Roadside crosses: using public property to endorse religion?
By The Associated Press
10.21.02
TUCSON, Ariz. — It used to be that Michael Sanchez didn't think a lot about the eight white crosses standing near his family's house. They'd been there since his family moved to the neighborhood in 1998, like silent soldiers, a lingering memory of a car collision that killed eight people, five of them children.
Then Sanchez's father died in February in a car accident at Interstate 10 and Palo Verde Road. The family put a cross there.
"I think they're really important," Sanchez, 18, says now. "It's a memorial for people to know what happened."
Roadways across the country are dotted with crosses and other markers. It's at least a centuries-old tradition, a Tucson folklorist said — a way for the living to remember those they have lost and a religious ceremony for some, to mark the holy spot where a soul has left a body.
But they're not without controversy. One such memorial was the focus of a court battle in Colorado. And officials across the country are finding different ways to handle the markers.
Tucson folklorist Jim Griffith said the memorials began in Arizona in the Catholic community for people who died without having the chance to be absolved of sin. They lined trails in their early days, and passersby would stop, light a candle or say a prayer, Griffith said. In 1783, the bishop of Sonora asked Spanish military authorities to forbid the practice because it discouraged other settlers, Griffith said. It was forbidden, he said, but it didn't stop.
The Arizona Highway Patrol used white crosses in the 1940s and 1950s to mark the places motorists died, Griffith said. It has stopped the practice, but the markers continue to be placed by others.
"There still are people who take these as an indication they should say a prayer for the repose of the people who died there," he said.
In New Mexico, where people have made grave markers out of flowers, pumpkins, tin cans and other materials since Spanish rule, memorials are protected as "traditional cultural properties" through the Historic Preservation Division.
Around the country, laws regarding the crosses vary from state to state. They are banned in North Carolina. In California, there are limitations. But the right to erect the markers is protected in Florida and West Virginia.
Arizona traffic officials say they don't mind the memorials — if they aren't permanent and don't cause traffic hazards or impede road maintenance.
Michael Graham, spokesman for Tucson's Transportation Department, and Carol Anton, who works in community relations in the county Transportation Department, said their agencies' stances were similar. They just ask people to be cautious in erecting the signs.
"This is a very sensitive issue," Graham said. "People are mourning, and they need an opportunity to mourn."
That opportunity has led to a court battle in Colorado.
Brian Rector, 18, died in March 1998 when his Ford Escort was hit by a semi. After the cremation and funeral, a family friend took some 2-by-4s and paint and fashioned a 3-foot-tall white cross, inscribing it "Son, Brother, Friend." Relatives added flowers and small angel figurines.
"Because we don't have a cemetery plot to go to," Rector's mother, Deena Breeden, said, "we definitely want to keep up the memorial forever."
A driver who often passed Rector's memorial and others disagreed — and took action in April 2000.
A state trooper saw Rodney Lyle Scott's truck on the side of the road with its hazard lights on. A collection of flowers and wooden crosses was in the bed. Scott told the trooper he was "cleaning up the interstate." Thinking Scott had permission, the trooper let him go.
Soon, the Breedens and other families noticed their memorials missing and complained. They found a sympathetic ear at the office of Adams County District Attorney Robert Grant.
Scott, identified through his license number taken by the trooper, was charged with "desecration of a venerated object" and faced the possibility of six months in jail and a $750 fine.
Denver attorney Bob Tiernan, a member of the Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, offered to represent Scott for free.
The memorials "are using public property to endorse religion," Tiernan said. "It's a violation of the U.S. Constitution, as far as I'm concerned, and it's a serious distraction."
In April 2001, Tiernan won acquittal for Scott when a judge ruled the Rector memorial was "discarded refuse" and "unlawful advertising" under the law, not a venerated object.
The Breedens were allowed to put a memorial back up — its cross removed, they said, to keep from offending anyone — without receiving a citation.