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Gravescape Can Pay Respects To The Dearly Departed For You

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 11, 2008

TAMPA - Jim Flautt lives in Fort Lauderdale and, until recently, the only way he knew to check on his father's grave in St. Petersburg was to drive the 240 miles.

Then he heard about Gravescape.com. For $45.95, a representative of the new company went to Bay Pines Veterans Cemetery, snapped several pictures of Army veteran Don Flautt's grave and e-mailed them to his son.

Now, Flautt can check on the grave any time he wishes. He can even have flowers placed there.

"I think it's an ingenious idea," he says.

Gravescape.com is the creation of Mark Martin, a 43-year-old Ohio businessman whose company will go to any cemetery in the lower 48 states to provide reassurance to relatives hundreds or thousands of miles away.

It launched in December and so far has about 100 clients, Martin says. He expects business to take off during his 12-month advertising and public relations blitz.

Martin had planned to retire for good when he sold his transportation logistics business, he says, but the Gravescape.com idea was too powerful to resist.

It popped into his head one day after he had traveled 150 miles to tend his mother's grave. As he walked away from her resting place, the thought struck him: "How many people can't do what I just did, and what do they do?"

In times past, people tended to stay in the same community where they buried their parents and grandparents. But modern mobility has opened the door to ventures such as Gravescape.com.

People often move far away from family, Martin notes. "They might go to college at Cornell, go to work in Philadelphia, and they're from St. Louis."
Florist shops also deliver plants to graves, but customers don't always know how their flowers look, Martin says:

"That visual verification we give to people - it's a home run!"

Though private cemeteries aren't likely to provide such a service, Bay Pines and other

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