Pet Cemetery Coming to Frank Sinatra's Resting Place
Your dearly departed little Fluffy or Fido will soon have the opportunity to rest in peace on the grounds where luminaries - such as Frank Sinatra, Sonny Bono and Betty Hutton - are buried when ground breaks on a pet cemetery at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City later this year.
The Palm Springs Cemetery District Board of Trustees, operators of Desert Memorial Park and the Welwood Murray Cemetery in Palm Springs, recently announced the formation of the nonprofit Pet Memorial Park Cemetery Foundation, which enables the district to designate land for pet burials.
"I've been wanting to do this for about 13 years, and I finally found a way to do it," said Kathleen Jurasky, District Manager for the Palm Springs Cemetery District. "Our health and safety codes, which are our governing document, says that a public cemetery district cannot bury pets - it can only be for people. The only way around that is to form a nonprofit or get the laws changed."
After spending years running into obstacles, Jurasky and the board opted to go the nonprofit route.
The board agreed to offer the foundation a low-interest, $25,000 loan and will allow the new group to lease district office space for $1 a year until a new building is constructed.
Jurasky has assembled a team of volunteers who are donating time and talent to the project:
Legal Services (Steven Quintanilla, Q & A Lawyers Law Firm)
Landscape Design Development and Construction Documents (Ron Gregory, RGA Landscape)
Building Design Development and Construction Documents (Chris Mills, Architect Prest/Vuksic)
Logo and Interior Design (Jeff Jurasky, Jeffrey Jurasky & Associates)
Cemetery Site Survey (Allen Sanborn, Sanborn A/E)
Project Manager (Michael Fontana)
The layout, design and cost of interment are still to be determined, but the five acres should provide plenty of pet burial space for years to come.
"They're going to be in-ground - we're not going to have a mausoleum - we may have some niches, which are above ground," Jurasky said. "All the burials will be cremation, mostly - unless, of course, your pet can fit inside the (burial vault). If you have a small dog or small cat or lizard or bird ... or frog or fish or whatever little small animals ... they can go in the whole body burial (vault), but if they're larger then they'll have to be cremated."
Just how many pets can five acres accommodate?
"If you had one acre of land and you're going to do full body burials - (8-foot by 4-foot grave) - you can put 600 to 650 burials in that one acre," Jurasky said. "Now you're dealing with little small sections, which are like 3 by 3, you multiply that exponentially, so there's going to be a lot of room for a lot of pets."
The only other local public pet cemetery I know of in the Coachella Valley is Pet Haven in Desert Hot Springs, which is the final resting place for about 1,000 pets - mostly dogs and cats, but also a few birds, rabbits and monkeys, and one pot-bellied pig.
President Gerald R. Ford's dog, Liberty, is among the celebrity pets buried at the site. The presidential pooch - a golden retriever - lived at the White House during Ford's administration. Five of Liberace's dogs are interred in individual graves not far from Liberty.
Over years of conversations, Jurasky has tried to "get a pulse" of how people felt about the idea of having a pet cemetery at Desert Memorial Park.
"Most people have their pets and they keep them at home or they bury them in their yard - or they scatter them someplace illegally," she said.
Over the course of all those years, Jurasky saw the excitement build for another option for pet owners.
"I would love to bury my pet in the cemetery - I'd know where they are, I can go there," Jurasky said, recalling some of her conversations. "I had this one lady who sold her home about six months ago and she has two pets buried ... on the grounds of the home ... and she wants to go back to the new owners and see if she can get her pets' urns out of the ground and save them so when the cemetery gets built, she could put them out here."
Jurasky, who's former president and on the board of the California Association of Public Cemeteries, has been trying for years to win over her association colleagues.
"When I first started doing this .. I would always talk about doing a pet cemetery and everybody would always laugh at me, 'Yeah, yeah, Kathleen - whatever,'" she said, laughing. "I went to the association's annual meeting last year and I told them this is what I'm doing. We're going to be the first public cemetery district agency to have a pet cemetery."
Jurasky said there are about 250 public cemetery districts in California, which include those that do two or three burials a year to 1,000 a year - and everything in between.
"Public agencies up and down the state of California are waiting to see how it turns out for us and what we do," she said. "I'm overwhelmingly excited - I'm giddy. And the fact that I've gotten this team together to donate their time is even more exciting."
Jurasky, who is in need of a few more volunteers - and donations of building materials and labor - is reaching out to the community. She's specifically in search of applicants to fill two open directors' positions on the new foundation board.
Those interested in applying - or donating time or services - can contact Kathleen Jurasky (serving as acting executive director for the foundation) at (760) 328-3316 or info@pscemetery.com
