Reef Ball Foundation Photos and Project Description Database

Thursday, October 4, 2001 Cremated remains become part of memorial reef created off Charleston by Bruce Smith Associated Press CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- Amid prayers and remembrances, Rose Kovacs had her own prayer answered Wednesday when she looked out on Charleston Harbor and watched a barge carry a big concrete ball out to sea. The ball bore a plaque containing the names of those whose cremated remains would make up the first community memorial reef created by Eternal Reefs Inc. The remains also were mixed in two dozen other concrete balls that would be sunk offshore as part of a fishing reef. Those reef balls, some weighing as much two tons, contained the cremated remains of Kovacs' first husband, her second husband and her second husband's first wife. Kovacs had kept the ashes in her home for years. "I just kept them in the house, and I just didn't know what I wanted to do," she said. "I just loved this idea because they all loved the ocean and the harbor, and I felt, 'Why not?' I thought this was a prayer answered." Eternal Reefs, based in Decatur, Ga., made it possible for the remains to be buried at sea. "I wanted to lay them to rest with the living and all of God's creatures," Kovacs said. "I just thought it was best for my loved ones in this kind of environment rather in a cemetery. Someday I hope to be right next to them out there in the ocean." As she spoke, members of other families had their pictures taken next to the ball with the plaque. Some made pencil tracings of the plaque on notebook paper. Don Brawley, an avid diver, founded Eternal Reefs in 1998. Six years earlier, he co-founded Reef Ball Development Group, which developed the concrete balls used as artificial reefs. Approximately 150,000 have been sunk worldwide, he said........