Cemetery plots see less demand in Kane County

Kathy Munro no longer wants the rights to burial she and her late husband purchased in 1968 for three plots in River Hills Memorial Park in Batavia.

Turns out, selling them isn't easy. She has tried for 30 years.

"At some point, I'll probably look into donating them, maybe to a veterans organization," Munro said in an e-mail.

People still purchase rights to burial, but not like they once did. Society's transient nature and the economy are contributing to more cremations and fewer rights to burial purchased in advance, those involved with funerals and cemeteries said.

"It's not like they used to years ago when a family member buys 16 graves for the whole family," said Roger Ronzheimer, superintendent for the St. Charles Township cemeteries.

The Illinois Cemetery and Funeral Home Association doesn't track the number of rights to burial sold before they are needed. However, treasurer Vickie Hand said, conversations among members indicate pre-need purchases started dwindling in the late 1990s. Declines become more drastic during times of economic hardships, she said.

She said she isn't surprised people are struggling to sell rights to plots.

"When you're out trying to sell a grave in this day and age, a lot of families want to be able to go to the cemetery and want to pick out wherever they want to go," Hand said, comparing it to selling a house.

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Munro was 19 when she and her husband, 22, paid $500 for rights to four plots in Batavia from a salesman.

Her husband died a year later of a pulmonary embolism, so she was happy to have them available, she said.

Since then, the 61-year-old Glencoe resident said, she has moved, remarried and concluded burials are a waste of materials.

"We don't know what we're going to do with our ashes yet, but we decided on cremation," she said.

In Ronzheimer's nearly 38 years in the business, he said, he has watched the cremation rate increase from about 5 percent to about 40 percent – a rate the superintendent of Blackberry Township Cemetery has noticed, too.

"It's really climbing," Fred Dornback said. He noted the cemetery he oversees near Elburn offers smaller plots for urns and a cremation garden for ashes only.

Ronzheimer's and Dornback's observations mirror a statewide trend. The cremation rate in Illinois was 33 percent last year, up from about 22 percent a few years ago, Hand said.

"But that's because of the economic climate," she said. "It's very difficult for people to come up with the additional money that it would take to bury people, so they're leaning toward cremation."

According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the cost of an adult funeral in 2006 cost about $7,300. The price included embalming, the use of a hearse, a metal casket, a vault and the use of facilities for the viewing and funeral ceremony.

It excluded cemetery, monument and obituary costs.

A 2007 study found cremation costs ranged from $800 to $3,000.

Burial plots for the ashes, urns and, among other options, the shipment of the remains contributed to the variation in price, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

John Pattison, a pastor at Faith Baptist Church at Mill Creek, has presided over three funerals in the last 12 months that involved cremation. He said money isn't the only reason why people choose that option. His grandmother, for example, wanted her remains in the urn containing his grandfather's ashes.

"Some people feel better keeping ashes with them," Pattison said. "Some just want to keep them close."