“I’m 60 years old and I’ve never known those gates to be closed,” Proffitt said, attributing the action to Melody Shepherd, co-owner of Thos. Shepherd & Son Funeral Directors. “I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing but she’s hurting a lot of people. She can make the hours but Saturday and Sunday is the day people don’t work, when they go (visit loved ones’ graves). I don’t see how she can stop us if we bought those plots. That’s our land, those two plots.”
One day after good Samaritan landscapers voluntarily mowed the overgrown cemetery grounds and trimmed weeds around headstones, the cemetery’s owners locked the gates.