Burr Oak Cemetary and Gambling Addiction

Last Friday, Towns blamed a gambling addiction for behavior that is so ghoulish even the worst of sinners would have a hard time understanding it. “I am very sorry for this situation and how it has affected my family and the families of the Burr Oak ...


Mary Mitchell couldn’t find her brother’s grave at Burr Oak
BY MARY MITCHELL

It’s been almost two years to the date that I’ve had to consider thinking about Burr Oak Cemetery.

I used to think about the horror of it every time my mother came to Chicago. I’d hold my breath hoping that she would not ask me about going to visit her sons’ graves.

My mother is going to be 84 next month. Some women her age are still kicking up their heels. My mother is fragile. She can get around fine, but she can’t handle any emotional stress.

So we keep things from her.

She has been a worrier all her life, and there was nothing we could do about it. But now, even when all hell is about to break loose, we paint a cheerful picture.

Two of her sons are buried in Burr Oak. One passed away in the winter of 1987. Another left in the summer of 2000.

When the grave-desecration scandal broke in 2009, one of my sisters and I joined the throng of distraught survivors who descended upon Burr Oak looking for what was once hallowed ground.

We found one grave. We did not find the other.

This is something my mother must never know. If any of my relatives happen to be reading this, please do not pick up the phone and call my mother with this news.

Of course, I am not alone. There are likely thousands of people who are still trying to figure out just where, exactly, a loved one is buried.

Most of us can shut this out of our minds until another relative passes and we must make another trip to a cemetery. Then it hangs over our heads like an unpaid bill.

But Carolyn Towns’ admission of guilt in the scandal carried the same gut-wrenching punch it did two years ago. Last weekend, the former cemetery manager pleaded guilty to six counts, including dismembering a human body and theft from a place of worship.

Investigators allege that Towns — the mastermind of the scheme — stole $300,000 over several years. She was given a 12-year sentence.

Three co-defendants, Keith Nicks, Maurice Dailey and Terrence Nicks, are still awaiting trial.

When the scandal unfolded, Towns was described by friends and relatives as a “devoted” member of the First Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Woodlawn. She sang in the choir and was known in her neighborhood as someone who loved the church.

Last Friday, Towns blamed a gambling addiction for behavior that is so ghoulish even the worst of sinners would have a hard time understanding it. “I am very sorry for this situation and how it has affected my family and the families of the Burr Oak Cemetery,” she said.

Talk about destroying a good testimony and giving the church a bad name, Towns did both.

But I am not dancing on her grave. A lot of black families were impacted by the Burr Oak scandal and a lot of those families have relatives behind bars. Prison life will be hard.

I don’t know what led Towns and the others to do what they did, but their deplorable actions are symbolic of a sickness affecting too many black people. That sickness isn’t a gambling addiction.

Too many black people don’t value black life, and they behave as if black life counts for nothing.

That’s not to say that black people should be preying on others. That is not my point. But what happened at Burr Oak is symbolic.

Every Monday morning, I go through the paper and find that at least a half-dozen black victims have been critically wounded or killed. They have been shot, or stabbed, or run over, or beaten to death. Black neighborhoods are being shot up to the point that black children might as well be sitting ducks.

Darn the statistics: The level of violence shows that too many young people still think life is a violent rap video. That is why the community must stay on the police until the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Towns and the other co-defendants had no respect for black death. Because the owners of Burr Oak ran such a loosey-goosey operation, they should have been charged with criminal neglect as well.

It should have mattered to these people that civil rights giants Mamie Till-Mobley, and her son, Emmett Till, are buried in their cemetery.

It didn’t.

I can’t bear to see my mother wrestle with that.