City Council pledges overhaul of public cemetery on Hart Island
Often abandoned by their families and disdained by society, scores of New Yorkers stricken with HIV/AIDS found their final resting place in mass graves on a barren dot in the middle of Pelham Bay — Hart Island.
They’re buried in a city public cemetery — known as Potter’s Field — and managed by the Department of Corrections.
Critics complain the cemetery it is operated like one of the city jails, an experience that family members describe as often difficult and demeaning.
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“They’re bussed around with all these other families, which a lot of them are visiting their family member for the first time, so you’re going through this traumatic experience with them,” said Bronxite Elsie Soto, 36.
“It’s not really bonding, it’s more like observing someone else’s pain,” she added. “To me, that’s really difficult.”
The Hart Island activist rode the 4 train for an hour to tell city council members about the “disheartening” and “undignified” plight of visiting her dead father, Norberto, who passed from AIDS and was buried in a mass grave at the island’s southern tip.
The city put her father there after private funeral homes refused to handle his corpse during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a common problem faced by victims of the disease.
“He wasn’t someone who just got tossed aside by his family,” she said.
Soto would love to visit her father’s resting place more but she said the logistics make that impossible: Ferries run infrequently, visits usually must be booked months in advance and only small groups can go.
It’s a setup that has City Council Speaker Corey Johnson — the first openly HIV-positive citywide official — demanding change.
“As an HIV positive man, it was an emotional and overwhelming experience for me,” Johnson said at a Thursday hearing, recounting his November visit there. “It is clear to me that we can do much better for the people who are buried there, and I feel an obligation to help.”
About 1 million souls have been buried on Hart Island since the Civil War– also including stillborn babies, homeless people, unidentified remains and others too poor to afford a funeral.
More than 100,000 New Yorkers died from HIV/AIDS between the mid-80s and the mid-90s, hitting the city’s LGBT community especially hard.
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Johnson is backing a package of bills that would transfer operations over Hart Island from the Correction to the Parks Department, require the city to operate regular ferry service there and establish an office to provide support those who need burial assistance. It also would create a panel to study public burial issues.
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And the de Blasio administration is on board.
“Hart Island has a rich, complex history and a sacred meaning for the families of loved ones who were laid to rest there,” mayoral spokesman Raul Contreras, in a statement. “It’s now time to chart a new course forward for the island and future public burials.”
He added: “With the eventual transfer of Hart Island to the Department of Parks and Recreation, we will ensure the Island, its history and special meaning continue to be maintained and open to visitors.”
Additionally, the administration said it was moving to end public burials there.
That’s an apparent reversal from a year ago when the administration argued the move would be cost-prohibitive and told Politico that it saw no need to change how the island is managed.
Hart’s legacy and links to the AIDS crisis linger on.
City agencies have repeatedly refused to talk about just how many HIV/AIDS victims are buried on the island, but a 2018 investigation by The New York Times revealed records from city hospitals that indicate the number could be in the thousands.
