36th Annual Interfaith Memorial for Indigent Persons Draws 'Friends'

by Suzanne Hanney

When someone is faced with poverty, incarceration, addiction, domestic violence or social injustice, they can’t heal and reach their full potential on their own. They need someone to walk alongside them, a “friend” – “cara” in Irish Gaelic, said Dr. Kathleen St. Louis Caliento.

W. Earl Lewis was a doorman in Chicago in the mid-1980s who heard about the burial of indigent persons in mass graves; he worked more than a year to organize the first interfaith memorial service for them in 1986. Tom Owens was a successful businessman who retired in the 1980s and went from shelter to shelter meeting people, becoming friends with them and using his connections to help people find jobs — 8,000 people since he founded the Cara Program in 1991.

“Mr. Lewis and Mr. Owens…, these two men answered a call so much greater than themselves,” said Caliento, president & CEO of the Cara Collective and keynote speaker at the 36th annual Interfaith Memorial for Indigent Persons, May 25 at the First United Methodist Church. “They saw an injustice, set out to correct it, and thousands of lives have been transformed. There’s power in community. We see it every day in the work we do, our participants, our alumni. And we see it today in this room.”

The Interfaith Memorial Service gives the community a chance to stand in as “surrogate family” —or friends—for people who were cremated by the Office of the Cook County Medical Examiner. The roughly 60 persons at the lunchtime service were able to mourn individuals who died poor – not necessarily homeless – but with no one to claim their remains.

This year, there were more than 400 names of diverse ethnicities listed in the memorial service program. Eight people spent 25 minutes reading them.

“Each of them has a life story and belongs in this world, an inherent dignity,” said Dave Becker, a ministerial intern at the Third Unitarian Church of Chicago. “Let us not turn away from the 1 in 6 people in the U.S. who lives in poverty, the 40 million who will not find food. We are connected in mystery, tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

There was also a welcome from the Rev. Dr. Myron F. McCoy, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church; greetings from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, speakers from the Sikh Religious Society and the Archdiocese of Chicago and a benediction from the Zoroastrian Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

The KAIA String Quartet, comprised of violinists Victoria Moreira and Naomi Culp, violaist Amanda Grimm and cellist Hope DeCelle, played the prelude, interlude and postlude. The KAIA Quartet are the first ensemble in residence at classical music station, WFMT.

Andrew Kilens found out about the service as a member of First United Methodist after he lost both grandmothers the previous week. “It was a blessing to be able to celebrate their lives at the memorial, like God was calling me to be present with these individuals who are no longer present on Earth anymore but who celebrate eternal life with the Lord.”

Karina Fruin had just started working in Cook County government and saw an email about the service. “I thought it was quite beautiful to have a service like this. I am an Orthodox Catholic and we have a big heart for people who died unknown.” Fruin was going to send the list of names to Mother Nectaria at St. Paul Skete in Grand Junction, Tenn., so that she could pray for them.

“This gathering is a way to say these individuals mattered,” said Sheila Rogers, who has worked in social services for nearly 30 years. “We want to close our eyes and throw them a dollar. But if we are God’s people, this is a way of taking care of one another.”

The KAIA Quartet plays at the 36th annual Interfaith Memorial for Indigent Persons on May 25 at First United Methodist Church.