N.J. Sen. President Codey seeks to restore grave sites for mentally ill

[Kire]

N.J. Sen. President Codey seeks to restore grave sites for mentally ill
By Lawrence Ragonese/The Star-Ledger
September 19, 2009, 9:00PM

MORRISTOWN -- The small concrete cylinders are buried at Morristown’s Evergreen Cemetery, virtually impossible to see until you are almost standing on them.

Each is marked with a four-digit number etched into its flat top, like a bar code for the dead — fading markers into past lives of indigent state psychiatric patients long ago placed shoulder-to-shoulder in the ground in body bags or pine boxes.

They were people once, with names and lives and families. But as many as 6,000 former state patients rest in mostly anonymous graves in Morristown and in potter’s fields near state psychiatric hospitals in Glen Gardner and Marlboro, Winslow Township and Trenton. In some instances, with markers sunk underground or inexplicably removed, the history of these patients dating back as far as 150 years ago has been lost.

Now, that may change.

State Sen. President Richard Codey, who as a youth picked up the dead at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital for his family’s funeral business, has embarked on a crusade to find identities of these people and restore their dignity in death.

More: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/09/state_sen_president_cody_seeks.html

[NNadir]

1. I am really pissed off about this business of removing Codey as Senate President.

I just think the world of this guy.

Like all good Democrats, I'm voting for Corzine in November but I wish Codey hadn't been bought out of the Governor's mansion.