This Hendricks column appears in Wednesday's Kansas City Star:
Should roadside memorials be banned?
Long before a state senator introduced legislation that would do just that along Kansas highways, filmmaker Joe Kipikash asked himself the same question.
Day after day, he drove past the same, weather-beaten roadside shrine near Kansas City.
“I was quite frustrated having to look at this ugly thing,” he said.
But his frustration gave way to compassion when he asked some questions about the display.
He learned it was built by a couple whose child had died at that spot.
Age 3 — the same age as Kipikash’s son at the time.
“It put myself in their shoes,” he said.
And it was that understanding that led him to write and direct the 2006 feature film “Descansos” — Spanish for “resting places” — in which a roadside memorial is central to the plot.
That project then led to a new TV documentary on this global phenomenon, produced by Kansas City filmmaker Melissa Villanueva.
The other day, I previewed a copy of the bound-for-cable “Resting Places,” and it’s a fine film.
Narrated by Liam Neeson (he played the title roles in “Schindler’s List” and “Kinsey”), it was made with the help of a grant from the Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee.
Villanueva and Kipikash, executive producer, trace descansos back to ancient Spanish funeral rituals. Indeed the first region in the United States where roadside memorials were first prevalent was the Southwest.
But in recent decades, the practice has spread throughout the United States and beyond.
Why the “sudden surge?” as the film calls it. Even the experts are unsure. But now you’ll find roadside memorials in Greece, Iceland, Argentina, Poland, Great Britain, France, Australia, to name a few.
Like Americans who put up hand-built memorials, people around the globe have a spiritual need, Neeson tells us, to mark the spot where a loved one has died.
“But we have not found any other countries,” Kipikash told me, “that have passed legislation against handmade memorials.”
Any country other than the United States, that is.
Of course, that’s what started our discussion on this. Sen. Phil Journey, a Republican from Haysville, introduced a bill that would outlaw handmade memorials along Kansas highways. He cites safety concerns, among others.
Under his plan, grieving relatives could sponsor for a fee a sign designed and maintained by the highway department.
Other states have done the same in response to the increase in roadside memorials and the controversies they raise.
“Resting Places” interviews a man who was arrested for tearing down a memorial in Colorado.
Isn’t it a violation of the separation of church and state for people to erect crosses on public land? he asks.
Certainly, Journey’s legislation would address that complaint, as well as the safety issues that concern him.
(Too many memorials are too close to the highway, he thinks.)
But Kipikash and Villanueva say they’ll have news for the senator when the three of them appear Wednesday from 11 a.m. to noon on “Up to Date,” the radio show hosted by my pal and Star reporter Steve Kraske on KCUR, 89.3 FM.
“No legislation in the world will stop people from putting up memorials,” Kipikash says.
Florida has a program like the one Journey proposes for Kansas. Yet, Floridians still put up their own memorials for loved ones because it’s more personal.
“I feel his presence (there),” one mother says of the memorial she built for her son. “I miss him.”
That scene more than any other changed my heart on this issue. That and the e-mails I got from those who have erected and continue to maintain roadside memorials.
“Yes, the cross is still up,” Manuel Blancarte of Kansas City, Kan., said of the memorial he and his wife, Ana Marie put up for their son, Jesse, five years ago this month.
He died at 37 of heart failure while riding his bike.
Several times a year, the Blancartes change the flowers hanging from the cross and water the plants around it. Manuel cuts the grass in the summer.
“It’s a nice country road, quiet and peaceful,” he said.
I’m sure it is. And what harm does it do us if a family sees it as their place to grieve and remember?
As long as roadside memorials don’t interfere with public safety, I say we let them be.
