Nine unclaimed homeless New Yorkers who froze to death on city streets last winter will receive a funeral service and permanent resting place at a landmark Manhattan church, after community organizers and a funeral director stepped in to prevent their burial on Hart Island.
Rhonda Roland Shearer, 65, founder of the nonprofit Art Science Research Laboratory and the advocacy group Cut Red Tape 4 Heroes, organized the intervention. The funeral director Patrick J. Marmo, owner of International Funeral & Cremation Services of New York, donated the full funeral arrangements for the nine deceased. Housing Works, the nonprofit service organization, also helped coordinate the event.
The nine were among 18 homeless people found dead outdoors during a brutal cold stretch last winter when temperatures in New York City plunged as low as 3 degrees. Relatives claimed the remains of half the victims. The other nine bodies were headed for burial on Hart Island, the city’s Potter’s Field off the Bronx coast, where unclaimed remains have been interred for more than a century.
“As a lifelong New Yorker and a funeral director for over 30 years, I have always believed that every life deserves to be honored with dignity and respect,” Marmo said.
Shearer said she hopes the funeral brings awareness to the vulnerable individuals who die on the street each winter and urges the city to better prepare to help them in the coming months.
“I hope this will make everybody more alert to prevent this again,” she said.
The funeral service is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 2, at 5:30 p.m. At St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, during an All Souls Day Mass. The ashes of the nine deceased will be laid to rest throughout the church’s Resurrection Chapel. The service is open to the public.
In Christianity, All Souls Day is when the church remembers and honors those who have died.
“We’re honoring and purely recognizing the humanity in each person,” Shearer told The Post.
Shearer’s intervention marks a rare moment of individual action disrupting the city’s standard process for unclaimed bodies. Hart Island, which has served as New York’s public burial ground since 1869, typically receives about 1,000 bodies annually from the city medical examiner’s office when no next of kin can be located or afford burial.
The nine deceased individuals were never publicly identified by name in the coverage of their deaths or in the funeral arrangements. City officials have faced repeated criticism from housing advocates for insufficient outreach during extreme cold weather, when hypothermia poses lethal risk to those sleeping outdoors.
Temperatures during last winter’s deadly cold snap reached single digits across the five boroughs, straining the city’s shelter system and outreach teams. The Department of Homeless Services operates a cold weather emergency protocol that triggers additional outreach and the opening of warming centers, but advocates have questioned whether those measures reach the most isolated individuals.
Shearer has not disclosed how she learned of the nine unclaimed bodies or what specific negotiations were required to secure the church venue and redirect the remains from Hart Island. St. Thomas Church, an Episcopal parish on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street, is known for its choir and Gothic Revival architecture.
The Nov. 2 service will be the first time the nine deceased are publicly named and honored together.