A New Jersey woman is suing the funeral home that handled her father’s burial after she discovered his ashes had been left in the home’s basement for 30 years.
Debbie Uraga, 69, and her family had been visiting the empty grave at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown for 31 years, since her father died in 1993, without knowing it, she said. News 12.
Uraga had long believed that his father, George Jonas, a military veteran, was buried in the family cemetery alongside his mother, sister and brother.
“I always went to see him on Father’s Day and his birthday. Because he was a veteran, the VFW also put a flag on his grave. I think we all just assumed he was there,” Uraga told local media.
But in June, she was contacted by a man from an organization that collects unclaimed veterans’ bodies and gives them proper burials. He shocked her by telling her that he had found her father’s body in a box in the basement of John F. Prager Funeral Home.
The news came as a shock to Uraga.
“It’s very painful,” she said. “It’s unbelievable because I thought my father would be there. He should have been at the cemetery with the rest of my family.”
Uraga said that in 1993 the funeral home assured him that his father had been buried in the cemetery with his family.
“They just said they agreed to let him be buried,” she said.
The family has filed a lawsuit against Mount Olivet Cemetery and John F. Prager Funeral Home, seeking to hold them accountable and to prevent other families from having to go through the grief they felt over this discovery.
The owner of John F. Prager Funeral Home said Jonas’ cremation and funeral were conducted with the utmost care and that he had attempted to contact Uraga multiple times about the status of his father’s body. W.C.B.S..
“All attempts by our funeral home to contact the Jonas family’s next of kin for instructions regarding the final disposition of the body have gone unanswered until we attempted to provide a respectful burial for this man’s body in our state’s veterans cemetery,” a representative for the funeral home said in a statement to the station.
But Uraga disputed their claims.
“That’s a lie. No one has contacted me,” she retorted.
Uraga said he lives just five minutes away from the funeral home and if he had tried to contact them about his father’s remains, it wouldn’t have been difficult to find them.
The grieving daughter said she now has the box containing her father’s ashes and the cremation certificate with her name and address on it.
She hopes that now that her father’s remains have been returned, he will finally be given a proper burial.
“After 31 years, maybe I can finally rest,” Uraga said. News 12.
“They always say, ‘Rest in peace,’ but how can you rest in peace if you’re in a basement?”
