeepers could not keep up with the dandelions, clover and other invasive weeds.
Okamura said families were never authorized to plant their own grass but enforcement had been lax. He said he put up a sign two years ago reminding families of the rule and warned them if they did plant their own grass, it would be dug out of the ground.
But he said the practice is difficult to stop because families plant their own grass on weekends when no one is there to stop them, and there are not enough workers to replace unauthorized grass. As a result, families have grown bold, even complaining that workers cut their grass too short.
"One guy threw his shirt in front of the lawn mower so we wouldn't cut the grass he planted," Okamura said. "Other people put rocks, marbles."
Star-Bulletin reporter Mary Vorsino contributed to this report.
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A recent photo of the West Hawaii Veterans Cemetery shows the poor state of the landscaping. Volunteers from the Big Island Golf Course Superintendents Association will replace the patchy Bermuda grass with a salt-tolerant beach grass.
Funds on way for
Kona vets’ cemetery
NORTH KONA COAST, Hawaii >> The West Hawaii Veterans Cemetery is 59 acres of hot, barren lava rock and 1 acre of badly landscaped gravesites dug into crumbling gravel fill.
Some of the 132 burials are sinking into the ground as the fill settles.
Burials there cost as little as $300, but many veterans and families say the place is too ugly to be buried in, said Richard Highley, an official with the Kona Disabled American Veterans.
"It's kind of like Boot Hill," he said.
Now help is on the way.
The Big Island Golf Course Superintendents Association has already repaired an irrigation system and cleaned up the site, part of $100,000 in free improvements that will continue after Memorial Day.
The federal State Cemetery Grants Program has promised another $100,000 for "liners" to stop burials from sinking.
State Rep. Cindy Evans obtained $300,000 from the Legislature to be combined with $980,000 in federal money being sought by U.S. Rep. Ed Case. The money will be used for a better water supply, restrooms and sewage disposal, shelter from the sun and a columbarium for urns.
Case and Evans will be the featured speakers at Memorial Day services at the cemetery.
The site, off Queen Kaahumanu Highway 12 miles north of Kailua-Kona, is bad and beautiful.
It offers a clear view of the Pacific with a picturesque volcanic hill on the shoreline in the center of the view. But the sun and wind are miserable.
"It's a hostile environment of lava," said Les Chess of the golf course superintendents' group.
Before the 1995 groundbreaking, Kona veterans had to be taken to Hilo for burial, Highley said. When a Kona site was sought, only locations with 2 or 3 acres were available in the steeply sloping lands south of Kailua-Kona, he said.
In the flatter lava land to the north, the state offered 60 acres for free, to be administered by Hawaii County's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Recognizing the arid nature of the area, the original plan was for xeriscaping, meaning desert-like plants, said Carswell Ross of the state Office of Veterans Services.
But no one saw beauty in dryness, so Bermuda grass was planted. It didn't form a lawn, but it made patches of green that wild goats and donkeys munched on top of graves, Ross said. Fencing was put up to keep them out.
The lack of facilities also kept people out. Only one portable toilet is at the site. One day, a man went inside, closed the door and while he was there, the wind blew the door open again, Ross said. The embarrassment convinced him and others not to come back.
Now, many people recognize the need for change.
"We're working like the devil," Ross said. "We've got our work cut out for us."
Those "liners" promised by the federal government, boxes of concrete or some other sturdy material, will be prepositioned in the ground. When a burial is ready, a lid can be lifted and a casket placed inside.
Existing graves have been leveled off with the surrounding ground.
Workers will poison the existing Bermuda grass, bring in 450 cubic yards of soil, then place a half-acre of sod on top of it, Chess said. The grass is a salt-resistant variety known as beach paspallum. The grass will stay green with brackish water from nearby Kukio Resort, while the salt in the water kills weeds.
Headstone sites will be marked with global positioning system readings, removed during work, and then returned afterwards.
County maintenance workers are already inspired. "They've come awake," Chess said.
And if the federal money comes through, visitors will enjoy that healthy lawn and the view of the Pacific from the shade of a new pavilion.
