Colorado Family Fights to Save Headstone with Offensive Imagery

Five years ago, a family buried a relative in a Colorado Springs cemetery with a headstone featuring actual photos of their departed loved one. Now, it has been brought to the family’s attention that some of the photos have been deemed offensive, and some have even taken the liberty of censoring the memorial without permission.

Colorado Family Fights to Keep Loved One’s Headstone

The Geschke family buried their brother in Colorado Springs’s Evergreen Cemetery close to five years ago, something no one ever wants to have to do. The plot is the final resting place of two brothers, Timothy Alan and Ryan James Geschke, who passed away in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

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The headstone reads, “Beloved Sons and Brothers Gone Too Soon” and has numerous photographs permanently affixed to it.

Much to their surprise, one day, when family members visited the gravesite, they noticed that black tape had been put on one of the photos, a picture showing one of the brothers holding up middle fingers.

It’s unclear as to who put the tape on the photo, but now that the cemetery has been made aware of the complaint from an unidentified source, the gravestone has been put in jeopardy.

One of the rules that Evergreen Cemetery claims is being broken states the following:

No words or images may be engraved on a memorial that would be considered profane or offensive to the general public.

The cemetery has stated that the gravestone’s offensive imagery must be removed, but the grieving family is fighting, citing the difficulty of going through the process of getting a headstone in the first place.

Read More: Notable People Buried at Neglected Colorado Cemetery

Check out the full story from KOAA 5 here