Levine kept all the people she could locate apprised of the activity at the cemetery. Money trickled in from donations, while maintenance fees for some of the plots, daily burials and cremations helped to bring in some necessary funds. She invested her own money and along with the help of her husband and family friend, they have been working every day to improve the cemetery. Levine and her volunteer team are still cleaning up buildings that are ready to be torn down, to have a place to work until funds become available to replace them.įilled with determination, Levine purchased a tractor and built relationships with vendors who supply caskets as well as supplies needed in order to operate. The physical task of restoration involved cleaning all the headstones, restoring water to the property, mowing, cleaning years of fallen leaves and cutting tree branches. This wonderful place was so neglected as to be unrecognizable.” “Licensing had been lost and utilities turned off. Not only were many graves unidentifiable, the grounds themselves were completely overgrown and broken down. She wrote to every name on the list, assuring people that the cemetery was secure and asking for help in identifying the animals and the plots in which they lay.Īs the task unfolded, it became a massive undertaking. That was where the journey began, trying to match people with plots. There were no records to work with except the names of people who had buried their animals with the confidence that the cemetery would always be there. Her first order of business involved identifying all the graves: there was no map of the cemetery and many plots had no headstones. Levine began restoring the cemetery in early April of 2018. The way I feel about this place, other people feel the same way and it had to be saved.” “My pets are there, they’re my children and there are thousands of other pets at the cemetery.

“When I learned it was in trouble, I just knew that I had to save it,” Levine said. Her relationship with the cemetery is more than 20 years old. Levine was motivated to restore the cemetery, as it is near and dear to her heart. A dozen devoted pet owners’ cremated remains, including a war veteran, lay in rest as well beside their dearly loved animals. The cemetery is home to approximately 10,000 souls including dogs, cats, rabbits and a circus elephant. A real estate broker by trade, Levine unearthed the facts surrounding the cemetery and marshalled her energy into not only stopping what could have been a project for a bulldozer but into resurrecting and restoring the cemetery. The cemetery was in total disrepair, overgrown with weeds, stones covered in lichen and crumbling apart.

Her nonprofit bears the same name as the cemetery. She quickly formed a not-for-profit corporation and was able to secure the cemetery, renaming it Forever Angels Pet Cemetery at Abbingdon Hill. When Rita Levine learned that the cemetery, then called Abbingdon Hill, had not only been abandoned but sold, she knew time was not on her side. The cemetery had been abandoned and auctioned off to a land developer, who had no idea he had purchased a pet cemetery when he bought 15 ½ acres of land at auction in Orange County in 2017. The pets buried in Forever Angels Pet Cemetery at Abbingdon Hill in Montgomery would be thankful for the work Rita Levine has done to revitalize their final resting place.

Angels rest pet cemetery