Members of a Minnesota family are angry after they said the Cottage Grove Cemetery Association threw away mementos that were at their late son's gravesite, KSTP reported.
Adam Fournelle was 34 when he died on April 9, 2016. When he was buried at Cottage Grove, his family decorated the gravesite with a hockey stick, fishing rod and other mementos. David Fournelle, Adam's father, said the cemetery caretaker had approved the items.
"It was just a nice little tribute to him," Fournelle told KSTP. "They meant a lot. That's why we put them up."
Fournelle said he received a letter from the Cottage Grove Cemetery Association a month ago. The letter said that on June 9 "they will remove items that have not been approved by the cemetery board." KSTP reported that a sign on the cemetery property lists only shrubs or bushes as prohibited items.
"We're kind of looking around the cemetery here, saying there's a lot more people who have a lot more stuff than we do, and we kind of figured that because we had verbal approval to put the hockey stick up that we would be OK," Fournelle told the television station.
However, the items were gone from Adam’s gravesite.
"I was rather upset," Fournelle told KSTP. "I just thought it was disrespectful that they would just throw it away."
Fournelle said he wondered why the letter was not more specific about naming prohibited items.
"Given a chance, I would have taken the stuff down and it would have been fine," Fournelle told KSTP. "It's going to be different now because we can't have those things."
Officials at the Cottage Grove Cemetery Association have not commented, the television station reported.
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