Created: 5/19/2009 1:31:09 PM 
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- An historic cemetery on Jacksonville's Northside is in severe disrepair, and relatives of the deceased want something done about it.
Vaults have shifted, headstones are scrambled and actual caskets are exposed -- all across the street from Saint Clair Evans Academy, an elementary school.
Minnie Gaffney McDaniel has six relatives buried at Mt. Olive Cemetery near the intersection of 45th and Moncrief.
"I love my family in death as well as when they were alive," said Gaffney McDaniel.
Her father, George Gaffney, Sr. was the first relative buried there.
"My father passed in 1968 and I've been coming out here every year since then," said Gaffney McDaniel.
George Gaffney, Jr., died in 1972. Raymond Gaffney and Van Bruce Gaffney both died in 1995. Her grandmother and great-aunt are also buried at the family's six-person plot.
On holidays and birthdays, the flowers and flags Gaffney McDaniel places at their graves are often the only bright spots in the dark, dilapidated burial ground.
Gaffney McDaniel, 72, says she has to rake the leaves, drag away the limbs and pick up the trash just to make their final resting place look nice.
"I bring a rake, bag, trash bags and everything," said Gaffney McDaniel.
She often takes her daughters and grandchildren to show them the importance of caring for family after death.
"I even have pictures of my mom. She would come and sit in my car. She would watch me," said Gaffney McDaniel.
Every year that she was strong enough, Gaffney McDaniel's mother, Rena Gaffney, would pose for a picture next to her late husband's headstone. For 39 years after George Gaffney, Sr.'s, death, she wanted to be buried next to him.
However when she died in 2007 at the age of 95, her family buried her at Edgewood Cemetery instead because Mt. Olive Cemetery had long since fallen apart.
"It sort of split the family up. Now, I have to go to three cemeteries," said Gaffney McDaniel.
Mount Olive was not always a mess.
When Gaffney McDaniel's grandmother purchased the family plot in the 1950s, Mt. Olive was a well-groomed resting place for middle and upper-class African-Americans in Jacksonville. According to surveyors, the first person was buried there in the late 19th century.
It was one of several cemeteries owned by the Afro-American Insurance Company. The company was founded by businessman A.L. Lewis, said to be Jacksonville's first African-American millionaire.
The company went out of business and abandoned the cemeteries in 1990.
When Gaffney McDaniel and I walked through Mount Olive recently, the once quiet paths had become neighborhood shortcuts.
"I wouldn't bury out here anymore. Not at all," said Gaffney McDaniel.
Acre after acre, we saw nameless cement boxes and sunken headstones. Some vaults were open and several caskets were exposed.
Gaffney McDaniel says the cemetery deteriorated over the years and she has never seen a cleaning or restoration crew at Mount Olive.
She wondered who had any responsibility to take care of Mt. Olive and three other dilapidated, historically-segregated cemeteries in the Moncrief area: Memorial, Pinehurst and Sunset Memorial.
We found out.
"The City of Jacksonville did agree, because of the importance of these four cemeteries, to clean them up, get them good and clean and continue to maintain them," said City Planning Manager Joel McEachin.
McEachin was a member of a Blue Ribbon Commission that suggested the city take some action to clean up and preserve the cemeteries.
"They were well overgrown. You couldn't hardly see the graves from the street," said McEachin.
In 1992, the city took over maintenance of the four cemeteries. However, the city does not own them.
The City of Jacksonville also commissioned maps and surveys of the cemeteries. They hoped to find markings on graves and vaults to identify some of the unknown people buried there.
"[The city has] not taken the responsibility for actually dealing with markers and graves because that would open up a floodgate for these kinds of things and where would it finally end?" said McEachin.
"What they basically do is make sure that the grounds are clean, cut and pick up trash and things like that," McEachin added.
However, on every day of our investigation, there were several piles of garbage at Mount Olive. The garbage was in trash bags, but they were all ripped open.
There were yellow uniforms with one pile, labeled "City of Jacksonville."
Renee Brust, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office, discussed several potential scenarios that would lead to city uniforms being dumped at the cemetery. However, she could not say for sure how they got there.
There were also piles of garbage inside the three other Moncrief cemeteries the city maintains.
In front of the gates of Memorial and Sunset Memorial cemeteries stood a four-foot granite marker. Each was inscribed with the name of the cemetery and the names of several Jacksonville City Council members.
It appears that someone tried to chisel the names of the City Council members from the Sunset Memorial marker.
According to Brust, the city maintains a Cemetery Maintenance Trust Fund to pay for the care of the four historic cemeteries. Brust tells First Coast News that the current balance is $198,853. However, that money does not pay for the upkeep.
Brust says the staff and supplies to mow and clean the cemeteries come from the Public Works Department's budget instead.
Requests for specific records relating to the trust fund, including the funding sources and guidelines for spending, were not granted.
The city has no plans to cover the exposed caskets or place the vaults back into the ground.
"It would be nice to see them put back in the right places, where they are. We would hope that the community and family members would help in that process if they can," said McEachin.
The city hopes to create a "Friends of..." group for each of the cemeteries. A fifth historic cemetery in the area, Gravely Cemetery, has an active group that cleans the grounds and headstones.
There are no specific plans to replicate that program at Mount Olive or the other Moncrief cemeteries.
However, a few days after we approached the city about the condition of the cemeteries, we found juvenile inmates removing trash from the cemetery.
Gaffney McDaniel says she'll do her part to keep Mt. Olive Cemetery clean. She'll continue to plant flowers and flags and love her family in life and in death.
"I'm not going to let them down," said Gaffney McDaniel.
