Henderson County News: Cemetery Commission probes complaints about Shepherd Memorial Park hendersonvillelightning.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hendersonvillelightning.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“I’m 60 years old and I’ve never known those gates to be closed,” Proffitt said, attributing the action to Melody Shepherd, co-owner of Thos. Shepherd & Son Funeral Directors. “I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing but she’s hurting a lot of people. She can make the hours but Saturday and Sunday is the day people don’t work, when they go (visit loved ones’ graves). I don’t see how she can stop us if we bought those plots. That’s our land, those two plots.”
One day after good Samaritan landscapers voluntarily mowed the overgrown cemetery grounds and trimmed weeds around headstones, the cemetery’s owners locked the gates.
Children and grandchildren who visited the graveyard on Mothers Day to pay respects were greeted by knee-high weeds and grass that nearly obscured headstones. Word spread on social media and WLOS-TV reported on the aggrieved families who wondered who is taking care of the memorial park. (State regulators last November suspended the license of Thos. Shepherd & Son Funeral Service, the cemetery owner, as a result of a complaint that still awaits a final resolution.)
Enter Sam Byrnside and Aaron Owensby, owners of L&S Landscaping and A to Z Landscaping respectively. Both Henderson County natives, Byrnside and Owensy dropped a day of paid work and brought a crew of six to mow and weedwhack every blade of grass.
Henderson County (May 13, 2021) - Henderson County residents who have family members buried at Shepherd Memorial Park had become increasingly distressed at the condition of the cemetery.
But those who have preneed contracts with the more than 100-year-old business should be able to transfer any prepaid contract to another funeral home, state regulators say.
The Board of Funeral Services ordered the Church Street funeral home to shut down after an inspection last summer turned up numerous violations of state regulations.
In a series of regulatory actions dating to 2018, state board inspectors have investigated at least six consumer complaints against the funeral home and its crematory, which are owned by Thomas R. “Tom” Shepherd, the licensed funeral director, and his wife, Melody Shepherd.
The state board issued a show-cause order on Oct. 29 alleging numerous violations. The funeral home responded five days later that Tom Shepherd had been experiencing health issues and was “not currently competent to address violations” spelled out in the show-cause order. The next day the state board issued the order for summary suspension of the funeral home’s license