BELLEVUE, Neb. (KMTV) — James Rains sister, and his 94-year-old mother visited Bellevue Cemetery to see the grave and the mother broke down in tears when she saw how bad it was.
"It was just this pile of dirt and then, it had the sinkholes, and it looked like the headstone was about ready to cave in,” says Priscilla Fiala, the niece of James.
A day after the family of James Rains saw the grave, his sister Liz posted this on a Bellevue Facebook group, asking if the city could do anything more to clean up the graves at Bellevue Cemetery.
Within hours Mayor Rusty Hike responded and said constant rains were the cause of the disrepair and before they knew it, the gravesite looked much better.
"And said we will get this fixed, this is the first time that he has heard about it and he sure did do it,” says Fiala.
Still Priscilla Fiala, the niece of James, sees a larger problem, one that goes beyond her uncle's grave.
"And there are other headstones or other plots that are here that are, they're not in good shape. Some of them are actually worse than my uncles,” says Fiala.
She wants city staff to pay more attention when similar issues come up.
"You would hope and think that they would be walking the cemetery looking to see these issues,” says Fiala.
Fiala says the cemetery is beautiful and this incident serves as a wake up call for the city to clean up it's problem spots.
"And I know there's lots of things that need to be worked on in Bellevue but this is a place that I think a lot of people would expect it to be nice,” says Fiala.
3 News Now tried to reach Mayor Rusty Hike several times tonight to ask how he plans on keeping the cemetery looking nice in the future. He did not return the phone calls.
