Mother says village blocked her request to bury son on her property

NEVILLE, Ohio (WXIX/Gray News) - An Ohio woman is considering legal action after the village of Neville in Clermont County blocked her request to bury her son on her property.

“It is our family cemetery,” Irene Kraemer said. “That’s something that my son did request many years ago.”

Kraemer’s son died on Sept. 21.

Neville Mayor Rob Gastrich said he reached out to Kraemer and said she couldn’t bury her son on the property around her home.

He contends no other family members are buried on the property.

“I spoke to her in depth and I said that the village is against this and I said if we need, we’ll have an emergency meeting and we’ll do an ordinance and she asked that we have an emergency meeting,” Gastrich said. “I can’t support everyone burying a person in their backyard.”

Neville held a meeting Tuesday and passed the emergency ordinance to stop the burial.

Kramer appeared with John Sheil, her attorney.

“She had a permit from the state to bury her son in her family cemetery,” Sheil said. “The village has decided they don’t want to listen to the state. They’d like to do it their own way.”

Sheil and Kraemer brought paperwork from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office regarding the burial of deceased family members on family-owned property.

“It said that in townships, townships cannot interfere with creating a family graveyard,” Gastrich said. “But nobody is buried at this place. No bodies are buried on this property and this is a new thing.”

There is a cemetery less than a mile from Kraemer’s home that costs around $1,000 for a burial plot of up to four people, the mayor said.

“I’m trying to be sympathetic and I’ve told her that I’m sympathetic to what she’s going through,” Gastrich said. “We’ve got a cemetery right here. It’s closer than most people go to the grocery store.”

Kraemer and her lawyer say her son’s final resting place isn’t about money; it’s about her religion and family tradition.

“I feel that my rights were violated and I will be looking into further action legally,” Kraemer said.

If Kraemer contests the village’s ruling, the next step is going to court, according to her lawyer.

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