Reports of poor maintenance and slow delivery of markers have been accurate, said a representative of the owners of Green Acres Memorial Park, but are being addressed and the pace of improvements will pick up.

The private cemetery, located off U.S. 80 east of the Beechwood intersection, is the largest in the area.

It was begun in the 1960s as a perpetual-care memorial park by local owners and was sold to new owners, one of whom is Mike Graham and Associates LLC of Houston, Texas, in late 2001. It has been operated as part of a group since.

“We have had a lot of problems with personnel,” A.M. Brewer, who identified himself as a general manager for Green Acres’ owners, said in a telephone interview.

He said the company has a new person in charge of maintenance operations who will be covering the company’s responsibilities in this area.

“It sounds like the gentleman I’m talking about will have to come there and clear house,” Brewer continued.

Unlike public cemeteries, where lots are sold and maintenance is paid through a combination of public and private funds, memorial parks charge a premium rate for grave spaces and invest the income from sales of lots and burials to pay continuing costs.

Since the change in ownership, Green Acres has drawn many complaints and at least one lawsuit.

In a 2002 case, a family member complained that American flags and other ornaments on graves were removed without notifying relatives and that the flags were disrespectfully discarded on a pile of rubbish.

Another complaint the same year, accompanied by a lawsuit, claimed that a grave was desecrated by being stripped of sod and its temporary marker. That, the complainant said, was in retaliation for not purchasing a grave marker through Green Acres.

Evelyn Price’s first husband, Colin L. Dorrell, died 30 years ago and is buried in a grave just inside the Mississippi 27 entrance.

“He’s kind of on a hill that doesn’t have any grass on it, never had any,” Price said.

She also said the fence line dividing the cemetery from Mississippi 27 is grown up with weeds, shading her husband’s grave and others in the same area.

“It’s supposed to be perpetual care,” she said. “Well they aren’t doing it. They are only cutting a little bit of grass in the middle to make it look presentable and they are not getting around on the fence rows.”

Cemetery roads are also in poor shape, several people have said.

“I have been there when the roads have been nearly impassable,” said George Cronia, whose parents are buried at the cemetery. “To me it’s a lack of responsibility and a lack of care.”

As a private cemetery, Green Acres defines the type of markers that must be used and also sells them.

“My wife died Aug. 28, 2004,” said retired insurance executive Jim Westbrook. He said he ordered her grave marker from Green Acres when he made arrangements for her burial and paid for it at the time.

“I was told it would take 12 weeks to get the marker,” he said. “At 13 weeks, I was told it had been back-ordered.”

Westbrook said he checked back Feb. 18 and was told the marker had been shipped and it would take five days for it to arrive. When he checked March 1, it still had not arrived.

It is now nine months since Birdie Westbrook was buried at Green Acres and there is still no marker for her grave, Westbrook said.

Debbie Felt is another person with a complaint about slow delivery of a grave marker. Her husband died in October 2004 and she was told it would take three months to get the marker ordered and delivered.

When the marker had not arrived by this spring, Felt went to see a local attorney who wrote Green Acres a letter.

“From the date they received the letter, the marker was placed three weeks later,” she said.

Brewer said a new local manager may have to spend a week or two at Green Acres to get things in motion. He said the company will try seeding bare areas and bring in paving material to alleviate the problems with the roads.

Permanent grave markers, he said, should normally take only six to eight weeks to order, deliver and install. The process has not been working quickly enough, he conceded, through a combination of factors.

“Some of it was our fault,” he said. “We went through an area there where we had a financial crunch. And we have had some problems with one of our suppliers.”

Brewer said he had just processed several marker orders for Green Acres and promised to check on others.