Cemetery in monumental fight

By Nicole LaPrade and Alice Joy

CUPERTINO -- A battle brewing between one university employee and several Cupertino residents is asking who is really entitled to rest in peace.

Edy Madsen, a cashier for Bon Appetit, spearheaded efforts to have veterans' memorials put back at Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Cupertino, where her husband and Santa Clara alumnus, C. Mitchell Madsen, is buried.

Madsen loved the six, black-marble monuments that surrounded the flag pole. Each one honored a branch of the military, and one honored missing-in-action and prisoner-of-war soldiers.

But neighbors, who live in the area surrounding the graveyard, complained that the statues -- which are taller than the cemetery's flat headstones -- were too close to their homes.

"After one week I went with my son," Madsen said. "I didn't want to say anything because I wanted it to be a surprise, but the monument was gone."

The memorials, which were put in and blessed this past May, were removed by Cupertino's planning commission just days after they were installed because of permit issues, officials said. They say the cemetery had not filed the proper paperwork before installing the memorials.

But this week, city officials granted an appeal to Gate of Heaven, allowing the cemetery to do permit work without holding public hearings. This means that neighbors may not be able to have as great of a say in the cemetery's operations.

"The city has to have some control; otherwise, people would do what they want," neighbor Michelle Hocker said. She went on to say that the city of Cupertino has strict permitting codes for such things as landscaping and alterations to the appearance of property.

Hocker's house looks onto the cemetery directly over where the memorials stood.

"It looks like a park. It's not frightening me or my children," Hocker said. She said that she bought the house knowing that the cemetery resembled a park-like setting.

At first, neighbors complained about the memorial statues, which were erected near Madsen's husband, and other landscaping changes the cemetery was proposing.

Madsen rounded up opposition to the removal of the memorials, despite her limited English, creating petitions and speaking out at council meetings.

Such is the battle raging between local neighbors, who say they are entitled to their peace and quiet, and relatives of veterans buried at the cemetery, who say their loved ones were there first.

"The problem is, from our perspective, they are overreaching their authority because they can now keep us from doing all this permit work," Cemetery Director Bob Lindberg said. "We've got a dead tree down by the lake. We've gotta go back before the commissioners and get approval before we can do anything."

According to Lindberg, the neighbors and the cemetery reached an agreement in August on where the memorials will be put in the private cemetery. But the city planning commission added a last-minute stipulation at the hearing requiring "further public hearing and planning commission approval of a detailed landscape plan prior" to any work being done.

The cemetery appealed this ruling to the Cupertino City Council on Tuesday. The council ruled in the cemetery's favor, 3-2.

Gate of Heaven was opened in 1972. Nearby homes were built between 1998 and 2002.

"In 1996, there was nothing there. Even (in) 1998 (and) 2000, I didn't see any. But then all these fences more than 10 feet tall and the houses are 2 stories high. They can look at me and I have no privacy," Madsen said.

Silvia Felix, whose father, a World War II veteren, is buried at Gate of Heaven, said that neighbors are "concerned about their view, but all the people who bought grave sites here thinking, 'my son or daughter will have a view all the way down to the Bay.' Now they don't have that. That's all gone now. You don't have your solitude like you did before."

"These people, they look for like a park," Felix said. "This is not a park, their decorations, their backyard. This is a cemetery for World War II veterans."

Contact Nicole LaPrade at nlaprade@scu.edu, or Alice Joy at ajoy@scu.edu.