Honoring the Unclaimed Dead
Andre House volunteers gather to honor lives of the forgotten

By Rebecca Bostic, The Catholic Sun
December 7, 2006

LITCHFIELD PARK — On the evening before one of the largest holidays of the year, one group of Valley Catholics didn’t sit around a dinner table with family.

Instead, they gathered in the dense darkness engulfing an area of Litchfield Park that goes unnoticed most of the year.

The faithful gathered at White Tanks County Cemetery, a graveyard that is large in size, but small in recognition and number of visitors.

There is no sign to mark its location and no headstones in the cemetery’s vast expanse. It is home to those who have passed on without a family member or friend to claim their body.

Every year, on the eve of Thanksgiving, the cemetery is unusually full of life when the Andre House, a homeless ministry in Phoenix, hosts a memorial service and candlelight vigil to honor those who died without loved ones present. The group quietly gathered once more Nov. 22.

“I’m here because most the people who are homeless don’t have a family or can’t afford to have a funeral or memorial service, so I’m here to honor their lives,” said Gloria Chavez, a parishioner at All Saints Newman Center in Tempe.

“No person is any less than another person, so no person deserves any less than anyone else,” she said. “Part of being Christian is living faith through acts of service.”

The Andre House provides a place in Phoenix for Christians to live out the call to service.

“It’s part of our mission to practice the corporal works of mercy,” said Holy Cross Father Bill Wack, the director of Andre House. “We feed the hungry every day, we clothe the naked, we do all of that, but we don’t really do anything for the dying or the dead.”

Upon this realization, according to Fr. Wack, a volunteer many years ago connected the Andre House with the weekly burials that occur at White Tanks Cemetery for the unclaimed dead in Maricopa County.

Although Andre House workers now attend the weekly ceremonies, the leadership strives to gather in a large group once a year to “remember everyone who has died over the course of the year. To remember them and say their names out loud,” Fr. Wack said.

After directing the Andre House for the past five years, Fr. Wack is beginning to recognize more names every year.

“I knew they were dead and I knew they were here, but just hearing their names at this service every year, it just really brings it back. I can picture them curled up in a blanket outside our building,” he said.

“Kelly — whose name will be read tonight — she was at our house every night in a wheelchair using our services, our bathroom, getting cloths, eating dinner; it brings it back every year, ” he said.

Like the lives of many of the deceased buried at White Tanks Cemetery, the memorial service is humble, yet heartfelt. Participants gathered, holding a lit candle and a carnation, to listen to the list of the names of the deceased men and women who were not claimed by a living person.

Each carnation was eventually put next to one of the many graves of a person who died in the last year.

Participants prayed by the fresh graves — a small metal disc attached to a stake buried in the dirt, dimly lit by a luminary for the memorial service.