CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Off U.S. Highway 77, there’s multiple cemeteries.
One belongs to Saint Anthony’s Church and just a few feet away is another. It’s a nameless place people still go to visit their lost loved ones.
Lately, doing that has become a challenge
There’s hanging tree limbs, trash and weeds covering the entire property.
Under it, you would find a cemetery. People who have been lost, or forgotten.
“These graves date back to the early 1900s,” Freddy Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez has family buried at the cemetery. For the last five years, he’s been doing the maintenance work.
“I’m just doing it because it could be one of my relatives in here. I have my mother-in-law here but, it wouldn’t be fair to just do one of them, so I just do the whole thing,” he said.
Gonzalez is doing all this out of his own pocket with the help of his brother-in-law, but it hasn’t been easy.
“When I go to work, no one comes around. I spend hours and hours trying to clean it up,” Gonzalez said.
For as long as Gonzalez can remember, no one has stepped in to help. Now, he and many others have the same question.
“Who owns this property so we can talk with them,” he said.
Robstown City Secretary Gabby Garcia told Action 10 News they’ve been investigating this cemetery for several years.
Garcia said they've been reaching out to multiple sources including Saint Anthony’s Church. Still, they have no lead on who is responsible.
One member of the Robstown Cemetery Association said they’ve also searched for answers, but no one knows who the owner is.
Ramon Funeral Home officials added they have not done any burials at this cemetery because there’s no one in charge.
For now, the Gonzalez family has taken things into their own hands.
They ask the community to help in any way they can, by joining in on their clean-up efforts or coming forward with any information about this property.
