Ninety-year-old Theodore Crumbley’s seen plenty of funeral processions during the 40-plus years he’s lived across from Mt Carmel Cemetery.
Nowadays though, there’s only been a few.
“When I first bought this house that cemetery was really kept up everyday somebody was over there doing something, and it was beautiful over there,” Crumbley said. “But now…”
Two years ago, the bodies of two women were found dead in the cemetery, which sits on the corner of Elvis Presley Boulevard and Elliston.
When visitors come to Mt. Carmel, they don’t stay long.
“They can’t find nothing they get back in their car and go on home,” Crumbley said.
It would take a weed-eater or lawnmower to hack through the weeds to find some headstones.
Tom Lee, the hero who saved 32 people after their steamboat sank and the man the downtown park is named after, is buried here, somewhere in the weeds.
Leroy Pierce has lived near the cemetery for 30 years.
“There’s a couple of guys that come over there periodically and cuts around their parents’ grave or whoever that is,” Pierce said.
Public records show the cemetery is owned by Mt. Carmel, Inc. We couldn’t find any record showing who’s named in the corporation.
“You see all those trees, they been down about four or five years and ain’t nobody been out here and we’ve been trying to get somebody out here and nobody comes,” Crumbley said.
