Unclaimed remains laid to rest in Fayetteville church garden

Unclaimed remains laid to rest in Fayetteville church garden

The Rev. Lowell Grisham, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, prays Tuesday over the burial sites of cremains from 14 individuals during the dedication of the St. Joseph of Arimathea Community Memorial Garden at the Fayetteville church. The 14, whose remains had been unclaimed by family or friends, were buried at the site with the permission of the Washington County Coroner Roger Morris.
The Rev. Lowell Grisham, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, prays Tuesday over the burial sites of cremains from 14 individuals during the dedication of the St. Joseph of Arimathea Community Memorial Garden at the Fayetteville church. The 14, whose remains had been unclaimed by family or friends, were buried at the site with the permission of the Washington County Coroner Roger Morris.

The Rev. Lowell Grisham stopped at a small grave site, bowed his head and said aloud, "John William Nash." He moved to the next grave, bowed his head and said, "Brian Boggs."

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

About 50 people were in attendance Tuesday as the cremains of 14 people were interred in the St. Joseph of Arimathea Community Memorial Garden at St. Paul’s Epsicopal Church. The interfaith funeral service included selections by representatives of the evangelical Christian, Roman Catholic and Humanist traditions and the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu faiths.

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

All participants took the opportunity to fill with dirt the graves of 14 people buried without family or friends at noon Tuesday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. Many of the individuals were homeless or had “nobody left,” said Washington County Coroner Roger Morris, whose office is responsible for the remains.

The rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville continued his journey, stopping at each of 14 tiny graves in the church garden.

Home

The cremains of the following Washington County individuals were buried Tuesday in the Joseph of Arimathea garden at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Fayetteville.

Bruce Barr

Ronald Davis

Kenneth Gogue

Wayne Kitchen

Lawson Johnson

Mona Robinson

Paul Sharpe

Paula Stroud

“Baby” Keas

Britt Barnes

Clyde Bowman

Angela Chorba

Jeff Antoine

Brian Boggs

John William Nash

The Human Route

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human

When you are born, where do you come from?

When you die, where do you go?

Life is like a floating cloud which appears.

Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.

The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.

Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.

We may not know your names or your faces,

But we know that, like us, you have experienced

The Human Route.

— Buddhist poem

Read by Barbara Taylor

of Morning Star Zen Center

The church hosted an interfaith service at noon Tuesday to dedicate the St. Joseph of Arimathea Community Memorial Garden and inter cremains of 14 people whose bodies were not claimed by family or friends.

STORIES SCANT

Some of the individual cremains have been held for as long as six years by the Washington County Coroner's Office, said Coroner Roger Morris.

"They were people also," Morris said during the service. "Some of them had no families, and some of them tried to hide from their families. But rich or poor, it makes no difference."

He told the story of one of the men buried, who rode a local transit bus all day on the day he died. Officials think the man might have had some help getting on the bus. "But when they found him at the end of the day, he was unresponsive," Morris said.

Some of the deaths were weather-related, he continued. "They were homeless, and they froze to death," he said. Another died when her roof fell in during the severe ice storm a few years back.

"One or two had nobody left," he said. "They lived on welfare or their retirement check."

And one set of cremains came from a baby, but Morris declined to share that story for publication. It was simply too horrific.

"It's been my mission for the last five years to find their families," Morris said. "As the years pass, it gets harder."

The coroner's office receives bodies from apartments, homeless camps, hospitals, hospice, nursing homes and more. The staff will spend hours, days, looking for relatives, Morris said. They check with state agencies, federal agencies and even enter fingerprints into the FBI's Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Such research revealed two of the county's unclaimed cremains belonged to veterans, so they soon will be interred at the Fayetteville National Cemetery, Morris said.

For many years, Morris said, he pondered the final placement of the unclaimed cremains. In addition to a dignified burial, he also wanted round-the-clock access to disinter them if family members are found. Each set of ashes was double bagged and sealed, Morris said.

"Even though they are buried here, we are still looking for their families," he said.

"The coroner had asked us, if he ever found a plot of land to bury them, would we come pray over them," said the Rev. Suzanne Stoner, associate rector at St. Paul's. "It took me two years to think of this [garden]."

The church already hosted a columbarium in one of its gardens, so it was legally certified as a cemetery, Grisham said. The church faced few hurdles for providing a place for the unclaimed cremains.

"The garden is dedicated in the name of Joseph of Arimathea," Grisham said. "Joseph donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of the executed criminal [Jesus], for the man who was the inspiration of my faith and a prophet in the Muslim tradition."

The individual graves ultimately will be marked with proper gravestones, said Alan Ostner, a church member who served on the planning committee for the garden.

COMMUNITY

Morris said he was pleased with the interfaith service Tuesday at St. Paul's. In addition to the Episcopal pastors, representatives of the evangelical Christian, the Roman Catholic and Humanists traditions and the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu faiths spoke and shared prayers.

"We don't know what religion they were, or if they even had a religion," Morris said. "Every faith is special. We are all the same."

"This is an expression of our hope and love of humanity," Grisham said to open the service. "We see this as an opportunity to express our identification with others as human beings. We offer them hospitable welcome and are honored to provide them with this beautiful place to be remembered."

"Father, Creator, the one who knows everything about us, Dear Lord," prayed the Rev. Angela Mosley Monts of St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville. "Celebrate those who were created in love."

"... Grant that our brothers and sisters may sleep here in peace until you awaken them to glory," said the Rev. Jason Tyler of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville. "For you are the resurrection and the life. Then they will see you face to face and in your light will see light and know the splendor of God."

"To those who are known to you, to those whose hearts and prayers you have heard, we trust those whom you have known will never be lost to you," Grisham said.

As Grisham closed the service he invited those in attendance to welcome those who had no one into the community by by pouring dirt into the graves. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," he said.

Ostner chose to replace the dirt with his bare hands as others used the garden tools provided. He said that built another layer of personal connection with the unknown individuals buried here.

"I think the coroner said it best," Ostner said. "We are all the same. I wanted to really offer them a blessing."

"It was a great honor to be part of the experience," said Barbara Taylor of Morning Star Zen Center, who read a Buddhist poem during the services. "I felt a healing time in the midst of a very divisive week," she said, referring to the rhetoric heard during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

"How important it is to honor and respect these people," she said. "We don't know their names. Nobody has claimed them. But the community embraces them."

"They are going to be loved again," said St. Paul's member Jennifer Cole, who envisions a similar end for herself.

"It was a loving, beautiful thing," she said. "The community came together, and they were ushered out with dignity and love."

NAN Religion on 11/05/2016

Upcoming Events