The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1913-03-13

q the writer's sad duty to
attend a number of funerals
and to officiate as chaplain of the
lodge of which l have the distin-
guished honor of being Worshipful
Master, it has never been my I'M
pleasant duty to encounter such an
unpleasant experience as that at the
funeral Of the late Mr.. Joseph Chef
ia, an Italian-American citizen, who
lived an honorable and upright life,
and who lived and died Mason.
MIR. Chetta's funeral took place on
Thursday afternoon, Aug 20, in the
family tomb of St. Roch's Cemetery,
where the unpleasantness referred
to took place.
The usual Scottish rite, or Mason
ic, services were held at the Dante
Lodge, at Kerlerec and Rampant
Streets. They were conducted by the
writer From the lodge we pro-
ceeded to ST. Roch's Cemetery, and,
to our surprise and absolute disgust,
there stood two policemen in uni
form and two plain clothes men, and
when we began the last, sad rite and
sacred ceremony, we were inter-
rupted by the sexton, who informed
us that the board of directors,
whoever they may be, had instructed
HIM not to permit us to say any
service in the cemetery over the re-
n aims of our deceased friend and
brother.
This interruption was nothing
short Of an outrage, inasmuch as we
had made all arrangements for the
burial in ST. Roch's Cemetery; mas
much as the fact that our friend, Mr..
Chetta, had departed this life was
advertised in the newspapers of New
Orleans; inasmuch as the death mott
ces specifically stated that the fun
eral would be in st. ROch's Gene
terry, and by reason of the further
fact that the Chetta family were the
sole owners of the burial plot, and
had an absolute right to have con-
Quoted whatever services they de-
sired on their own property-prop-
erty for which they paid a high price,
and by reason of the still further
fact that our dead friend requested
his beloved ones, shortly before his
end came, that the services be con-
Quoted by his brothers in Dante
Lodge, F. and A. M, telling them,
Il have lived Mason, and so shall
l die one" No one should have had
the right to prevent Lis family and
his friends from carrying out that
wish.
To say the least, the action in pre-
venting us from doing our most
solemn duty, that Of saying service
over the remains Of one of our broth
ers who departed this life, was alb
horring, horrible and positively dis
gushing, and, naturally, did not make
any friends for this board of direc-
tors" for all those attending were
not Masons. Can you imagine how
the broken-hearted wife and her
three children felt when we were
stopped in performing the last
service for our friend? They stood
at the grave with tearstained faces,
and suffered a sufficiently great, in
fact, an irreparable loss in the de-
parture of the husband and father
without going through the embar-
rassment Of seeing the Casket placed
in the family tomb without the cere-
mOny because of the arbitrary action
Of the board, that is, according to
the statement of the sexton of the
city Of death. However, Mr.. Edi-
tor, we, all of us, offered up prayer
in silence and paid our respects with
bowed heads.
We are a law-abiding people in
Dante Lodge, and there is no reason
why the police and plain clothes