A group of homeless advocates – in a ceremony Wednesday open and welcoming to the public – will bury 50 persons whose unclaimed remains spent the last year in storage at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office.
This is the fifth year that people with prior homeless experience will be honored with a funeral and not buried en masse with hundreds of the city’s other unclaimed dead who eventually share a communal grave in Northwest Philly’s Laurel Hill Cemetery.
“The cremains of 50 unclaimed and formerly homeless individuals will receive a dignified burial through a community-led effort to ensure respectful final arrangements for all,” the City of Philadelphia announced this week…