Every Sunday for years, the Roth clan, who has called the Buffalo area home since the

1800s, would spread a blanket under a yawning shade tree at Buffalo Cemetery to picnic, pick

wild flowers and remember.

The grounds were lovely back then, decades ago, and it was a serene way to honor the dead.

But when Gail Weatherford visited the family plots with her mother last week, both happened

to look around the grounds more than usual and, as they did, became increasingly upset.

"It was awful, and it was everywhere," she said.

Headstones, some of them sizable, had toppled and others looked like they were about to.

Many were tilting. Some looked like they were sinking. Still others were surrounded by uncut

grass and weeds.

The Sunday picnics there ended long ago, but the family still returns every spring and fall

to plant flowers and keep up the plots — and Weatherford's mother, Ruth Bennett, said

the current state of the cemetery is not what her ancestors signed up for when the first plot

was purchased in 1901.

"It's sad," her mother, Ruth Bennett, said. She can remember those picnics. "So sad."

True, Weatherford said, the cemetery is old, dating back to the turn of the previous

century, when it was relocated from Buffalo's North Street to Pine Ridge Road in Cheektowaga.

But Weatherford complained to the cemetery's management during her visit, saying the

company's neglect — not age — was to blame.

She said it appears some of the headstones had been purposely tipped over by vandals, and

that some had been damaged by employees mowing the grounds.

"Those are heavy duty mowers they use," she said. "They can do a lot of damage."

She estimated 75 percent of the damage she saw was from mowers.

But Jeff Reed, vice president of the Mount Calvary Cemeteries Group, which owns the

cemetery, said the organization has not been neglectful.

Reed acknowledged to The News that damage has been done by employees mowing the grass, but

said such occurrences are "very infrequent."

"If a family comes in and says there is lawnmower damage, we look at it," he said. "If it's

something we've done, we take care of it."

Reed said the Mount Calvary Cemeteries Group, a not-for-profit business that purchased the

cemetery in 1987, does routine inspections of each of its cemeteries there, which also include

Mount Calvary, Ridge Lawn, United German and French and Pine Lawn.

Actually, the descendents are responsible for maintaining the headstones, he said.

"We are basically held harmless," he said.

When they can, workers try to fix tombstones, but they are only capable of minor repairs.

The magnitude of the job — the grounds of all five cemeteries together total 360

acres, with 252,000 graves — means not all repairs that need to be done will be at any

given time, Reed said.

Mount Calvary for the past nine years has been able to secure state restoration funds to

repair or remove dangerously deteriorated tombstones, Reed said.

Reed said that money won't be available this year due to state budget cuts.

But age is the real culprit here, he said. Because the cemetery is so old, it includes

graves that don't have vaults or grave liners — 2,000 to 3,500-pound concrete liners in

which caskets are placed.

Such "outer burial liners" protect the caskets and serve as a solid foundation that

prevents earth from shifting or collapsing. Most cemetery by-laws have required them since the

1960s, Reed said.

When the ground shifts over graves without such liners, "it can look like someone ran

through, tipping the headstones over," Reed said.

Headstones now are placed in a concrete foundation.

Weatherford is not impressed with Reed's explanations. There are just too many damaged

headstones for her to believe his claim that Mount Calvary is doing everything it can. She is

especially upset because she agrees that finding descendents is probably very difficult. And

that means, those interned there "have no voice.

"I'm not letting this go. Mount Calvary needs to do something to resolve this problem."