Forever Fernwood Cemetery Funeral Home

David McNew/Getty Images) On a Saturday night in late August, hundreds of people assembled outside one of Los Angeles’ most popular cultural venues, waiting for its gates to open. Picnic bags and arm chairs hung on shoulders—The Jerk, the 1979 absurdist Steve Martin comedy about an ignoramus’ unlikely rise and spectacular fall, was to be screened—and many took surreptitious sips of craft beers. The line stretched two blocks along a strip-mall-heavy section of Santa Monica Boulevard in east Hollywood, rounding the corner of Gower Street for another few blocks. The questions pinging through the air were like those furtively asked outside a chic nightclub: “Do you think we’ll get in?” “Have you done this before?”This wasn’t a revival theater or a movie night at the Hollywood Bowl. Rather, it was a typical Saturday night during the summer season at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which in the last decade has become as well known for its menagerie of eclectic events as for the many early film stars buried there—including director Ernst Laemmle, composer Franz Waxman, Yiddish playwright Peretz Hirschbein, and mobster Bugsy Siegel. That Saturday, the gates opened a few minutes after 6 p.m., and the masses poured in, streaming across the cemetery’s broad lawns. Picnic bags were opened, wine bottles uncorked, tea candles lit. The skunky bouquet of marijuana materialized, overwhelming the grounds’ natural jasmine aroma. By 7:30, about a thousand people had assembled, and a young Steve Martin emerged, projected 30-feet tall on a mausoleum’s whitewashed wall.While a hit with partygoers, Hollywood Forever’s insouciant attitude toward matters of life and death elides its complicated past. Journalists have also been guilty of submitting to the charms of the place and its management. Most stories about the cemetery have focused on the success of its current owner—Tyler Cassity, a handsome 40-year-old from a wealthy Missouri family of cemeterians—and ignored the cemeter...

Tyler Cassity, who also owns the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles, where he lives, is a defendant in a civil lawsuit in his native Missouri. The suit charges him, his brother and father with looting millions of dollars from insurance polices and trusts that were supposed to be spent on customers’ pre-paid funeral expenses, according to a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting.A path at Gan Yarok Cemetery in Mill Valley photo/foreverfernwood.comWhile his father and brother pleaded guilty three months ago to felony fraud charges — stemming from a now defunct family holding, National Prearranged Services — Tyler Cassity has not been indicted. However, he is a defendant in the ongoing civil suit and, according to the CIR report, federal prosecutors claimed that both Hollywood Forever and Forever Fernwood were operated with illegally obtained funds from NPS.The chair of the Gan Yarok Association, Rabbi David Cooper of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, issued a statement this week to members of the association and others who might be concerned.“When the association began working with Fernwood, we understood that Tyler Cassity’s father and brother were indicted in Missouri for fraud in regard to their cemetery holdings but that they were not involved in any ownership of Fernwood itself,” Cooper wrote. “Cassity himself was not indicted and apparently was not involved according to inquiries the Association made at that time.”As for the misuse of funds, Cooper wrote, “That claim has not been proven and if it were, it does not invalidate the consecration of Gan Yarok.”Gan Yarok was consecrated and billed as the country’s “first green Jewish cemetery” in March 2010, after roughly two years of planning by a consortium of Bay Area congregations: Reform Rodef Sholom in San Rafael; Conservative Netivot Shalom in Berkeley; Orthodox Beth Jacob in Oakland and Beth Israel in Berkeley; and Jewish Renewal Kehilla in Piedmont. It has space for 500 graves; of those, 174 have b...

It took him a while to find the right words to begin.“It’s an awkward feeling to have a celebration at a cemetery,” said Dardik, spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland. “But this is one of the few times, if not the only time, that we’re not here to bury a loved one or friend. We’re here to do something that is remarkably different.”On March 26, approximately 40 people consecrated Gan Yarok, the new Jewish section of Forever Fernwood in Mill Valley, by walking around the burial ground seven times while reciting a collection of psalms.“Today is about forever,” Dardik said. “We are making a natural spot the holiest place that a resting body can have.”A public, nonhalachic dedication is scheduled for Memorial Day weekend.Participating in the Gan Yarok consecration are Dan Fendel and his 7-month-old grandson RamiHebrew for “green garden,” Gan Yarok has space allotted for 500 graves, according to cemetery sales manager Raymond Soudah. It includes Orthodox, Conservative and community areas, each with its own regulations and separating woodchip paths.One section is already open, with room for 100 plots spread across the three areas — surrounded by trees, wildflowers and the voices of children playing at a nearby school.“This moment is incredibly and deeply satisfying,” said Charlene Stern, a founding member of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley and the child of Holocaust survivors. “We said Kaddish all through our trip to Poland, having no idea where our relatives are buried. To have a place is beyond words.”The cemetery’s “green” designation means no concrete liners or embalming fluid are used, according to Rabbi Stuart Kelman, president of Kavod v’Nichum, a consortium of burial societies, Jewish funeral homes and cemeteries. Bodies may be buried either in plain wooden boxes, wicker baskets or biodegradable shrouds.Natural rocks with name plaques, wildflowers, shrubs and trees will serve as markers for the graves instea...