By RAY LIGHTNER

Journal Staff Writer

Forget about pine boxes. Worry instead about pine trees. That is apparently the case at a nearby cemetery where trees have been cut down and dropped over graves, cracking headstones and burying some in the limbs.

“I couldn’t show my son his grandmother’s grave,” Marshall Miller said. “It’s buried under a pile of trees.”

Miller’s mother-in-law is buried at the privately owned black cemetery, Oak Level, at the end of Thompson Road at Interstate 75 near Perry.

Miller said he’s been going up the past three weeks and saw somebody had cut down the trees, leaving them there on top of graves.

Some of the downed trees are sitting on head stones and some of those head stones are cracked. “It’s a mess,” Miller said. “I don’t know who cut the trees down and left them there, laying on the graves. You don’t mess with a cemetery.”

The cemetery owner Clarence Copeland explained: “It’s an ongoing process.”

Copeland said he’s actually in the process of cleaning it up, and clearing trees to the property line to expand the cemetery and make it look nicer than it has.

Copeland said the work stopped because: “It’s been too hot out there.”

He explained the “ongoing process,” would continue to at least October when he can get a burn permit to clear out all the debris. He said he been in contract with the fire department, which will be out for security once he gets a burn permit. The state outdoor burning ban is in effect until then.

Copeland also said no graves or access to graves were blocked. When told that was not the case, and told of Miller’s situation, Copeland said it would be cleaned up and said “the process would move faster if he (Miller) wanted to help out. He didn’t have to go to the paper. He could have called me.”

Miller has been to the funeral home, the city and the county about the matter. Perry City Manager Lee Gilmour confirmed the cemetery is not within city limits. It is listed on the county zoning map as being in unincorporated Houston County and is zoned R-AG (residential agricultural).

The trees cut down are large old pines, mostly. Other large trees in the cemetery have been marked, apparently to be cut down as well. Some appeared dead or rotted.

The piles of debris in the cemetery included not only trees and tree limbs but cardboard boxes and plastic flowers plant pots from graves.

The cemetery is still in use as there was a very recent grave with funeral flowers still on it. Graves in the cemetery date from the1900s and include at least one veteran.