AIKEN - Sue Townsend never asked to be a funeral director, but that's the role the Aiken County coroner will assume Friday when she helps bury the cremated remains of five people who died penniless and without survivors.
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A minister will stand over the five small plots at Calvary Cemetery on University Lane in western Aiken County and say a few simple words. Modest, engraved headstones will mark the places where those left behind or long forgotten lie.
Mrs. Townsend and her staff hold the ceremony every few years. The plots are donated by St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church, the headstones made for a small fee by an area monument engraver, and the cremations done for a discount by a local crematory.
The duties of coroner in South Carolina include taking responsibility for unclaimed bodies, particularly those of people who made no burial arrangements.
Of the five to be buried at 11:30 a.m. Friday, 62-year-old Dorothy Mae Richards died in a North Augusta nursing home with no surviving relatives and 61-year-old Marion Edwards had no one to pay for his burial after his death from prostate cancer. Migrant worker James Daniel died of multiple health problems at age 56. Sam Harris, 75, died on the front porch of his Beech Island home and was found by a fishing buddy. Joseph Samuel Scott, 78, also will be buried Friday.
Usually, the dead leave some money that can be put toward the burial, whether it's a small insurance policy or Social Security pension, or, in the case of Mr. Daniel, money from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control earmarked for the burial of migrant workers.
Coroners approach indigent deaths in different ways. Barnwell County Coroner Lloyd Ward doesn't cremate unclaimed bodies. Indigents are buried in simple caskets in county-owned land beneath generic metal markers.
"My county council feels cremation is a personal choice, and they don't want to make that choice for that person," Mr. Ward said.
In Columbia County, Coroner Tommy King keeps the ashes of the unclaimed at his funeral home.
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Darrell Ables, a deputy coroner in Aiken County, gets the unclaimed remains ready to deliver to George Funeral Homes.
RON COCKERILLE/STAFF
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'We hold the remains for several years," Mr. King said. "I've had one for two or three years now. Maybe some (relative) will show up eventually."
Mrs. Townsend waits longer than the state-required minimum of 30 days before cremating unclaimed bodies, storing them in a refrigerated morgue.
She tries to locate surviving relatives before having the bodies cremated.
"Do I have to have a memorial service? Absolutely not," she said. "It's just a respect for the dead we have in this office."
Reach Stephen Gurr at (803) 648-1395.
