Richmond Cemetery Offers Green Burials

By Donna Moxley on Wednesday, September 24, 2008.

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The town of Richmond recently dedicated part of its cemetery to environmentally green burials.

Officials believe it is the first of its kind in New Hampshire and possibly New England.

It was the death of one local man that started to change the way some people think about how they bury their dead.

NHPR Correspondent Donna Moxley has the story.

(Winchester ambience under)
Gordon Oxx died last summer.
His wife Carol had him buried here, in Winchester’s Evergreen Cemetery.
The two had been married 51 years, so Carol had a pretty good idea how Gordon would want to be buried.
Carol 1: He was not a person for that kind of display that is traditional with most funerals today. We both believed in – we’re here today. That’s good. … I knew he would have been very upset to have to go through what many people do go through.
By today’s standards, Gordon Oxx’s burial was unusual.
Carol2: It was just a very simple wood coffin, no finishing, no nails, no paint or any other kind of finishing. No metal, rope handles, a simple pine box.
Despite his simple gravesite, with its flat granite marker, Gordon Oxx made a little bit of history when he died,
Thanks to a lot of help from his wife, Carol.
Even though the Oxxes live in Richmond, he couldn’t be buried there the way he wanted to.
The town required graveliners or vaults.
Carol had already asked about environmentally sensitive – or green – burials in Richmond before Gordon’s death.
And she doubled her efforts afterward.
She found a sympathetic ear in Geraldine Lutz.
Lutz chairs the Richmond Cemetery Trustees, which coincidentally was looking to expand the cemetery a little.
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Geraldine Lutz.
Lutz 1: Why not allow people to have, you know, whatever we can offer them, whatever is available for burying their loved ones?
That sentiment seems to have carried the day.
The trustees have designated up to 100 plots for biodegradable burials at the Richmond Cemetery.
That means no embalming chemicals, no metal trim on caskets, no vaults, no headstones.
Markers won’t be required, but if desired, they’ll have to be of local fieldstone, flush with the ground.
Maintenance crews will mow only a few times a year, for liability reasons.
Any plants will have to be native to the region, and roads will be few.
This kind of cemetery could become more common.
Earlier this year Richmond’s State Representative Barbara Richardson introduced a bill requiring that towns accept green burials.
Richardson1: I just think that funerals can become so ornate and involved, a tremendous expense, and I think that it’s a time when people are grieving and kind of go along with a fancy coffin and doing all kinds of things when it’s sad that that’s the way we treat our dead. … our ancestors were buried in their back yards, so we’re just going back to the way it used to be.
Richardson’s bill failed.
But the rest of the funeral business in New Hampshire may be starting to catch up with this new movement.
Morin 1: It’s really our client families that are going to drive this.
That’s Peter Morin, the new executive director of the New Hampshire Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association.
He acknowledges green burials could mean a loss of income for funeral homes.

Morin2: Sometimes people are resistant to change … you know, doing business the way it’s always been done … there was a lot of opposition industry-wide years ago to cremation, and there was a lot of resistance to it, and again we’ve learned the lesson that it’s our client families, our families will determine what they want and no matter how much we resist it or whatever then that’s something we need to provide. (Ambience from Winchester)
Now Carol Oxx can determine what she wants.
She plans a simple burial for herself in Richmond’s new green cemetery.
And she’ll be moving her husband’s remains to the plot next to hers.
For NHPR news, I’m Donna Moxley.