June 2022

Page A12 JUNE 2022 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS Se c t i on A www.vischerfuneralsupplies.com Time may be only a moment so keep a memory Necklace Urn Pendants for an Everlasting Keepsake. Urns hold a portion of the cremains. Sterling Silver and Gold pieces in stock. orders or catalog: www.cremationkeepsakes.com cremationkeepsakes@comcast.net 877-303-3144 CREMATION KEEPSAKES He asked for a donation to help those without funds to pay for prescription drugs or for doctors’ appointments. Tsarnaev’s uncle donated $1,500 for this. Peter Stefan wrote a memoir of his time with the Tsarnaev family. He entitled it Last Rites for the Boston Marathon Bomber. He was searching for a publisher. He had his license suspended by the state board in October 2020 when the odor of un-cremated decedents became apparent to the neighbors. He had more deceased than his cooler could hold as many were indigents waiting for authorization to cremate. Community support for his vindication was overwhelming and many appeals were made to the state. His license was returned in January 2021 with a two-year suspended sentence where he had an appointed monitor. Stefan also ran for the Massachusetts Governor’s Council and for Worcester City Council, looking to assist those forgotten or ignored by the legislature. His legacy was serving those who needed the care and understanding of someone who would show them dignity when no one else would. Stefan was asked why he decided to pursue funeral service. He told freelance writer Kevin Koczwara the story of attending a school near Copley Square in Boston, not far from the Boston Marathon finish line. A skylight fell off a building not far from his school and killed a child he went to school with. “All that was left was the ice cream he was holding,” Stefan remembered. Days later, when the funeral procession of his friend passed the school, he saw the name of the funeral home in the hearse window: Graham, Putnam, and Mahoney. It was a sight he obviously never forgot. The people of Worcester, and those he served beyond that area, will never forget what he did for those pushed aside by others. “Peter has been the poor man’s and woman’s guardian angel for decades!” –Rosalie Tirella, InCity Times Observations “It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues: the knight’s sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.” –Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Cervantes’ fictional nobleman turned self-appointed knight Alonso Quixano who became Don Quixote was considered either a misfit or an angel. Peter Stefan, late owner of Graham, Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Home in Worcester, Massachusetts has been called that, and worse. What they will say about Peter Stefan is that he followed his heart. Stefan, 85, died March 13, 2022. Stefan is best known for accepting the remains of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers who planted and ignited the bomb at the 2013 Boston Marathon. Peter Stefan was a self-described “son to hardworking Greek and Albanian immigrant parents.” Stefan grew up in Dorchester in a “triple-decker” with his mother, grandmother, aunts, and uncles. He was licensed as an embalmer in 1966, but his first career was a saxophonist who traveled and played “with some big names, made some recordings.” He desired to serve people and to leave the concert circuit. He took a job with the Graham, Putnam, and Mahoney Funeral Parlors, who had buried his grandfather. They had several Massachusetts locations, and Stefan purchased two of them in 1975. He sold one and set his career with the Worcester location. His mission was to serve “the underserved”: the poor, the immigrants, the Hispanics. Soon, the AIDS epidemic of the eighties hit, and many funeral directors would not accept these cases out of fear. Stefan accepted them from a wide area. Stefan was also a pillar in Worcester, helping to establish the Family Health Center along Queen Street. He was granted a key to the city in 2013. He helped the Public Inebriate Program and Shelter, Aids Project Worcester, the Nigerian American Organization, the Veterans’ Shelter, and others. On April 15, 2013, two brothers, 26-year-old Tamerlan and 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were on a Boston sidewalk near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, as runners were crossing the line. They left two pressure-cooker bombs, filled with shrapnel, hidden in backpacks. The bombs went off within a short time of each other. The bombs killed three people including an eight-year-old boy. 260 were wounded with sixteen losing limbs. Three days later, the Tsarnaev brothers shot and killed By Steven Palmer a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer in order to take his gun. They stopped a car and forced the driver to drive them. The driver escaped and the brothers continued in his car until they were spotted in Watertown, MA. The encounter with police escalated to a gun battle, and both brothers were wounded by gunshot. Dzhokhar drove a vehicle at police and instead hit his brother Tamerlan, who was apprehended and died a short time later in the hospital. Dzhokhar ran from the car and hid in a boat on blocks in a residential yard, where he was caught hours later. Convicted and sentenced to death in 2015, he is currently held in a maximum-security prison in Colorado and his execution has been upheld in the courts. The brothers were Islamic extremists but acted on their own to protest U.S. wars against Muslim countries. