Flight of the dead: Suburban families move loved ones from Detroit cemeteries

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit News

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Flight of the dead: Suburban families move loved ones from Detroit cemeteries
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News

CLINTON TOWNSHIP-- At precisely 8:57 a.m., under an overcast sky, Francesco and Francesca Imbrunone were re-laid to rest. A man in a dark suit stood over their remains proclaiming that they "await the resurrection."

If that promise holds true, then it would be, in a way, the Imbrunones' second resurrection. As it happens, the couple was buried nearly 50 years ago in Detroit's Mount Olivet Cemetery on the city's east side. Then their grandchildren decided to disinter them, move them to the leafier suburbs and bury them again this particular morning.

"He'd complain, 'Why did you spend the money?' " said Francesco's granddaughter, Gerry Seip. "My grandmother? She'd just cry."

By now the statistics are as well known in London as they are in Livonia. Detroit has lost half its population since its heyday of the 1950s, and every year the city hemorrhages an estimated 5,000 people more. First it was white flight to the suburbs; then with the city's continued spiral into poverty and violence, blacks began to flee to those same suburbs. And while census figures show that whites are returning to some of the nation's largest cities, Detroit is experiencing a flight of a different kind. As the Imbrunones' second funeral demonstrates, Detroit is experiencing the flight of the dead.

Read more: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080812/METRO08/808120367