Homeless Memorial Day in Columbus

I attended the Columbus Homeless Memorial in December to remember homeless people who had died.  I got to see one of the most tireless advocates down in Columbus, Don Strasser, and got to see how other cities do the Annual Homeless Memorial.  It was much different from the one done by NEOCH in Cleveland over the last 20 years.  It was a much more solemn service than the one is Cleveland, but did not have as many people experiencing homelessness in attendance.  About six years ago, Ohio legislators made December 21 as Ohio Homeless Memorial Day so there are services throughout the state on the first day of winter in most of the big cities.

In Cleveland, we have done the service in a meal program so that homeless people would attend.  Over the last few years our service was in the day while the Columbus service is always at night. Cleveland typically has a politician talk about the importance of no more deaths while in Columbus they have people who knew some of the deceased talk about their friends.  I really like this aspect of the service to hear about people who died, but would have liked to hear from friends or family and not social service providers exclusively.  The Columbus service was an actual religious service with a few clergy providing readings and prayers.  Cleveland did a similar effort with a Rabbi and Christian minister all reading a prayer.  The best part of the Columbus service was the choral singers who performed as part of the service.  

There were a similar number of deaths read at both services with 54 names in Columbus.  In Cleveland there were around 55 names down from 99 in 2016.

by Brian Davis