Rochester, N.Y. - An Irondequoit man with a small plot of land took out an unusual ad in the classified section of the newspaper recently, hoping to find a buyer.
"None of the surrounding area was landscaped as it is now, or anything. The only original thing here are the trees," said Earl Bauman as he stood in the middle of Holy Sepulcre Cemetery in Rochester on Sunday.
The 85-year-old man buried his wife at Holy Sepulcre on December 27, 1980. Expecting that someday he would be buried next to her, Earl bought a plot of land alongside his wife Geraldine.
"She got ill and the doctors tried to help her, but those things happen, that's life I guess," Earl says.
As time marched forward, Earl's heart did the same--a few years after Geraldine passed away, he remarried.
"I would believe she would want me to go on with it, what can you do? Life goes on," he said.
The empty space in his heart had been filled, but not the space next to Geraldine. Earl always assumed he would be buried in a shaded part of the cemetery, known as the "Queen of Heaven" section.
But Earl and his new wife, Norma, eventually decided they wanted to be buried together in Irondequoit, so Earl now finds himself playing real estate agent for an unusual plot of land. A few months ago he took out a classified ad in the newspaper which read, "Cemetery Plot (1), Holy Seplucure Cemetery, $600."
"I'm only doing what I think is right for my situation," he says.
Strange as it sounds, folks at the cemetery say this type of thing happens all the time, and some of the nice plots go for around $2,000.
"If somebody's in the same situation I'm in and they can us it, why let it go to waste," he explained.
Earl still hasn't had a buyer, but says he plans to place the ad back in the paper this spring.
