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Burial plots will be put to good use
On May 7 and 8, you ran a front page story and subsequent editorial about my offer of a family grave to the Tsarnaev family for burial of their son Tamerlan, the slain accused Boston Marathon bomber, in the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground. [click on links below] Days later, a religious group effected the burial in an Islamic portion of a cemetery in Virginia
I would like to report to your readers the disposition of my cemetery plot over the months since then.
I first offered the two remaining graves in my plot to the mayor of Hamden, then to the president of Hamden’s Legislative Council, thirdly, to my mother’s church, Mt. Carmel Congregational, and finally to the Unitarian Society on Hartford Turnpike in Hamden where I did my internship 35 years ago as a Yale seminarian. They were offered in memory of my mother, Barbara W. Keane, without charge to each of the four entities, to be given to needy candidates, hopefully veterans.
All four refused the offer.
At this juncture, a month ago, the dean of Yale Divinity School, Gregory Sterling, and the former mayor of Hamden, Craig Henrici, agreed to search for worthy candidates for the graves, and I transferred the titles of the two plots to attorney Henrici last month, who will see to it, along with the Yale Divinity School dean, that the graves find an honorable use.
I am touched by their courage and generosity in being willing to associate themselves with a gift and with a giver whose overture of a final resting place for the accused Boston bomber provoked so much controversy last spring in Hamden and New Haven.
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