Elmont Cemetery

The discovery stunned the girl’s mother and grandmother.Most Popular“It was just really emotional for me,” the grandmother, Marlena West, 47, of Freeport, recalled Wednesday.“And her mother is so ... she just can’t even handle it. It really messed her up. It was like she was reliving the tragedy of what happened to her daughter,” West said.Amiyah Dunston of Baldwin was 9 when she was fatally mauled by a pit bull in November 2015 while playing with friends in an Elmont backyard.She was buried at Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale, owned by the Town of Hempstead. The family has ordered a headstone but it hasn’t arrived yet.“We don’t call it her grave, we call it her garden. She loved flowers and things like that,” West said.After she reported the blunder, Gerald C. Marino, commissioner of Hempstead’s Department of General Services, saw to it that the incorrect headstone was removed by the monument company.“He came out and was very sympathetic and apologizing for the error,” West said of Marino. “He told me this has never happened before.”A spokesman for the firm, S & S Memorials Inc. of Hempstead, did not return a call seeking comment.Wishing to spare the family that owns the headstone the same anguish, West said she tried unsuccessfully to contact them via Facebook.She wrote: “Please if u have loved ones in Greenfield Cemetery please visit often! You just never know what to expect in this world today.” Hempstead Town spokesman Mike Deery could not immediately say whether the other family had been informed of the mix-up.Deery couldn’t recall a similar error, adding that separate procedures govern the placing of headstones and burying of bodies.“We’ve extended our heartfelt apologies to the [Amiyah Dunston] family ... on behalf of the monument company that made the mistake,” he said.West is still wounded.“It’s really terrible and tragic,” she said. (Newsday)

He calls it “Dead Art” — startling black-and-white photos shot in cemeteries around New York and the country. He creates them the old-fashioned way — in a home dark room, printed with chemicals on photo paper. Throughout April, he exhibited his startling work at the Freeport Recreation Center, in a show sponsored by the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport. Truly, the landscapes that he captures remind one of a scene from an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Photography “is kind of a solace to me,” said Turrciarone, who has been a Freeport resident for more than 30 years and who works in the heating and air-conditioning industry in New York City. “I get away from everything, get to be myself and take pictures. It’ quiet time for me.”Before taking pictures in cemeteries, Tucciarone photographed weddings. For six years, from 1985 to 1991, he was juggling a full-time job in the heating and air-conditioning field, raising a family, and on the weekends jumping from wedding to wedding. By 1991, he put his camera away and decided to focus on taking care of his family. For 19 years, he only picked up the camera sporadically to capture family memories. Only in the last seven years did Tucciarone return to photography in earnest, but this time he wanted to capture images that inspired him. His adventures have taken him to Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Va., and beyond. Tucciarone cannot explain precisely why he photographs cemeteries. He only says that he will end up in one someday.“I have a lot of leading lines in my photographs,” he said. “I may have a walkway with headstones and a tree that has no leaves on it, kinda an ominous tree. For me, photography is a feeling [more] than anything else. I see something that strikes a chord with me, and I take the picture … It’s an emotional thing for me.”He now spends close to 20 hours a week on his photography. He does not limit himself to cemeteries, but even on vacations with his wife, he might venture to one to snap images. Several of his photographs have been featured in magazines and books like ... (liherald.com)