Cathedral to be final resting place of Matthew Shepard
For 20 years, the ashes of Matthew Shepard have not been laid to rest.
Shepard’s killing in 1998, when he was a 21-year-old college student, led to national outrage and, almost overnight, turned him into a symbol of deadly violence against gay people.
Mourners flocked to his funeral that year in Casper, Wyoming, but there were also some protesters, carrying derogatory signs. Shepard’s parents worried that if they chose a final resting place for their son, it would be at risk of desecration.
Now they have found a safe place. On Oct. 26, Shepard will be interred at the Washington National Cathedral, the neo-Gothic, Episcopalian house of worship that is a fixture of American politics and religion.
“I think it’s the perfect, appropriate place,” Dennis Shepard, Matthew’s father, said in an interview Thursday. “We are, as a family, happy and relieved that we now have a final home for Matthew, a place that he himself would love.”
Two decades ago, Matthew Shepard was robbed by two men, pistol-whipped and tied to a fence in Laramie. He hung there bleeding in near-freezing temperatures until a passing bicyclist spotted him, thinking at first that he was a scarecrow. He later died in a hospital.
“His death was a wound on our nation,” Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said in an interview Wednesday. “We are doing our part to bring light out of that darkness and healing to those who have been so often hurt, and sometimes hurt in the name of the church.”
The elder Shepard said his family had long searched for a fitting resting place for his son, who was once an altar boy in the Episcopal Church. They considered spreading his ashes over the mountains and plains of Wyoming, but still wanted a place they could visit to talk to him. They considered splitting the ashes.
At the cathedral, not only will the family be able to visit him, but so will guests from across the world.
“It’s a place where there’s an actual chance for others to sit and reflect about Matthew, and about themselves, and about their friends,” Shepard’s father said.
Shepard’s friend, Jason Marsden, remembers him as a young man who was passionate about global politics and human rights. He remembers the funeral in 1998 — how the attendees overflowed into nearby churches, and how some people came to protest with their signs.
Now Marsden, who works to promote his friend’s legacy as the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, plans to be there in Washington this month when Shepard’s ashes are interred in the crypt.
“It is a noteworthy place to be at rest, and it invites conversations about the importance of this person and what this person represents in American history,” he said.
Marsden added that Shepard liked his church in Wyoming and would have appreciated being interred at the grand cathedral in Washington. “I think that with Matt’s sense of occasion and drama, he would have found that tremendously gratifying and very cool,” he said.
The cathedral regularly hosts prayer services and memorials for politicians and presidents. It recently hosted Sen. John McCain’s funeral. The ceremony on Oct. 26 will begin with a public service in the morning, and the ashes will be interred privately.
Budde will preside over the event alongside the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003. He has since retired.
Robinson said he had been working with Shepard’s parents on issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for years.