A Colorado cemetery is forcing a family to remove an "inappropriate" headstone bearing images of upraised middle fingers.
The headstone has been in Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs for five years, marking the final resting place of brothers Timothy and Ryan Geschke. The sisters of the interred, Heidi and Holly Geschke, were recently informed that the headstone designer was told to cover up images of raised middle fingers on the gravestone with black tape.
"This is a symbol of love and Geschke blood through and through," Holly Geschke told KOAA.
Now, the cemetery's manager is telling the family that the headstone must be removed.
According to the cemetery's rules, headstones cannot be profane or offensive to the general public. "No words or images may be engraved on a memorial that would be considered profane or offensive to the general public," the cemetery's current rules state.
Holly Geschke told The Independent that she was not asked to sign a contract when the tombstone was erected and was not told by anyone at that time that the design violated any of the cemetery’s rules.
She said the only instructions her family was given at the time were that the middle finger engravings could not be facing a nearby street.
When KOAA reporters asked the cemetery's manager, Cheryl Godbout, how many complaints she’d received, she said the number of complaints was "irrelevant, because once I was made aware of it, then I had to do something."
“It would not have been right of me to know about it, knowing it violates our rules and to ignore our rules," she said.
The Geschke sisters do not agree that the images are offensive enough to warrant removal.
“This was created with so much love and respect and loyalty to our brothers,” Holly Geschke told KOAA. “This is speaking to the character of not who they were, but who we are as a family.”
The manager said the family does not need to remove the headstone themselves and that the cemetery will store the marker for the family.
The sisters told KOAA that they don't plan on removing or remaking the headstone to bring it into compliance with the cemetery's rules.
"They're in a resting place and now here we are being asked to disturb their resting place," Holly Greschke said. "It's mind-boggling,"
She said her family plans to fight the removal order, and if necessary, move her brothers out of the cemetery entirely.
“These are my brothers, I'm not going to let this go,” she told The Independent. “Whether this ends in our favor or not we're not backing down on this. We're making noise for the boys.”
