Regina Brunner Holmes, a life well lived

The family and friends of Regina Brunner Holmes faced the huge emotional challenge of balancing anger, grief, and respect for a life well-lived as they gathered Sunday to remember an 85-year-old woman brutally killed in her East Mount Airy home.

They took the high road.

"Yes, we are extremely angry that our mother was terribly beaten and killed," Adam Brunner acknowledged before a capacity crowd of about 500 at Joseph Levine & Sons funeral home in Trevose.

Then he expressed compassion for people whose lives are filled with "trauma, pain, and sadness" and said his mother's killer "must have suffered so much for his heart to turn so cold."

He said he hoped for a prison system that truly rehabilitates rather than hardens. "We are so weary from all this violence," he said. "We don't want anyone else to suffer the way we are suffering."

His brother, Eric Brunner, said a friend told him, "The person who murdered my mother took her death, but he did not take her life."

Holmes was found a week ago in her home after she didn't come to work at her part-time job at the Chestnut Hill Local newspaper. She had been beaten and stabbed. Her throat had been slashed.

Police announced Saturday that they had arrested a man who had worked as a handyman in the neighborhood, Leroy Wilson, 37. They said their suspect had a long criminal history.

At the service, Holmes was described as a smart, spunky woman who had faced her own challenges: widowhood, divorce, and cancer.

Eric Brunner said she had accomplished her life goals. "She often said, 'If I die, do not feel sorry because I have lived a full life.' "

He described his mother as an early adopter of healthy eating. A package of Tastykakes was a rare treat the family shared. She was old-fashioned enough to keep writing letters long after most people had stopped, but also had been part of an encounter group in the '70s and had chided her teenage sons and their friends for using the word chick.

"You have to stop using the word chick because it's degrading to young women," she told them.

Adam Brunner said his mother told him that, as a 16-year-old Overbrook High School student, she said yes when a "young man from another race" asked her to dance. Everyone else stopped dancing and moved to the edge of the floor. She and the young man kept dancing.

Brunner asked whether she was worried what the others would think. "I liked this man," she said. "I wanted to dance with him."

Brunner said his mother always cared about injustice and inequality. "She did what felt right," he said. "She embodied her values."

She worked for more than 20 years at Northwest Center for Older Adults, now called Center in the Park, an agency that helped older people maintain their independence. Rennie Cohen, a coworker there, said they got off to a rocky start but became great friends. She said Holmes was a complex person to whom a wide variety of adjectives could apply. A few of them: caring, assertive, bold, perfectionist, honest, and kind.

Eric Brunner said a friend told him that his mother's soul might be confused after her sudden death. It might help to give it permission to move on. So, in front of the audience, he did just that. "I want to say, Mom, it's OK to go now," he said. "The light is waiting for you. You are free from your burdens."