Cemetery Lawsuit

Cemetery Lawsuit

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Story Published: May 20, 2004 at 3:54 PM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 1:29 AM PDT

By April Zepeda

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SKAGIT COUNTY - In her Big Lake home outside Mount Vernon, Jeanette Livingston shows off a wall of family pictures.

The pictures hold a very special place in her life.

There's only one missing. Livingston never had a picture of her mother. Her mother died when she was just two.

"All I have is a picture in my mind," said Livingston.

The last time she returned to her home town of Lubbock, Texas to visit her mother's grave, she hoped to take a picture and tell her mother how well her life turned out.

"I had so many things to tell my mother that I wasn't able to tell her. And I still can't because I don't know where she is," said Livingston.

Her mother's grave was missing and so were several others she visited every Sunday for 20 years.

"The section where my mother was is now all grassed in with other graves. They had to have buried other people over them," she said.

Livingston and five others are suing Lubbock's oldest and largest cemetery. They accuse city operators of burying multiple bodies in single plots, placing headstones on the wrong graves and losing gravesites altogether.

Since attorneys filed the lawsuit, 30 more people with relatives in the cemetery have come forward.

The city says it's investigating but can't comment on the pending lawsuit.

That suit seeks $300,000 for each plaintiff. But Livingston says it will take more than money to make things right.

"What I want them to know is they can't get away with this. And then I want them to find my mother," she said.

If they do, Livingston plans to buy her mother a proper headstone. Then she will take the picture she's never had, and put it in the place it's always belonged.

As Livingston proudly looked at the family picture wall she shook her head. "That picture is still missing."

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