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*sighs* You can't do good deeds these days.
FRAMINGHAM - Collin Kelly is a 9-year-old boy who just wanted to honor his heroes by placing flowers on the graves of long-dead soldiers at Edgell Grove Cemetery in time for Memorial Day.
But the town-owned cemetery's trustees are standing by a rule that forbids strangers from placing flowers in the plot where 156 veterans from the Revolutionary War to the Vietnam War lie. ``I can't believe the controversy we are embroiled in,'' said an incredulous Lynn Kelly, Collin's mother. ``It's two marigolds! It's not like we're defacing the graves - we're honoring them.'' Collin's plan to raise money for flowers touched strangers' hearts. When he fell $75 short, a MetroWest Daily News story sparked a flood of donations and an offer of free flowers from River's Edge Greenhouse. ``We had people knocking on our door, wanting to meet Collin, giving him 5 or 10 dollars,'' Kelly said. ``I had a man in my driveway crying.'' Cemetery superintendent Kevin Devlin called Collin's idea ``a nice gesture,'' but he said, ``If you have a cemetery, you have to have rules and regulations.'' Trustee vice chairwoman Barbara Ford said, ``You don't just go into a cemetery and place flowers on graves that belong to somebody else. Those are private lots.'' But Collin said, ``These graves are so old that no one comes to visit them much.'' Collin came up with the idea when he visited a relative's grave and noticed that the veterans' graves did not have any flowers. He said if he can't honor them, he'll give the money to the Framingham Veterans Council. Council President Mal Schulze called the trustees' decision ``absolutely thoughtless'' and invited Collin to be a guest of honor when the veterans lay wreaths on Monday. |
This is certainly a lovely idea, but maybe the boy should've checked with the cemetary management before raising the money for this?
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What is the problem with someone laying flowers on graves? I can understand if he was going in to defile the graves, but laying flowers on them? |
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I personally see no harm in laying flowers on the plots, but private plots are private plots. I think the cemetary was well within their rights to enforce their rules, even if it made them look silly. But my point is simply this: it is usually a good idea to talk to the owners/managers of a place before raising money to memorialize/decorate on it. |
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I agree most of these cemetaries would be reduced to complete anarchy without rules to keep 9 year olds from putting flowers on graves. People are idiots :rolleyes: |
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Nothing is wrong with it. Yes, there are stupid rules, rules that don't make sense but, unfortunately, the cemetary has a rule against this currently. Don't like the rule, you can try to get the rule changed but, you can't fault them for enforcing a rule they have. |
Yes, heaven forbid that the cemetary manager looks the other way while a little boy puts a few flowers on someone's grave.
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Well if he had picked a couple of dandelions and laid them on a grave, I'm sure they would have looked the other way. But he started trying to raise funds and the media got involved.. so it turned into a much bigger thing. I do think that they should change their rule however.. at least allow people to request to do things like this if they don't want to just ditch the rule altogether.. and in the very least they should make this a one-time waiver of the rule. |
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Like others have said, it's not that 9 year olds putting flowers on graves is the problem. They have the rule for a reason, presumably. It's their right to enforce it. Let's not think the parents are blameless in this thing, either. I doubt a little kid came up with the idea to go around town asking for money for flowers. And someone between the parents and the people giving him money probably knew the rules but gave cash anyways. What's to say they didn't have problems with vandals so they made the blanket rule of only letting family onto the private lot and that's one of their selling points ("family only access to our secure facility")? What about the local college kids, planning a prank, who claim they're just going to put flowers on the grave and protest that "you let that little kid on, why not us? you're discriminating" ? It's their business, they can do what they want within the law. And this shouldn't even be news. This is just another case of someone using the media to be an attention whore (the parents, not the kid- it's not like the 9yo knows how to play the media game). SI |
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I looked over in the direction from which she had just come and saw the myriad machines where kids get those worthless stickers, tatoos, rings and whatnot. I sighed while reaching in my pocket to find the little silver token. To my suprise she makes a b-line for a machine that was off to the side. An odd looking contraption with no little plastic eggs filled with useless crap. She deposits the quarter in the machine and she watches it clink into the bottom (it had a clear outter shell). She ran back to me and when asked what she had done she replied, "I was giving money to other kids that don't have any." Granted it was only a quarter, but in her mind it was a million dollars. |
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Aw, that's so sweet... and so typical. It's a touching story. AND it has the bonus feature of HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC AT HAND except that it's a kid doing something nice. Thank you for falling into the trap of most media these days of completely missing the fucking point and not addressing any other point in the argument. (EDIT: And why this example you used was so great and is so prevalent is now you can say how heartless I was for not acknowledging that what the kid was doing was something sweet because it was. But it still doesn't address any of the problems. Kindof like putting together a crappy school funding plan and accusing me of hating kids because I vote against it.) SI |
