c. 1998 Religion News Service

BAY CITY, Mich. _ There’s a memorial in Roy DeLorge’s front yard, but not for anyone he knew.

DeLorge, supervisor of Kawkawlin Township, came home one day in October to find white and purple artificial flowers stuck in the ground by his fence. A month later, a small cross appeared with a pine wreath and red ribbon on it.

He doesn’t know what to do, he said. No one asked him if they could put the memorial there, but he doesn’t feel right disturbing it.

The memorial is for John Harris, 78, of Saginaw, Mich., who was crossing the road across from DeLorge’s house when he was struck by a truck and killed Oct. 10. Harris’ family declined comment on the memorial.

“I guess I don’t mind (the family) leaving it there for a period of time, but I guess I don’t think it should be there indefinitely,” said DeLorge.

His dilemma is not unique. Experts say roadside memorials have become increasingly popular across the United States in the last seven to 10 years, creating uncomfortable issues for people and government agencies.

“At times we feel we’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Gary Naeyaert, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Transportation. “We are caught between the competing desires of our department to both enhance safety and to be compassionate.”

Families are grieving when they erect the crosses and usually don’t think to ask permission from property owners.

When the memorials appear on local or state rights of way, as they usually do, county road commissions and state departments of transportation tend to leave them alone _ an exception to normal policy.

“It’s a difficult thing. It’s a new thing,” said ChrisTina Leimer, a Texas writer who’s spent the last four years researching American funeral customs. “There are not prescribed rules for how to do it and who’s responsible. So all those things need to be negotiated or they happen by default.”

Roadside memorials are becoming more popular because traditional funerals just aren’t enough for people anymore, Leimer believes.

“They (funerals) don’t have enough of the right elements in there to start the grieving process for many people,” she said.

Roadside memorials let people express themselves.

“They need to participate,” Leimer said. “They don’t want to sit back and let some minister who may not have known this person very well deliver a eulogy. We’re inventing a new way of saying goodbye.”

Just up the road from the Harris cross, Elgin Nichols removed a roadside memorial placed at the front of his business.

The family of John Steward put four concrete blocks topped with a cross in front of Nichols’ Appliance & Kitchen Gallery warehouse, where Steward landed in a fatal motorcycle accident in 1995.

The memorial was secured with screws to a concrete median in the parking lot, Nichols said. He had workers remove it after about five months.

Nichols said people told him the memorial was distracting.

“I don’t have a problem with people in terms of wanting to remember their loved ones, but when I get a couple of calls from people that said there was almost an accident there, I said, `I’ve got to do something,”’ Nichols said.

Art Carmona, a friend of the Stewards who lives just south of Nichols’ warehouse, volunteered to put the Steward memorial in his back yard, overlooking the scene.

“We rode bikes together,” Carmona, 47, explained. He keeps the grass cut around the memorial, helps decorate it and has a beer with his old friend once in a while.

Another family has since placed a cross next to Steward’s, after asking Carmona’s wife, Crystal. A woman died in a car accident across the street about a year after Steward, family members say.

“I told the wife, `Yeah, that’s OK, but that’s the last one. Not unless it’s going to be mine,”’ Carmona said.

Leimer said roadside memorials provoke strong feelings on both sides. Those who erect them have a strong drive to honor the person who died and mark the accident that killed them, while others may find the memorials too morbid.

“We don’t tend to want daily reminders of death in our life,” said Leimer, who runs The Tombstone Traveller’s Guide, an Internet Web site.

“When you go to cemeteries, you intentionally go to the cemetery and drive through its gates. We don’t expect to see the reality of death on our daily trips, in our daily life, and so I think these things are little reminders that penetrate that veil that we want to keep,” said Leimer, who has a master’s degree in sociology and does research for the University of Houston.

The memorials are an especially touchy subject for governments, which routinely remove other objects, like political signs, from road rights of way.

Nationwide, governments that remove roadside memorials are the exception, Leimer said. Homemade crosses and other memorials have been banned in California and Florida.

The Florida Department of Transportation, however, will replace unauthorized memorials with standardized ones upon written request. The memorials are 2 feet tall, white, circular and plastic, with the words “Drive Safely” and the name of the deceased.

The state of Texas erects 2 1/2-foot, white wooden crosses through a program with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. A plaque on each cross gives the name of the victim and a date of birth and death.

Florida’s program started with crosses in 1997 but the design was changed after complaints that the state was supporting religion, a violation of the First Amendment.

The Texas program has been challenged in the Legislature for similar reasons and at the local level as “visual pollution,” Leimer said. But the program remains in place after at least 10 years.

Overall, Leimer said she thinks the ritual of road memorials is a good thing.

“It helps people to face the reality of what happened by trying to understand, by seeing the spot where it happened, and that’s part of initiating grief, of getting the grieving process going … accepting and facing the reality of death.

“It also has a social message because it’s letting the world know that someone died here, that they were important to someone, that bonds were broken, that it’s a dangerous world. It’s a message to beware.”

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