Cremated remains of 23 people who had lived and died homeless are put to rest
SELF, Inc. helped raise $12,000 to bury the remains of the group, who had been identified as having engaged at one time or other with a homeless services agency in Philadelphia.
They died homeless in 2020, their bodies unclaimed.
The city cremated all 23 of them and placed the ashes into boxes that were then stored in the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.
On Friday, four dozen mourners, many who work in homeless services, gathered in the damp cold of Mount Peace Cemetery in North Philadelphia to hear the names of the dead read aloud, and to watch the boxes be placed with tenderness and flowers into a 50-foot-long communal grave.
“We gather at this holy site,” said Sister Mary Scullion, the cofounder of the anti-homelessness nonprofit Project Home, “because we believe that every human being is precious, beloved, and worthy.
“When we read the 23 names, we are reaffirming their humanity — and ours.”
Few outside the Medical Examiner’s Office knew the remains existed until Self Inc., an agency that provides housing and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness, decided last year to hold a New Orleans-type funeral for Lester Ross, a beloved Philadelphia man of the streets who’d lived homeless and died of complications connected to COVID-19.
His body had initially been unclaimed because no one knew he’d died, said Mike Hinson, president and COO of SELF Inc. “We did a service for him because he deserved dignity in death,” Hinson said.
When Ross’ remains were picked up last October, Roy Hoffman, medical director of the Fatality Review Program in the Medical Examiner’s Office, said, “It gave me the idea of, ‘Oh, gosh, you can get more people’s remains here.’ ”
SELF Inc. created the Lester Ross Homeless Memorial Fund and, starting last December, raised $12,000 to bury the remains of the 23 majority Black and brown people who had been identified as having engaged at one time or other with a homeless services agency in Philadelphia.
Amazingly, in what Hinson described as a “frantic phone call” on Thursday, a man saying he was the son of a woman whose remains were part of the group asked to take them.
“We have no idea how this person found out about his mother after two years of not coming forward,” Hinson said. As it happens, the Medical Examiner’s Office had yet another set of remains to be buried. “So, we got one extra yesterday and included them in today’s service.”
Speakers at the ceremony on a hill at the cemetery Friday morning referenced the difficult existence of those who had lived unhoused and exposed on city streets.
“They did not have very much in life,” said former Mayor the Rev. Dr. W. Wilson Goode Sr., the chair and CEO of SELF Inc. “They now have all of you to say farewell.”
The Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, director for Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs for the city of Philadelphia, intoned, “We didn’t do right by them in life. But there’s a chance now in death to lovingly lay them to rest.”
Jacqueline Baily-Davis, a Philadelphia Police Department staff inspector and adviser to the Ross Fund, explained that “families of chronically homeless people do not have the money to pay for traditional funeral services, so their loved ones’ remains are left unclaimed.”
“To provide a sense of respect and decency for the dearly departed, we wanted to commit to the city’s motto of ‘brotherly love and sisterly affection.’ This is beautiful — something good.”
While the gathered sang “I’ll Fly Away,” a line of 23 volunteers, each bearing flowers and a box of remains, moved slowly through wet grass and mud to the newly dug grave.
Standing about four feet deep in the hole, cemetery workers accepted the boxes, each weighing about 10 pounds, and gingerly placed them in the dirt.
“I’m doing this because these people had no one else,” said volunteer Denise McKoy, 60, of Southwest Philadelphia, after she handed over the remains she was carrying. “They’re family now.”
Explaining how deceased people come to be in the care of the Medical Examiner’s Office, Hoffman said that “we are a means of last resort.”
Among the 23 sets of remains that wound up at Mount Peace on Friday, he said, “we reached a few next of kin, but they were either unable to handle the remains, or simply were not interested. I don’t know the exact numbers.”
“It’s so sad when ashes sit in the building and no one claims them.”
If SELF Inc. hadn’t organized the ceremony, Hoffman said, the remains would eventually have been taken to Laurel Hills Cemetery in East Falls for burial, unheralded and unseen by anyone else, Hoffman said.
At least for the 23, visitors said, there were witnesses to their interment who stopped for 60 minutes to think about them and say goodbye.
And, mourners said, the people who were honored on Friday served as an inspiration for those who make a living battling homelessness to never give up that fight.
“As we lay these loved ones to rest,” Scullion said, “may our God of mercy and justice make us restless to work even harder for a just and humane society where no one ever again needs to live or die on the streets.”
The names of the 23 people whose remains were buried follows:
Kevin Agrella, Luis Alduende, Salvadore Flores Altamirano, Tracy Tyrone Austin, Thomas J. Bird, Marcial Cabilan, Vincente Concepcion, Eric Davenport, Sean Michael D’Orazio, Larry A. Henderson, Rodney Hontz, Charles Peter Hulitt, Truong V. Huynh, William Joyce, Roberto Martinez, Juan Jacinto Morales, Brent H. Moyer, Alan Nawad, Esmeraldo Pagan, Marco Richardson, David Robertson, Santiago Robles, Joseph Thompson.