“I didn’t see any check or money, so what am I supposed to do?” he said. “If somebody comes in and wants a zoning permit but didn’t have the money, are you going to give them a zoning permit? No. Same thing here.”
The issue came to light during a meeting Tuesday when resident Bonnie Bertelson asked trustees if chatter circulating around the community about cremains discovered in the township’s maintenance building was true.
“That is not untrue,” answered Perry Twp. Trustees President Mindi Wynne.
“We were required to do an annual inventory, and during that annual inventory completed after Mr. Kraft’s dismissal, these three persons were found,” Wynne told the Dayton Daily News.
The township administration determined the cremains had been in the building as long as 13 years, Wynne said. She said the township is also updating its cemetery records system to help determine if any plots were double-sold.
Wynne said all three of the deceased had paid gravesites and the ashes should have been buried as soon as they arrived.
Two containers of cremains belonged to a married couple who had purchased burial plots and had their headstones erected years ago. The couple’s family was notified and the cremains were buried at Eversole Cemetery a short time after their discovery, Wynne said.
An acting supervisor who replaced Kraft on an interim basis contacted descendants of the third person, whose cremains were also buried at Pyrmont Cemetery, Wynne said.
Wynne said the township would not release names of the deceased out of respect for their families.
“At this stage, it’s all been rectified,” she said. “We don’t expect that there’s anyone else in this situation or that there are any other cremains.”
The price of burial plots at Perry Twp. cemeteries, however, does not include interment, which more than a decade ago cost around $300, Kraft said
According to Kraft, the cremains were mailed to the township years ago. When no one came to claim or pay to bury the ashes, they were put in storage, a practice not uncommon to any cemetery, he said.
Kraft, who been on dialysis since November, said he doesn’t understand why he was let go, but believes trustees latched onto the cremains issue to discredit him.
“I did my job and I bent over backwards for that township,” he said. “Politics is at its worst even in a small government like this ... They don’t tell the whole truth.”
Dale Seim, a former township trustee, said while in office he was aware that the cremains were kept in the maintenance building on Providence Pike.
“People said that they would forward the money for them to be buried and they would show up to bury them at some point, but they never did,” Seim said. “(Kraft) never could get any response out of them.”
Kraft operated the township’s four active cemeteries and maintained five inactive ones. He was also the Perry Twp. road supervisor when, after 36 years with the township, he was terminated for cause unrelated to the cremains, Wynne said.
Seim said Kraft was an exemplary employee who current trustees continue to treat unfairly.
“They want to make Mr. Kraft look bad for whatever reason and I don’t know why,” he said. “He was a wonderful employee for 36-37 years and had done over 1,000 burials in his career.”
According to Wynne, Kraft was terminated for insubordination and behavior unbecoming of a public official.
Wynne said she responded candidly when Bertelson asked about the situation during the online meeting Tuesday.
“Our goal in the township is transparency, because for a number of years under the old administration, there was no transparency,” she said. “Because somebody asked, we’re going to answer honestly.”
Wynne said the current Board of Trustees, which also includes Melissa Mears and Jason Hartshorn, is dealing with “an awful lot” of issues former administrations failed to address.
“There’s a lot of things that have caught us off guard,” she said. “But we are … correcting the things that need corrected, finishing the things that were unfinished and moving forward.”
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