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains sat uncollected for two weeks at the office of the medical examiner as the family tried to find a funeral home to handle his burial. The family wanted to bury Tamerlan in the Muslim tradition in a Muslim cemetery. The Dyer-Lake Funeral Home in Attleboro, MA agreed to accept the case. However, protestors and media began picketing the funeral home, even during visitations. The funeral director asked the family to find another funeral home. Peter Stefan was very familiar with Muslim tradition and agreed to accept Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains and coordinate a Muslim burial. The acceptance of this highprofile case came with protestors and the media. Death threats were received. The City of Worcester blocked off the yard of Graham, Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Home and posted a visible police presence. The protestors would chant and yell, and the media would clamor for a comment or interview. Peter Stefan, rather than staying safe in his building, ordered pizza for the assembled and listened to their often-abusive comments. He tried to explain why he would accept the body of a man who committed such a depraved act. “We bury the dead, that’s what we do. Doesn’t matter who it is. I can’t separate the sins from the sinners,” Stefan was quoted as saying. He told me the same when I interviewed him for a column in this publication in 2013. The family and Stefan searched for a Muslim cemetery that would accept Tamerlan. The few Muslim cemeteries in Massachusetts would not. The search went wider and wider. One rural cemetery, away from the controversy, was found. Tsarnaev was buried in Al-Barzakh Islamic Cemetery, Caroline County, Virginia. The media never knew he left the building, and they did not know until after the burial where he went. Stefan never divulged how he left and how he was taken to the cemetery. Stefan also never accepted payment for what he did. A Knight Errant Remembered Steven Palmer entered funeral service in 1971. He is an honors graduate of the New England Institute of Applied Arts & Sciences. He has been licensed on both coasts, he owned theWestcott Funeral Homes of Cottonwood and Camp Verde, AZ, where he remains active in operations. Steve offers his observations on current funeral service issues. Hemay be reachedbymail at POBox 352, Cottonwood, AZ 86326, by phone at (928)634-9566, by fax at (928)634-5156, by e-mail at steve@westcottfuneralhome.comor throughhiswebsite at www.westcottfuneralhome.com or on Facebook. F U N E R A L H O M E & C E M E T E R Y N E W S w w w . N o m i s P u b l i c a t i o n s . c o m Monthly Columnsonline at Earth offers Alternative to Cremation Soil transformation is a natural, environmentally-friendly alternative to burial and cremation. Over a 30day process, a body is gently transformed into a cubic yard of nutrientrich soil. Families choose how much soil they’d like returned - to scatter or plant - and the remaining soil is sent to local conservation land for restoration projects, including reforestation and restoring soil health. “Our mission is to provide the most environmentally-friendly deathcare option and the simplest way to make and manage arrangements. Soil transformation is for nature lovers, conservationists and those of us who want to protect the planet for future generations,” said Tom Harries, Earth’s CEO. Earth recently announced that it has raised $10 million from investors including Buckley Ventures, Lachy Groom, The Chainsmokers’ Mantis Ventures, Metrodora Ventures, Hyper, Shrug Capital, Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund, James Beshara, Animal Capital, Julian Shapiro, Earl Grey Capital, JD Ross, Not Boring Capital, Sahil Bloom, K5 Global, Leore Avidar, Matteo Franceschetti, Brad Holden, Sami McCabe and Amber Atherton. The capital has supported the opening of Earth’s first soil transformation facility, as well as continued development of soil transformation technology and consumer software. Earth continues to enhance its online experience, which includes the simplest way to make deathcare arrangements, and a portal through which families receive real time status updates, create and share Instagram-esq obituaries, and collaborate with family and friends. Arrangements can be made at time of need, or years in advance, through Earth Prepaid. Earth was co-founded in 2020 by funeral industry veterans Tom Harries; CFO Richard Benton; and COO Carolyn Maezes. “Cremation is a fossil fuel driven process that emits 535 pounds of carbon dioxide, equivalent to a 600-mile car journey. Soil transformation is natural, carbon neutral and a regenerative approach to deathcare,” Harries added. Earth’s state-of-the-art soil transformation facility currently has a 78-vessel capacity and is already the largest, most advanced facility of its kind in the world. Established in 2020 and based in Auburn, WA, Earth combines the latest in soil science with cuttingedge software to create a unique endof-life experience. Earth’s team has more than 50 years of collective funeral industry experience. For more information, visit www.earthfuneral. com or connect with Earth on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Continued from Page A6

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