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One Man Plotting Out Final Days at Green-Wood Cemetery
By
Billy Parker
Published Jul 19, 2009
Modified Jul 19, 2009
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By
Billy Parker
Published Jul 19, 2009
Modified Jul 19, 2009
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With space at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery at a premium these days, the Times tracks down the one man perhaps most responsible for the few remaining plots as they begin to expire. 54-year-old Lithuanian immigrant Kestutis Demereckas (known as Kestas) is Green-Wood's sole groundskeeper-turned-engineer, who will know for certain when the last body can be buried there, saying that after he is gone there will be no room, even for "Mr. Obama." He has been finding room for new bodies where there appeared to be none for two decades and tells the paper, “Sometimes I work three or four days, only to find no room. Nobody thought, ‘Someday Kestas will come looking for graves.’ ” More than half of Green-Wood's bodies date back over a century; these days plots where bodies are generally stacked on top of one another can fetch up to $60,000 for a family of nine. Kestas is exactly the kind of icy yet welcoming figure you'd hope for at a graveyard—he openly shares tales of his wife's desire to be buried in his workplace when she had a fatal illness (she survived) and the time he came across "The Hill of Graves" to wonder, "‘Why are these lots so small?’ And I find out. Babies.”
Tagged
brooklyn
cemetaries
death
Green-Wood Cemetary
Kestutis Demereckas
plots
Billy Parker
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