U.S. Army Sgt. Kimberly Walker, 28, truly loved SpongeBob Squarepants, a popular cartoon figure on the US cable network Nickelodeon. Every year, she had a SpongeBob birthday party, her family told local media outlets. The curtains in her home and in her bathroom also featured him. Walker was allegedly strangled and beaten to death by her boyfriend, who is also a member of the US military, in February of this year in a Colorado Spring, Colorado hotel room. She had served two one-year tours of duty in Iraq. So her family decided to honor her love of the well-known cartoon character at her gravesite. They ordered matching SpongeBob headstones for her and for her sister – one in an army uniform for Kimberly, and one in a navy uniform for her twin sister, Kara, an IT specialist for the Navy who is stationed in Naples, Italy. The gravestones were six-feet tall, weighed 7,000 pounds and cost $13,000 each, and the family had to obtain legal permission from Nickelodeon to use the design. The family obtained approval from an official at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio where Kimberly is buried who said they had no problem with the family's wishes, and even signed a contract to allow the stones to be installed. But when the two tombstones were delivered on Oct. 10th, the cemetery said the next day that they were taking them down immediately. "The family chose a design with the guidance of a Spring Grove employee who unfortunately made an error in judgment," the cemetery's president Gary Freytag told CNN. "The monument does not fit within Spring Grove Cemetery guidelines, was not approved by senior management and cannot remain here." Freytag admitted that the mistake was the cemetery's and that if necessary, it would reimburse the family for the entire $26,000 spend on the tombstones. "I feel terrible that it got to this point but I'm hoping we can come out at the other end of the tunnel with a solution," he told the Associated Press. The Walker family, however, were not happy with the cemetery's actions. Her sister Kara said that the decision dishonored her sister, who had devoted her life to serving her country. In an attempt to resolve the issue, cemetery officials met with the Walker family in the middle of October to resolve the issue. According to media reports, the cemetery suggested alternatives: a regular stone capped with a smaller SpongeBob figure, or laying the two large stones flat on the ground after the area had been redesigned to accommodate their size. But Kimberly's mother, Dorothy, said she is only willing to consider these alternatives if the cemetery is willing to consider returning the original tombstones to their location. Freytag, however, said that his company is willing to look at anything the family wants to do, except return the original stones. Freytag said he appreciated the service of the two sisters, but the families of other people buried in the cemetery were against the use of cartoon characters in the same graveyard that hold the remains of their loved ones. As a result, the Walker family, which noted it had a signed contract that allowed it to place the SpongeBob stones, said it is considering legal action as its next step. The news of the dispute has led to so many calls for and against Spring Grove's decision, that it had to install a special phone extension to deal with the overflow.
