RELATIVES PITCH IN TO HELP TIDY UP STRUGGLING EDWARDSVILLE CEMETERY

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- When Mike Tessaro read that Valley View Cemetery had to lay off its groundskeepers recently because of financial trouble, he picked up a broom and a lawn mower and went to work.

"I hate this, but what are you going to do?" Tessaro, 81, said Monday as he swept off the graves of his wife, son, daughter and other family members, and mowed the lawn around their headstones.

"I just hate to see it grow up," Tessaro said of the grass. "We paid good money for these plots."

The 35-acre cemetery was placed in receivership in 1997 along with Mount Hope Cemetery in Belleville when then-Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson forced out owner Larry Esterlen.

And although Belleville lawyer Donald Samson, who was appointed receiver four years ago, said the long-term prospects of both cemeteries are good, he also said it doesn't make sense to borrow money to maintain Valley View when a buyer has not yet been found.

Mount Hope's finances are in better shape, Samson said, and groundskeepers there continue to work.

The cemeteries have not been making new sales while in receivership, but have been honoring existing contracts for grave sites. Burials can go ahead because they are covered by fees.

At Valley View, the grass was beginning to look shabby in some areas Monday, while other areas appeared to have been trimmed and tidied over the weekend.

Samson said volunteers will have to do the work, since there's no money to pay groundskeepers.

Still, Jesse A. King of Collinsville, who was visiting the cemetery to put flowers on the graves of his parents and other relatives, said that surely some answer can be found.

"Maybe they could put together a committee or something to do the whole thing," he said.

"I don't know what the money problem is," King said. "It's a dirty shame."