Posted on 12/07/2011 11:42:24 AM PST by BenLurkin
The remains of hundreds of Los Angeles County residents whose bodies were never claimed by family or friends were buried in a mass grave Wednesday.
“This holiday season many of us are reminded how fortunate we are to be surrounded by our loved ones,” Supervisor Don Knabe said Tuesday, when he and his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors observed a moment of silence for the people being buried. “Sadly, not everyone shares this blessing.”
He said the 1,639 people designated for the mass interment at the Los Angeles County Crematory and Cemetery “are individuals that, for one reason or another, have no one but the county to provide them with a respectful and dignified burial.”
Knabe described some of the deceased as homeless or poor, many of whom with “no families to grieve for them”.
“Regardless of what their status in life was, each one of their lives matters,” he said. “It matters to us, their county family.”
Aw. How sad. Prayers for these souls & for all others who have no one to pray for them.
Through the mercy of God, may their souls rest in peace.
Yes, very sad.
And just in case anyone is wondering if the state of California searches very hard for relatives, be advised they search VERY hard because they can force them to pay for the interment—happened to a friend of mine, her ex husband who had nothing to do with his kids, who abandoned her 40 years ago with three small children, died recently, and the State came after the children to make them pay for their so-called “father’s” cremation.
Does this happen everywhere? Are there mass grave sites all over the country?
In our little town back in the 1960’s a homeless man with no family passed away and our Catholic Church held a funeral mass for him and the whole Catholic grade school attended and we buried him in the church cemetery.
Wonderful!
Makes me think of the boys featured in this article:
http://www.americancatholic.org/samo/Feature.aspx?articleid=57&IssueID=30
In New York City, unclaimed dead people are buried on Hart Island (prisoners from the City's jails dig the graves). There are similar sites in most big cities; Google "Potter's Field."
...some keywords with irony in them, even. Little correction there.
Alcohol is a hellava drug.
Insanity is a hellava illness.
No question about that, and that to whatever extent, a certain percentage of these individuals are in part to blame for their lot. That said, few would chose the loneliness and dispair of an unmarked mass grave...
If it were in my power, I would remove most of those keywords.
The Missing in America Project has buried hundreds of unclaimed remains of veterans. Nationwide. A very worthwhile project indeed...
Not sure how much culpability an insane person has - and point well taken.
My point is that it is usually a long hard road that leads to total abandonment by all friends and family - and usually drugs (alcohol) and insanity play a major role.
My uncle pointed out about my crazy Grandmother (his mom) that “if she had a bad leg we wouldn’t make fun of her and call her “gimpy”.”. But because she is abrasive, abusive and bat guano crazy.....
How sad. Prayers for these poor souls.
Sounds like a major opportunity to launder some bodies whose lives were illicitly ended prematurely.
Several years ago there was an article about this in the Wall Street Journal. It was both amusing and sad.
True enough. I have a nephew who is schizophrenic - it took forever to get him into a treatment program, and to date he’s been reasonably successful in his battle. But I know the time will come when he slips into whatever void waits and the thread that connects him with the family now will be broken.
Years ago I was always the first one to the office, and as such, it was my task to shoo the men that would sleep in the alcove away before other workers or customers got there. I got to know them a bit, and although some of them were nuts, they never game me any grief by pooping on the doorstep or trying to break in or vandalize. As long as they weren’t doing any harm, I never saw a good reason to not let them find a place out of the rain. Frankly, with them around it may have kept someone else from trying to break in. Anyway, one morning I got there, and as I was telling this one poor old fellow who’d obviously been living rough a long time that he had to move on for the day, he said in his near waking state, “Dad? OK, dad. Don’t worry, I won’t be late for school.” It was a profoundly depressing moment...
Oh, Lord, how sad that is!
Considering this is Los Angeles, I'd pay dollars to donuts that the vast majority were illegals. Some probably died from O.D. or knife fights, but most of them were likely elderly and brought over by their immigrant adult children and dumped in the hospital and abandoned for the tax payer to subsidize.
It's tragic that anyone would die alone and even their remains unclaimed, but that's in our culture. In others, it appears, not so much.
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