Leatha Shropshire stands near balloons memorializing her mother, Helen McKin, whose body was discovered among hundreds of others on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory in 2002.Questions linger about why 10 years have passed without a promised memorial being erected to honor the hundreds of people whose bodies were discarded and left to rot at Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Ga.
“A lot of people that worked the tragedy, they want to forget it because they feel like it was a black mark on their county,” said Leatha Shropshire, whose mother’s body was found lying on the ground in her funeral clothes, her dress hiked up. “[But] I don’t feel like our loved ones should be forgotten.”
But Walker County officials say nothing was done with the $45,000 awarded in 2002 by the Georgia Legislature to build a memorial because no one could agree on where and how one should be built.
“I heard from some people [that], ‘We do not want a memorial in Noble; we never want to think about it again,'” said Walker County Sole Commissioner Bebe Heiskell.
But people from Noble disagreed and wanted the memorial built as a park because their town had been portrayed in a bad light, Heiskell said.