Word: lawns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
March 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan. Even before a motorcade roars up to a presidential function, agents with metal detectors have carefully screened guests for weapons. Vigilance has also touched the President's weekend jaunts to Camp David; the helicopter departure time from the White House lawn is changed on short notice to make his movements less predictable...
...first complaints about Harbor Lawn came three years ago, when Audrey Cooper, 72, received a burial urn containing what she thought was the ashes of her husband William. A family friend named Jerry Read, who had once worked for Harbor Lawn but quit in disgust, told the widow that the remains were not her husband's. Says Read: "Bodies were doubled up on shelves in the refrigerator. When they got full, they'd stack the bodies on the garage floor and leave them there for days." Read and other former employees further charge that bins full of excess...
...lawsuits tackle two of California's wealthiest and most prolific body-disposal entrepreneurs, John Dillan Flanagan, 67, whose Harbor Lawn charnel house handled almost one-half of Orange County cremations in 1981, and Charles Denning, 53, founder of the Neptune Society. Flanagan's lawyer claims that his client is an absentee owner who "wouldn't know how to operate a mortuary." Yet Millionaire Flanagan seemed to know plenty about the business's bottom line. In 1961 he was convicted of grossly overcharging the Veterans Administration for frill-free funerals. He was sentenced to two years...
Betty McMullen and Melvin Belli, the plaintiffs' principal attorneys, urged their clients to form a Dignity After Death Society; the group's tearful demonstrations outside Harbor Lawn have generated morbid interest. The two lawyers also placed ads in the Santa Ana Register in Orange County, looking for others with loved ones who were cremated at Harbor Lawn...
...matter what happens in court, the furor over Harbor Lawn has brought closer scrutiny of the cremation business. Next month a new California law goes into effect making it a crime to conduct mass cremations or commingle ashes...