PERPETUAL MEMORIALS ON THE WEB: DOUBLE CLICKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR

Death is final, but the Internet lives forever.

At the new Web site called Tribute Park, loved ones can honor the deceased in perpetuity. Visitors to a site can view photos and video clips, listen to audio recordings, and read newspaper clippings and other biographical material placed there in collaboration between the families and writers at the Internet development company Cyber Impact.

The company thinks of Tribute Park as an on-line Biography Channel, in this case for Everyman.

"It encompasses every kind of communication medium known to man," says Mark Moore, the St. Peters, Mo., company's project manager. Cyber Impact is one of about 20 companies nationwide offering similar services.

Besides posting memorials to people who have died, at Tribute Park (www.tributepark.com) families can honor someone who is still living, find information on hospice care, veterans organizations or genealogical research, and even find peaceful music, art and hosted chats behind a button titled Meditation Garden.

For a one-time fee, the memorials and tributes are maintained in perpetuity. "I like the idea of honoring people and their families preserving their legacy and history," says project manager Mark Moore. "This is an opportunity for people to hold onto their heritage."

The site has local ties. Moore is a Perryville native and former Cape Girardeau resident. Jim Cohen, also a former Cape Girardeau resident, is the company's CEO. Among the investors are Cape Girardeans Jim Riley and Cord Dombrowski and Marble Hill resident Stan Crader.

Different memorials

In sample tributes available on the Web site, Moore has included one for his uncle, a Marine who was killed in 1944 during the Allied invasion of Saipan. It consists simply of a picture and the letter 20-year-old Charles Rosco Moore wrote to be opened in case he didn't survive.

He wrote of giving anything to see Perryville, Mo., again, to go fishing with his dad and to someday find the right girl to settle down with.

The letter reads in part: "I said a minute ago that I'm not afraid. I don't mean that like it sounds for everything inside of me seems to be in my mouth when I think of it. What I mean is that I'm willing to give up all these things myself if it will help others to get what I'm missing now. I want Rog and Ruth and their kids when they are born to have those things.

"Please don't grieve for me because I know exactly what I'm doing. I think now that I knew all the time. My greatest prayer is that you'll never read this letter."

Another sample memorial makes use of e-mails written by friends and relatives after 40-year-old Elizabeth Verble Schultz who died in Arizona. The collection of messages tells her story. "Families are scattered," Moore said. "You might have had an experience no one else had."

The content of the site is only edited for appropriateness.

For visitors, Tribute Park is like a cyber cemetery in one sense, Moore says. "You might go there for the same reasons, but it's not just a tombstone."

At Tribute Park, children and new family members also can learn about the family history, Moore said. Information can be updated through whomever the family designates as the site administrator.

'A family project'

The company offers four memorial packages or options can be bought a la carte. The tribute packages start at $195 and can reach $1,200 for a memorial involving up to 200 photographs along with video and audio clips. Families can write their own memorials or simply present information for Tribute Park's writers to organize.

Personal tributes for as little as $20 also can be purchased, Moore said.

Locally, Tribute Park is newly available through Ford & Sons Funeral Home. The company views it as another feature of its service, not a replacement for anything else.

"There is nothing else like it," said owner Walter "Doc" Ford. Half a dozen families are currently considering whether to honor their loved one in this way, Ford said. "It's a family project."

Some other local funeral homes either are evaluating the Tribute Park service or are satisfied with posting obituaries on their own Web sites.

Part of the amount paid for the memorials goes into a perpetuity fund used to maintain the site. If Cyber Impact should go out of business, Moore said the memorial would be transferred back to the Web site of the funeral home that sold it or the family would be provided with the information in some kind of archival form, probably on CD.

The Southeast Missourian maintains obituaries on its Web site, www.semissourian. com, but Tribute Park is not an obituary site, Moore says.

"What I want is stories."