Caskets are placed on sawhorses for the burial service. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

A procession brought seven wooden caskets to Chicago’s Mount Olivet Cemetery. Inside the caskets were the indigent and the unclaimed, fetal remains and the forgotten.

The service of tribute, honor and promise buried four adults, 24 babies and 34 cremated individuals, some of whom have been held at the Cook County morgue since 2014. The burials, coordinated by the county, Cook County Funeral Directors Association and Archdiocese of Chicago, gave the deceased individuals a fitting farewell, according to the Rev. Larry Sullivan, who led the July 27 service.

“Everyone deserves a respectful conclusion to their life,” said Sullivan, pastor of Christ the King Church in Chicago. “It is fitting for us to give them this burial.”

Sullivan said the burial service is an example of the Christian mission we are called to live.

“We are told to take care of one another,” he said. “… This is a program we can all be proud of.”

Poni Arunkumar, chief medical examiner for Cook County, sprinkles water on the caskets. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

It was the fifth time that Sullivan has been part of the burial service. He said the

emotionally heart-wrenching task of burying individuals who have been identified but not claimed by any next of kin, individuals whose families do not have the money to bury them, individuals who are unknown and forgotten, and fetal remains is offset by the knowledge that these individuals are being given a proper burial.

“We celebrate that these individuals are in heaven and are able to be with God,” Sullivan said.

This was the 18^th time the county has buried indigent and unclaimed individuals. There have been 776 babies and 256 adults laid to rest in those burial ceremonies.

Poni Arunkumar, chief medical examiner for Cook County, said her office does everything possible to connect deceased individuals held in the morgue with next of kin. Office staff members also do a detailed search to see if the deceased individual is entitled to burial in a Department of Veterans Affairs cemetery due to serving in the Armed Forces.

The casket tag of an unidentified individual. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

“We go through the VA and PA (Department of Public Aid),” to see what burial benefits are available, Arunkumar said. “We start with them.”

The medical examiner said the poor and unclaimed individuals deserve to buried with dignity.

“It is everyone’s responsibility to take care of the indigent,” Arunkumar said.

She noted that individuals’ final resting places are always marked so in case any next of kin does emerge down the road and wants to bury the individual elsewhere, the county knows where the individual is buried. She noted that she has yet to see that happen during her 17 years with the office.

“We do have the ability to exhume any identified individual,” if next of kin were to emerge, Arunkumar said.

Mount Olivet Cemetery workers lower one of the caskets into its grave site. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

Leonard Zielinski, a member of the Cook County Funeral Directors Association, said there is never an issue with getting funeral directors to help out with the service.

“Funeral directors from the city and the rest of Cook County, as well as from around the state, volunteer their time” for the indigent burials, Zielinski said.

Eight funeral directors assisted with the July 27 service. Zielinski said as many as 17 funeral directors have been involved with previous events.

“Funeral directors help Cook County coordinate the cases,” Zielinski said.

“We provide the transportation. It is important to help.”

Students from the Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling carry flowers to the gravesites of indigent and unclaimed individuals. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

Students from the Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling carry flowers to the gravesites of indigent and unclaimed individuals. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison said he felt it important to be at the service.

Students from the Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling carry flowers to the grave sites of indigent and unclaimed individuals. (Photo by Kevin Beese/for Chronicle Media)

“It is important to me personally as a Catholic that we take care of one another,” Morrison said.

He said he feels a responsibility to represent the county at the event.

“As a county commissioner and an individual, it is important to me that these individuals are properly interred,” Morrison said. “I can think of nothing more important.”

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