'It's filthy, a mess': Families say privately owned Lansing area cemetery is deteriorating

DELTA TWP. — Nancy Vogl's younger brother Charles Randall was 5 years old when he drowned in the Grand River in May 1978.

His remains were interred in a mausoleum at DeepDale Memorial Gardens off Old Lansing Road in Delta Township.

When Vogl's mother died in 2020, she and her siblings decided to cremate and bury her brother's remains with his mother elsewhere on the cemetery grounds.

Three years later, the family still hopes to sell what Vogl said is one of the last available spots inside the century-old mausoleum, but they are concerned any sale is unlikely because of the building's poor condition and the lack of upkeep elsewhere in the cemetery.

Vogl is one of several people with loved ones buried at the privately owned cemetery who say the property hasn't been cared for properly. They cite crumbling roads running throughout the 65-acre property, years-long delays in getting staff to address the upkeep of the grounds, drainage issues, and foul odors inside one of DeepDale's two mausoleums, one built in the 1920s and another in 1976.

Local and state officials have limited oversight of privately owned cemeteries, largely leaving families to work with the owners to try to resolve issues.

The oldest of the two mausoleums, built in the 1920s, and the cemetery grounds have been deteriorating for years, Vogl said, and her appeals to cemetery staff to address the issues haven't been successful.

Lindsay Granson, a spokesperson for Everstory Partners, the Bensalem, Pennsylvania-based company that owns the cemetery at 4108 Old Lansing Road, wouldn't characterize the condition of the property or say how many complaints the company has received in the past two years.

"Any complaints we have had have been addressed with the families," Granson said in an email. "We have a capital plan for each location, so some of the larger projects may take longer than others."

But Vogl said the company is letting the cemetery, where more than 23,000 bodies are interred, languish.

"This cemetery has a lot of history and its beautiful grounds are not being cared for," she said.

'It's filthy, a mess'

Vogl has been voicing concerns about the conditions at Deepdale to staff for three years, but she said the older of its two mausoleums where her brother was interred has been in disrepair for at least a decade.

Its interior walls are crumbling, Vogl said, and over the summer the floor was littered with fallen plaster. The building's interior lights weren't working when she visited the property over the summer.

"It's filthy, a mess," she said.

When a State Journal reporter and photographer met with Vogl at DeepDale in September, Josh Simms, the cemetery's superintendent, said he had been instructed by cemetery management not to allow media on the property. He prohibited the State Journal from taking photographs and from entering either mausoleum.

Less than a week later, Granson said a reporter could enter the property, but "the memorials of the families are their private property so we ask that they are not filmed unless the family gives permission," she said in an email.

Caution tape that stretched across half of the 1920s mausoleum's exterior steps in early September, which were broken in several places, was still in place in October when a reporter visited the cemetery. No repairs appeared to have been made.

Photos Vogl took and shared with the State Journal show deteriorating interior walls and crumbled plaster on the floor.

Cynthia Miller's father is interred in the second mausoleum, built in 1976. When her family held a service for her father, Charles Finney, in 2014, Miller said the smell was nauseating: It's what she remembers when she thinks about his funeral.

"When we went in there, I was walking my mom in and we almost threw up," the Mason resident, 55, said. "The smell of it, it was terrible and I don't know if it was the smell of decomposed bodies, or if it's because the drainage in that place is so bad that it mildewed in that area, but it was bad."

Inside the unlocked 1976 mausoleum, a musty smell permeated the air earlier this month and large water stains on the carpet in several places were visible along the wall in the mausoleum's lower level. What appeared to be a dehumidifier was plugged in and running.

On Monday, Granson said repairs are planned for the 1920s mausoleum. The building is closed "as we have contractors coming out for the pre assessment phase of the project," she said in an email.

But former DeepDale Superintendent Kenneth Green, 64, who retired in 2020 after working at the property for more than 40 years, said the 1920s mausoleum has been in need of repairs since at least 2010. Despite getting assessments and bids for work from several contractors over the years, management never authorized the work, he said.

"They've been avoiding fixing it," Green said. "They've never done anything but gone in there and swept up plaster. They used to have a sign on the mausoleum door that said, 'Mausoleum under repair. Please be patient.' It was there so long it was fading. You couldn't even read it anymore. They have never made an attempt to fix that building."

Granson declined to directly address Green's claims.

"I do not know Mr. Green and cannot speak to his experience," she said in an email. "I only know what we are currently doing with the leadership team to move the project forward."

Issues have taken years to address

"DeepDale used to be the prettiest place," said Suzanne DeVlieger, 75. Her parents and several other relatives are buried at the cemetery.

