Memorial service for homeless is planned
Maggie Burnett was a caring person who spoke lovingly of her family and offered compassion to anyone who walked through the doors of Catholic Charities’ Sanctuary Women’s Development Center.
Her oldest son, Tommy Grigsby, said her caring personality didn’t change even though she was homeless off and on for the last 20 years until her death on Dec. 13.
“She was a great person. She just had an addiction all her life — it was a struggle,” he said. “You think she was ‘just a homeless lady’ but she impacted so many people.”
Burnett’s life will be lovingly remembered when her name is the first to be read aloud at a public “Memorial Service for the Homeless” set for Friday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City. Organizers said more than 40 names have been submitted for the memorial, as of Monday.
Hosted by the Ignatian Spirituality Project, in partnership with St. Paul’s, the service is being held in conjunction with National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day on Friday. The National Coalition for the Homeless, the National Consumer Advisory Board and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council encourage communities to host such public events on or near Dec. 21, which is the winter solstice — the longest night of the year.
Cathy O’Connor and Mary Diane Steltenkamp, two of the event’s organizers, said they think Friday’s event is the first time such a service has been held in Oklahoma City. They said the names of men and women who died in 2018 while experiencing homelessness will be read aloud as attendees pray for each of them. Family members and friends of the deceased may also light a candle for their loved one.
Another organizer, Chris Flanagan, said leaders at metro-area homeless shelters and other organizations that advocate for the homeless have responded favorably to the service’s premise.
He said representatives of the Homeless Alliance and City Rescue Mission, in particular, told him that they loved the idea of honoring
the homeless in such a compassionate way.
“Their lives matter,” Flanagan said of the homeless. “We want the larger community to have the chance to know something about these people who can become invisible.”
Showing love and care
Grigsby said he heard many positive stories about his mother when he recently met with women who knew her at the Sanctuary Women’s Development Center.
He said he was surprised about the memorial service and he liked the idea as a way to shine a light on people that society doesn’t often recognize.
“They just get overlooked, honestly they do,” he said. “They all have families but they just have their situations.”
Jessica Nuno with the Sanctuary Women’s Development Center’s women’s day shelter, said Burnett was “an affectionate and caring woman” who had been a client at the center since 2015.
“While Maggie had her own difficulties. she never let that affect her compassion for others. Maggie was the first one to volunteer to help someone out,” Nuno said.
“And she would talk to anyone that would listen about her sons, daughter, and immediate family. Her pride in her family showed through the beaming smile on her face. She would light up at the mention of her family.”
Meanwhile, the Ignatian Spirituality Project, or ISP, is a nationwide organization that provides retreat experiences for men and women who are homeless and in recovery from addiction. O’Connor and Steltenkamp said the memorial service is being conducted by the Oklahoma City affiliate of the Ignatian Spirituality Project. The pair said the service is nondenominational and the public is welcome to attend.
O’Connor said the homeless participating in the local Ignatian Spirituality Project have said that they sometimes feel alone and unloved.
“It moves me to a new depth of sadness that I’ve not known before,” she said.
She said the memorial service is a way to let the homeless community and the community-at-large know that the homeless are loved and people do care for them.