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Man upset about relatives’ graves flooding in recent months

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MONROE, N.C. — A local man contacted Action 9 for help after the cemetery where his grandmother and great-grandparents are buried started having flooding issues.

Abbie and Sam Alexander were born in the late 1800s. They were laid to rest about a century later at Red Level Missionary Baptist Church along Rocky River Road in Monroe.

Their great-grandson, Frederick Alexander, told Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke he remembers them well.

One of his strongest memories of his great-grandfather was something so simple he enjoyed so much: eating an apple. “He just kind of shined it up on his shirt tail, you know, just bit it … front teeth … and I thought that was amazing,” he said.

As for his great-grandmother, Alexander says, “Every night before she went to bed, she’d come back in the bedroom. I’d be playing my little radio, we have a little dance before she’d go to bed.”

In front of their gray tombstones, there’s a pink-ish one for their daughter, Alexander’s grandmother, who died well before them.

Alexander says decades passed and he never saw the graves flood. But then, he says work started on a development next door, Stonebridge. “Now the water is backing back up on it,” he said.

The tombstones end up partially under water. “For somebody to come in like this and not even pay it no attention after it rains or whatever. You know what I mean? It’s kind of upsetting that they haven’t done anything about it,” he said.

Alexander says he asked the church to take steps to protect the graves more, but that nothing’s changed. He’s hoping someone can help but says he can’t seem to make progress on his own.

Stoogenke reached out to both the church and the developer on the project next door, both in multiple ways, but he did not hear back in time for this report.


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