Dear Editor:
The article “Between the lines: Buyer beware” in today’s Secaucus Reporter should be required reading for anybody who cares about Hudson County, especially about Laurel Hill.
I have been involved for the past several months in a case in the New Jersey Superior Court that involves my 20 year search for my grandfather who had been buried in the Hudson County Burial Ground at Laurel Hill, Secaucus in 1948. My grandfather’s short three-day stay at the Hudson County Hospital for Mental Diseases, between his admission and death, have always been a source of consternation to my family. The reference to an ongoing state investigation concerning the deaths of several seniors in the Meadowview institutions may be more of a County legacy that just recent neglect.
There are currently anywhere between 9,000 and 12,000 men, women and children buried in the 10 acres of cemetery that is the Hudson County Burial Ground. The NJTA recently purchased a section of this cemetery that holds about 3,500 bodies. While the NJTA is in the process of proposing a proper disinterment, reinterment and memorial for those people, Hudson County continues to hide in the shadows, quietly unrepentant for any of its sins. Surely it hopes once the furor dies down, it can sell off even more of the cemetery for profit.
I can only hope that the news of what’s been going on in Court will “convince” Hudson County to finally do the right thing without being “required” to by the Attorney General’s office.
Patrick Andriani