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dola,
I think the little kid should put his flowers somewhere else. |
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My pet iguana tried to save Terri Schiavo. A car ran it over on the way to the hospital though. |
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Then, uh, why was my post quoted since mine was just talking about the issues surrounding the story the topic was about? Just seemed like you were responding to my response (somehow). SI |
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Sorry about that. Schiavo would have wanted it that way, though. |
I work as Summer Help at a cemetary. I ride the mowers and such, basic stuff. But I know from where I work that if a person doesn't routinely visit their loved ones, the marker (the cemetary I am at doesn't allow headstones) will be totally buried.
So I don't know about this place, because the one I am at is like 240 acres, but if those graves aren't kept up, then it's obvious no one visits it, and if it's small enough to where they have upkeep of the graves, then it should be obvious if they're visited or not. If not, I say let the kid put the flowers down to show his respect. What harm does it do? |
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"Let's not think the parents are blameless in this thing, either. I doubt a little kid came up with the idea to go around town asking for money for flowers." reminded me that my daughter did something "charitible" without prompting of any sort (i dont' even know how she knew it was a donation kiosk). I agree with this for the most part, but some of these little kids are bleeding heart liberals and they can be very passionate about stupid shit like this without being prompted. **edit** they wise up when they get older and more cynical. They realize that stuff like "placing flowers on their graves" is meaningless tripe. |
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That should be the new Burger King pitch. |
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The point of this article should be that no one can spell cemetery.
As for the media and its incessant glorification of inane subject matter, that should pass without comment. |
Sigh, why is everyone supporting managers being thoughtless automatons, rather than decrying this prick for his complete lack of judgement?
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Because thus far, this is a one-sided story - without knowing why the rules at the cemetery prohibit strangers from decorating graves, it would be premature to castigate the manager of the cemetery. |
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And as I often do, I'll request that guys please provide links to any stories they quote.
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http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/lo...rticleid=99456 |
Fortunately, there are probably 6,000 incidents this month of well-intended kids doing similar things at various places across the country absolutely without trouble or incident. But, nobody runs to the internet to scream bloody murder about them, so we don't hear about them.
One case like this (justified or not, I neither know nor care) get posted somewhere, and civilization is at the brink of collapse. Spare me. |
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Thanks. Now why isn't the whole article posted? |
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The problem is the litigous society we live in now. Everything is about having a "CYA" mentality. The standard of "what a normal and right thinking person would do" is what everyone is held to despite the fact that I'm sure daily, we can find, at the bare minimum, 5 times when we didn't act in that manner. Again, the point I've never seen addressed- how do you protect the cemetery owner? If this was a story about how some graves of heroes had been defiled, everyone would be blaming the cemetery owner for his lax security of letting everyone in there. Is there a middle ground? Yes. But then you have claims of discrimination- why are a couple of college students not related to anyone not let in but an 8 year old is? Maybe he could watch everyone who goes there? I mean, after all- I know everyone at their job has time to babysit every person who wants to go there. So, in the end, he takes the path of least resistance- doesn't allow people in there and the town is ok with it. SI |
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That's not the same article SirFozzie posted? |
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No it looks like it's a little different. Probably got it from a different source.. that was just the first one I found when I looked for it with Google News. |
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Well, actually, no. I started thinking about that and did a search on my ~8K post history. Do you know how many contain the 2 major profanities? 60-something. Then I started looking through some of those and at least a third to a half were me quoting someone who had said something profane so let's take the conservative 1/3rd and say it's 40. So that's one half of 1% of my posts- 1 out of every 200. Shouldn't that alone say something? That the point was so completely missed that one of my rare uses of a strong word for emphasis was here? And, as predicted... Quote:
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SI |
Wow, I just noticed a big difference between the article posted and the one I linked to. The original post only mentioned the kid wanting to PLACE flowers on the graves. The article I linked to says he wanted to PLANT flowers.
