ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 A veteran\u2019s family says Riverside Cemetery on Lake Avenue isn\u2019t doing enough to maintain veterans\u2019 headstones. <\/p>\n
Private First Class Daniel Jose Rivera died in 2009 in Iraq and is buried in the veterans section at Riverside Cemetery. His headstone is now sinking into the ground, and his sister says he deserves better. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have him here in the veterans section at Riverside for a reason. This is our home. You know, he had all the honors to be buried in Arlington, but we chose to keep him home. So it\u2019s saddening that we have to deal with this,\u201d Rivera\u2019s sister Shadel Bradford said. <\/p>\n
Daniel\u2019s mother, Myriam Bates, says she now regrets having him buried at Riverside. She\u2019s in the process of getting him moved to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. \u201cIt\u2019s been the biggest mistake of my life putting him here,\u201d Bates said. <\/p>\n
Bates comes to the cemetery whenever she can, depending on the weather. She has tried several times to dig out the headstone. Dirt now covers Daniel\u2019s military accomplishments written on his headstone. <\/p>\n
\u201cDaniel earned a Bronze Star, and the star is pretty much almost in the ground. You can\u2019t even see it on the stone anymore,\u201d Bradford said. <\/p>\n
News10NBC reporter Declan Stablow found Daniel\u2019s headstone was the only one sinking like this, but several of the flat veteran headstones were also covered in dirt and grass. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey deserve better. I think that, you know, the families deserve better. And you can you can tell, you know, people who don\u2019t have family members left anymore. Their headstones are almost covered completely up,\u201d Bradford said. <\/p>\n
Daniel\u2019s family says they reached out to cemetery management about these issues, but nothing has been done. Stablow reached out to management at Riverside Cemetery to see if there are any plans to fix up the veteran graves, but he hasn\u2019t heard back yet. <\/p>\n
According to the City of Rochester website, cemeteries will fill sunken graves with topsoil but aren\u2019t responsible for repairing gravestones.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0headstone<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0cemetery<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0honoring vets<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0buried<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0sunken<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Veterans<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 A veteran\u2019s family says Riverside Cemetery on Lake Avenue isn\u2019t doing enough to maintain veterans\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[12320,35066,43891,43892,94,43893,1381],"class_list":["post-130889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-buried","tag-cemetery","tag-headstone","tag-honoring-vets","tag-iraq","tag-sunken","tag-veterans"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116637837956465531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}