Doris McCrea burial record | The Hart Island Project

Doris McCrea, a widow who retired as the head of records retention for Continental Grain, one of the world’s largest privately held corporations. She outlived her family but had made careful provision to be laid to rest with her husband in a cemetery in Turners Falls, Mass. When she died at 100 on July 10, 2012, she had a generous prepaid burial plan and more than $5,400 in her personal account at the nursing home where she had lived for 15 years. Yet three days later, the city issued a permit to put her in the potter’s field. Within four months, she was in a trench with 148 others.

“That’s criminal,” said Audrey Ponzio, a friend and former colleague from Continental Grain, when she learned where Ms. McCrea had ended up.

As in many cases, Ms. McCrea’s personal information had been lost or ignored in the shuffle near the end of her long life, when she was sent from nursing home to hospital, from hospital to hospice. “What happened to this patient is very unfortunate,” said Dr. Jonathan Mawere, the administrator of the nursing home, Queens Boulevard Extended Care Facility, who was prompted by an inquiry from The Times to find and try to reactivate her burial plan, three years late.

The New York Times, by Nina Bernstein
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-york-mass-graves-hart-island.html