Help Ken Brown Honor Veterans' Burial Contracts

My name is Rhonda and I work for the newest owner of Valor Park Memorial Gardens, Ken Brown, in Grain Valley, MO. We are a private, family-owned, endowed care cemetery with a long history of serving veterans and their families. In order for us to continue to do so, we need your help.

Let me share some of our history. The land the cemetery is located on was once owned by the Slaughter Family. In the mid-1800s, they started a private family cemetery on a portion of their land. Eventually, the land was divided up and the pieces sold off. The family cemetery, now known locally as the Historic Slaughter Cemetery, inspired the L... Family to turn this parcel of land into a public cemetery they named Swan Lake Memorial Gardens. The first burial that was not a Slaughter family member was in 1986. After a few years, the cemetery was sold to the A......s.

The A.....s advertised Swan Lake as a veterans cemetery. This was quite deceptive, as most people think of a national VA cemetery when they hear "veterans cemetery." However, Swan Lake was NOT a VA cemetery as it was privately funded, not issued grants from the government. This meant that when a veteran and their spouse arranged for burial in this cemetery, they had to pay for it. They were given one free space but had to pay for other expenses, like the burial vault, markers, and digging of the grave. If they had chosen a TRUE veterans cemetery, those expenses would have been covered. To make matters worse, when Mr. A..... was diagnosed with cancer, he chose to embezzle all of the pre-arrangement funds, roughly 2.5 million dollars. When he passed in 2007, the cemetery was sold again.

While the new owners, the B.....s, chose to change the name to Swan Lake Memorial Park, they were court-ordered to honor all of the previous contracts, even though the money had been embezzled. They also chose to continue advertising as a veterans cemetery. Again, this was deceptive to the veterans and their families that came to them thinking this was a national VA cemetery. In addition to this deception, the upkeep on the grounds was slowly allowed to decline. During their 17 years of ownership, buildings fell into disrepair, trash was allowed to be dumped behind the buildings, weeds were allowed to grow up, and just a general state of disinterest and disregard was allowed to cover the once beautiful cemetery. The most shocking and horrifying aspect, for me at least, was the number of graves that were left unmarked.

When Ken purchased the cemetery from the B.....s in January 2024, he was unaware of the darker aspects of the cemetery's ownership history. Due to the abysmal reputation Swan Lake was known for, Ken changed the name to Valor Park Memorial Gardens. Unfortunately, soon after the purchase was finalized, he realized the uphill battle he was about to face. Starting any new business is a difficult task, with many businesses failing in the first couple of years. While that struggle was expected, having hundreds of pre-need burial contracts with no funds to cover them was shocking. Most of the contracts are 20 years old or more, with the veterans and their spouses now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s and living on fixed incomes. Because of the person Ken is at heart, he has chosen to honor those contracts, even though he is not legally obligated to do so. As he likes to say, how can he sleep at night if he has to look a family in the face and tell them "sorry, I know you paid thousands of dollars all those years ago, but the money was embezzled so you'll have to pay it again." He just can't do it. To him, it's morally wrong and he is very much about doing the right thing. In the year and a half Ken has owned this cemetery, he has paid out thousands of dollars from his own pocket to cover the burial expenses and markers for dozens of families, with no end in sight.

Now we, as a business, sit at a crossroads. Since we are family-owned, with no corporation or second location to offset the costs, we have to make a decision that is breaking our hearts. Do we keep the business open but no longer honor the contracts? Or do we close the doors, selling the business to someone that will no doubt refuse to honor them as well? Either way, it's the veterans and their families that will be adversely impacted when they will be looking at paying thousands of dollars for services they thought were already taken care of, all while trying to grieve for their loved one.

This is where you come in. Neither of those options appeal to us in any way, so I'm reaching out for help. We're not looking to make a profit off these families. Our funeral home makes just enough through new business to keep us open and operating until things pick up. What we're really looking for is a way to offset the out-of-pocket expenses that are straining our finances and keeping us from providing the compassionate care and service we want to provide. Any donations made here will be used to pay for the burial vaults, markers/monuments, and digging of graves for those whose money was embezzled. It will be the wholesale amount, our actual cost, not the retail amount. As I said, we aren't looking to make a profit off these old contracts, we just need to be able to cover the costs so we can keep honoring them. We don't want to cause any more stress, anxiety, or financial difficulty for these families when they're already emotionally vulnerable. That's not who we are as people, or as a business. We also have dozens of markers that we have found stored in one of the outbuildings. It appears the previous owners were holding them back from being set because there was a balance owed. We don't care about any money owed to them; we want those markers set in honor of the person buried here. Unfortunately, that means we have to purchase the granite base for the marker to be set on, just another unexpected expense we didn't see coming.

In short, all donations will be used to cover the costs of fixing the issues left behind by the last two owners and their deceptions. When I told Ken I was going to set up this fund, he opened a bank account just for these donations so the money will be applied where I told you it will go. If you happen to be in town and want to stop by, we would be happy to give you a tour of the grounds, the funeral home, and open our books to show you exactly where the money has gone. We also plan to have a quarterly meeting in our funeral home's chapel to allow donors to review the books. If you would like to be added to the list to be notified of each meeting, please reach out to me here at GoFundMe. As I've said, we're not the kind of people or business to take advantage of someone else's vulnerability or generosity and are more than willing to do what's right, regardless of how hard it can be.