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Um, it has to be written by the same guy. Just look at the similarities. Foz must have grabbed it from a difference source though. Perhaps an even dumber source. |
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Ahh... the worm turns. |
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Personally, I think the kid was trying to do the right thing, but the cemetery was doing the right thing as well. Not only are they enforcing a current rule, but they enforcing a good rule. Because they're private plots, the cemetery is responsible for those plots and must answer to the families that own them. I understand that probably 99.9999% of the people out there have no problem with a kid trying to put flowers on a grave, but if even one family has a problem with it, the cemetery is responsible.
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Oh, and if this kid actually wants to plant flowers, then he's freaking wrong. He needs to discover Pokemon or something...
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Next thing you know people might actually demand that others actually follow the rules. What's this world coming to. |
Damn straight I'm angry. Aren't there people dying out there from war, cancer, drunk drivers, and Hillary Clinton that is more important news?
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Your member title needs to be changed to 'Fighting the Good Fight'. I'm sure HA would approve. |
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Someone needs to go check on BG. He just keeps typing the same thing over and over, regardless of situation so he must be asleep. SI |
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This kid needs to lay off the crack pipe. (Edit--9 year old kid)
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The plot thickens...DUN DUN DUUUUNNN |
I wonder how many people who support smoking bans support this kids 'right' to put or plant flowers on these grave sites since it is the owners decision whether to allow or disallow both those things.
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and the follow up to the story on Memorial day from the MetroWest Daily News.
FRAMINGHAM -- An anonymous group, said to be a collection of local veterans, broke the rules at Edgell Grove Cemetery yesterday afternoon. Unlike 9-year-old local resident Collin Kelly, who simply laid flowers by the graves of veterans Saturday after the trustees forbid him from planting them, these renegades broke ground. The group firmly planted Kelly's red flowers in the dirt in front of each grave in the cemetery. An older Framingham man who identified himself as a veteran said "brothers and sisters" of all those veterans went and put the flowers in the ground. "We were all veterans," said the man who did not want to be named in a telephone interview from his home. Cemetery rules may have been broken, but at least one local veteran advocate does not seem to mind a bit. "I have absolutely no idea who did it. All I have to say is good for them," said Mal Schulze, the president of the Framingham Veterans Council. He recalled a conversation he had yesterday afternoon with Collin's mother, Lynn, who went to remove the flowers from the graves -- the compromise that was agreed upon with the cemetery trustees -- when she discovered every potted plant had been transferred into the ground. "In actuality, Lynn made a promise to the trustees to remove the flowers by evening. She went to go (remove them), because she is a woman of her word, and found that every one was planted," Schulze said. The Kellys could not be reached for comment last night. Edgell Grove's cemetery superintendent, Kevin Devlin, also was not available for comment last night. Along with the flowers and American flags at each grave was an envelope with the words "Thank You Collin. Planted by the Sisters and Brother of the Brothers Lying Here." Thanks to this group's efforts, local veterans like Thomas H. Jones Jr., a deceased World War II Navy veteran, and Vincent M. Joyce, a deceased Army private who also fought in World War II, will be remembered long after the flags blow down. http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/lo...ticleid=100125 |
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