New York, NY – Poor, Destitute, And Unidentified Not The Only Ones Buried On New York City’s Hart Island

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    New York – Despite the fact that the majority of the nearly one million people buried on New York City’s Hart Island are either poor, destitute, or unidentified, the island’s history is littered with instances in which the bodies of easily-identifiable New Yorkers have wound up at the mass burial site, either through administrative error, systematic failure, or the occasional instance when the deceased has simply “slipped through the cracks.”

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    THE WEEK.com (http://bit.ly/1bi8tq5) reports that Amy Koplow, executive director of the Hebrew Free Burial Association, said, “Sometimes people wind up in the city cemetery when they shouldn’t be there at all. They’re not indigent. They’re not unknown. Sometimes they just slip through the system.”

    One case in point was the stillborn daughter of Westchester County obstetrician and gynecologist Laurie Grant.

    Grant had a severely problematic pregnancy in 1993, resulting in her being hospitalized at Lenox Hill Hospital 33 weeks into her pregnancy, after which it was determined her fetus had no heartbeat.

    An emergency C-section almost killed Grant, leaving her in excruciating pain post surgery.

    While still heavily medicated and delirious days later, Grant was assured by hospital staff that the “city” could arrange the burial of her deceased daughter, assuring her that the body would be buried in a spot where she could visit.

    “I don’t remember signing any papers. I was really out of it,” the 59 year-old Grant said.

    The hospital staff never contacted Grant’s family members and simply shipped the deceased child’s body off in a pine box to a mass grave in “potter’s field” on Hart Island.

    Koplow said she knows of another retired CBS television stage tech who died over President’s Day weekend, and whose body was transported and buried on Hart Island because hospital staff responsible for locating next of kin hadn’t returned in time from the holiday.

    “His case got lost in the shuffle,” said Koplow. “There’s all kinds of rotten stuff that happens.”


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