High school students are serving as pallbearers for military veterans who were homeless when they died or without a family.
“It’s really extraordinary to take note of someone who was left to die in the cold on the street,” Richard Mazyck, campus ministry and service coordinator for University of Detroit Jesuit School, tells TODAY.com. “They have no family and friends that anyone is able to contact ... It’s a reminder that every person, especially in the Christian religious tradition, is made in the image of God and is deserving of a particular regard and respect.”
Mazyck manages the Pallbearer Ministry at the high school. The student volunteers take the time out of their school day to help support a ceremony or burial for veterans or others who would otherwise be buried alone.
"We might even very strongly disagree at various times, but everybody has worth and value. Assisting at their funeral, or at their committal and burial, is a way of honoring their lives, even though we may have never met them," he says.
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The Pallbearer Ministry at the school began after six seniors volunteered to help bury three unclaimed veterans in October, 2015. Since then, volunteers have helped carry veterans in ceremonies at Great Lakes National Cemetery and others cemeteries around the Detroit area.
"This was an opportunity to give something to somebody who finished their life on the fringe of society," Tom Lennon, a former student, told TODAY.com in 2015. "These veterans were men I had never met, but they helped make the country I live in safer and stronger. No matter who they were or what they did on earth, every person deserves a proper burial."
Before the service, the volunteers try to learn about the deceased. They look through online obituaries; sometimes they learn only the deceased's name, while other times their whole life story is available.
"Sometimes the students find out that they are related to someone or they are at least friends with someone who is a part of the family and survives the memory of the deceased," Mazyck says.
Sometimes the students carry the coffin, and at other times they act as a team of "honor guards" who provide support and pray for the deceased.
The program paused from 2019-2021 because of COVID, but has come back stronger than ever.
The school ministry has partnered with A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Home in Troy, Michigan. The county attempts to find relatives to claim the body, but if nobody has responded after 90 days, the veterans are cared for by the funeral home.
“The students’ service is quite simply valuable to our firm because that is what we do — we serve our community by caring for and honoring the dead, regardless of financial circumstances," John Desmond, the funeral home's director, told TODAY.com in 2015.
Caskets are provided by the Dignity Memorial Network's Homeless Veterans Program, which aims to provide homeless and unclaimed veterans with a proper military burial across the country.
Mazyck says the volunteers often reflect during and after the service, and they use the experience as a way to grow as students and as humans.
"It's great to be with other people and pray with them, encourage them or just be present with them when they're in their sorrow. We all have times and moments of sorrow in our lives, including the passing of loved ones and friends and colleagues," Mazyck says.
"So it's really an honor and, in itself, its own consolation to be able to offer some support."
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