Cemetery Denies SpongeBob Monument For Slain U.S. Soldier

This is a story that begins tragically: Sgt. Kimberly Walker was found dead in a hotel room last February, allegedly killed by her boyfriend, Sgt. Montrell Mayo. But the tragedy doesn’t end there.

Walker was a huge SpongeBob SquarePants fan, so much so that she was buried with a SpongeBob doll in her casket. Then, the Walker family did what any other sensible SpongeBob-adoring family would do and ordered two six-foot-tall SpongeBob monuments, each weighing over 7,000 pounds and costing more than $13,000 apiece.

The SpongeBob monuments, for which the family purchased six plots, were built with the consultation of an employee from Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery. Each monument was adorned in military uniform—one in Army fatigues to represent Kimberly, and another in Naval attire for her twin sister Carol, who is still alive.

“I thought it was the greatest thing in the cemetery,” Carol Walker told a WLWT, a local news station. “I even told the people there, ‘I think this is the best monument I’ve ever seen and the best headstone that you have in the cemetery,’ and they all agreed that it came out really nice.”

But when the monuments were erected last week, the SpongeBob haters at the Spring Grove cemetery immediately ordered them removed. The cemetery admits that they feel horrible about the situation. “We are working with the Walker famiy and are committed to design a solution, at our expense, that will properly memorialize Kimberly within the context of Spring Grove’s historic landscape and guidelines,” said Gary Freytag, president of the cemetery.

Walker’s mother, Deborah, however, says the family feel differently about their memorial to America’s greatest soldier of love and happiness. “We all feel like SpongeBob should stay there.”

(Thanks, Pedro Nakama)