She travels from Arizona to visit the grounds once a year and said the property's upkeep has been declining for more than a decade. Weeds aren't pulled, limbs that fall aren't removed and the cemetery roads are crumbling, DeVlieger said.

"That isn’t what you deserve when you pay for perpetual care," she said. "I wouldn't willingly bury a family member there again ever."

Paulette Rogers of Haslett, whose great-grandparents and uncles are buried at DeepDale, said she called cemetery staff three years in a row with complaints about the condition of the grounds.

"They say, 'We'll look into it,' or 'We'll take care of it,' and nothing ever happens," Rogers said. "Finally, I just said, 'They're not going to do anything. It's a waste of my time to even call.' We do what we can when we go out there cleaning up around the markers, but it's all for naught because by the time you visit again, it's all nasty."

It took Eileen Delaney of Lansing at least eight years of voicing complaints to DeepDale's staff before they addressed headstones that had sunk into the ground without a foundation below them. The twins she lost during a miscarriage have been buried there since 1974.

"It upset me every time I’d go there and it wasn’t taken care of," Delaney said, but she added conditions have improved at the property in recent months.

"They have a whole new staff there and they walk the grounds regularly," she said.

Green, 64, said despite water leaks in both mausoleums and crumbling roads throughout the property, management never adequately addressed either while he worked there.

"They came up with more excuses or they would have me get bids (for repairs) and then never do anything," he said.

Green said the company's lack of upkeep led to his retirement.

"I couldn't bear to deal with it anymore," he said. "They wouldn't fix anything. They wouldn't do anything. That's why I retired because I just couldn't deal with the stress of what was going on. I feel bad for these families. I've got my mom and dad buried there and it's not right."

State oversight is limited

Everstory Partners, which changed its name from StoneMor Inc. in April when it became a private instead of a publicly held company, has owned DeepDale since 2010, Granson said.

The company owns just over 300 cemeteries in nearly two dozen states, according to its website, including Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in Lansing and East Lawn Memory Gardens in Okemos.

When asked about complaints about the condition of DeepDale's grounds, roads and mausoleums, Granson didn't address them directly.

"We have new executive and field leadership for (DeepDale)," and "the teams are incredibly family focused," Granson said in an email. "Local leadership handles complaints with the support of their leadership team and the support center. If they come in and put in a work order ... we have a system that we document all necessary repairs and it goes directly to the maintenance team and is tracked for completion."

Two complaints have been filed with Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs regarding DeepDale this year. Vogl submitted one last month, detailing issues with the grounds and its two mausoleums.

Another, obtained from LARA through a public records request, involved a burial marker that hadn't been engraved after it was paid for. Records show Everstory Partners addressed the issue less than a month after the complaint was filed.

While LARA, under the 1968 Cemetery Regulation Act, can ensure companies that own them maintain a fund to maintain the properties, "it does not have the authority to regulate maintenance and conditions of privately owned cemeteries, like DeepDale," said Abby Ruble, the department's director of communications.

"Cemetery registrants must comply with numerous requirements outlined in the Act and its associated administrative rules," said Jeff Wattrick, deputy communications director for LARA, including "establishment and maintenance of an irrevocable endowment and perpetual care trust fund, establishing a merchandise trust account, annual reporting of trust funds and accounts, and maintenance of books, contracts, records, and documents pertaining to, prepared in, or generated by, the cemetery’s operation."

The State Journal asked to interview the state's Cemetery Commissioner Linda Clegg, but she was not available, Ruble said.

Township complaint filed

Delta Township Clerk Mary Clark said the municipality has no authority to enforce the general upkeep of DeepDale, though staff has fielded phone calls about the cemetery in the past. She said she wasn't sure how many.

The township has no authority over the condition of the cemetery's roads as they are private, Clark said, although staff plans to review the township's property maintenance code as it pertains to the cemetery.

A complaint filed with the township about a structural issue with one of the property's buildings could prompt staff to review it and take action, she said.

Vogl said she filed a complaint with the township on Oct. 5 regarding the condition of DeepDale's older mausoleum and its roads.

Township Building Inspector Matt Leach confirmed this week that his department received it.

Township staff will be visiting the property, Clark said.

Vogl said she won't try and sell her family's crypt at the property until someone addresses the condition of the mausoleum.

"It seems to me there should be some ordinances regarding private property that the public are visiting," she said. "When you go into a restaurant, it's privately owned and yet they still have to maintain certain standards, right? Everything is a mess in that cemetery."

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GrecoatLSJ .

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This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Families say upkeep, care of century-old cemetery in Delta Township is lacking