Stone angels and American flags were taken from these graves. Families want to know why.

Families and friends have long decorated graves at Lakeland Memorial Park in Monroe with American flags, flowers, statues and sentimental trinkets. Now families are upset to see that hundreds of those items have been left on tarps and in the trash near the cemetery.

Amanda Kurtz said she has lived down the street from the cemetery for more than 30 years, and her grandfather, mother and niece are buried there. She and a relative visited the cemetery Sunday and discovered items missing from their family graves and, it seemed, graves all around the park.

Her mother’s grave had been decorated with grandkids’ crafts, a flag, flowers and her mother’s own glass penguin statues – her favorite animal was a penguin, Kurtz said. All of that was gone Sunday.

Kurtz said the family changed the flag and flowers seasonally, and all the items were in good repair.

“They didn’t look bad,” she said. “It wasn’t time for them to go.”

Kurtz said she pays for two plots at the cemetery and wasn’t notified of any change in the rules surrounding decorations. She would have come to the cemetery herself to collect items if she’d been told about it, she said.

“Those are irreplaceable items,” she said.

Kurtz talked to another woman who had placed something her son had made on his grave. She found it, broken, alongside all the other items in the woods near the cemetery, Kurtz said.

Several people left one-star reviews on the cemetery’s Facebook page, calling the removal of the items disrespectful. Kurtz and several Facebook users were particularly concerned that American flags had been thrown into the pile in the woods instead of being handled respectfully.

In a statement to the Observer Monday, Lakeland Memorial Park asked families to contact the park directly.

“We are committed to providing all families with a well-maintained environment for visitation and remembrance,” the statement said. “We are addressing the concerns our client families have brought to our attention.”

A list of cemetery rules obtained by local news station WSOC says the cemetery may remove items placed on graves, but Kurtz said the removal of so many items at once is a new issue.

The park did not respond to questions about whether its policy had changed recently.

The Monroe Police Department has not gotten any reports about vandalism or damage at the cemetery, the department said Monday.

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Stone angels and American flags were taken from these graves. Families want to know why.."