CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- Amid prayers
and remembrances, Rose Kovacs had her own prayer answered Wednesday when
she looked out on Charleston Harbor and watched a barge carry a big
concrete ball out to sea.
The ball bore a plaque containing the names of those whose cremated
remains would make up the first community memorial reef created by Eternal
Reefs Inc. The remains also were mixed in two dozen other concrete balls
that would be sunk offshore as part of a fishing reef.
Those reef balls, some weighing as much two tons, contained the
cremated remains of Kovacs' first husband, her second husband and her
second husband's first wife.
Kovacs had kept the ashes in her home for years.
"I just kept them in the house, and I just didn't know what I wanted to
do," she said. "I just loved this idea because they all loved the ocean
and the harbor, and I felt, 'Why not?' I thought this was a prayer
answered."
Eternal Reefs, based in Decatur, Ga., made it possible for the remains
to be buried at sea.
"I wanted to lay them to rest with the living and all of God's
creatures," Kovacs said. "I just thought it was best for my loved ones in
this kind of environment rather in a cemetery. Someday I hope to be right
next to them out there in the ocean."
As she spoke, members of other families had their pictures taken next
to the ball with the plaque. Some made pencil tracings of the plaque on
notebook paper.
Don Brawley, an avid diver, founded Eternal Reefs in 1998. Six years
earlier, he co-founded Reef Ball Development Group, which developed the
concrete balls used as artificial reefs. Approximately 150,000 have been
sunk worldwide, he said.
Eternal Reefs started with a request from Brawley's father-in-law who
asked if there was some way he could be buried at sea in a reef.
"He said he'd rather spend eternity down there with all that life and
excitement instead of in a field with a lot of dead people," Brawley said.
It costs about $850 for cremated remains to be buried as part of a
community reef. Individual reef balls also are available.
The final resting place of the reef balls are recorded so family
members can visit the site, Brawley said.
Mark Smith of McAlister-Smith Funeral Home said memorial reefs are one
of several options after cremation. Others possibilities include sending a
small portion of the remains into space or using some of the remains in
artwork.
The balls will be part of a fishing reef about 2 1/2 miles from the
Charleston Harbor jetties, said Bob Martore, reef coordinator for the
state Department of Natural Resources. The 25-acre reef is in about 30
feet of water.
One of those whose remains became part of the reef Wednesday was Vince
Taylor, a longtime DNR boat captain.
"Your way is the sea, your path is in the deep," Jennie Olbrych, the
vicar of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, prayed. "We commit these ashes to
the deep and in doing so, we pray that the reef may bring life."
