photo by: Mike Yoder

Loring Henderson, executive director of DARE Center, is pictured

The cover of the blue three-ring binder is unadorned, its only marking the word “memories” written on the spine in simple black typeface. It sits on a shelf at the DARE Center most of the time, but that day someone had brought it out, and it was open on the table.

When DARE volunteer Araceli Masterson-Algar walked into the building, she was not sure what was drawing people’s attention, but a small group that included people experiencing homelessness and DARE volunteers were focused on something laid out between them. And then she saw that one of them was crying.

“I didn’t know what it was that they were looking at,” Masterson-Algar said. “… And then I realized that they were looking at this binder.”

The binder has been kept and added to over the past 17 years, and it is likely the most complete local record of those who have died while experiencing homelessness in Lawrence in that time. The binder is filled with plastic presentation sleeves, and tucked inside them are copied photos of those who have died, poems written about them, snippets of obituaries, and, less frequently, a folded funeral program. In total, 31 people are included in the binder.

In one photo a woman grins widely like it’s a friend on the other side of the camera lens. In another a man plays chess at a small table set up on Massachusetts Street. Some are grainy photos that look like they were taken with an old cellphone camera. One is a family photo of a man on his wedding day. Another is simply a head-and-shoulders shot of a pink-faced man wearing a new-looking Bass Pro Shops hat. For some there are no photos, and a few people are represented only by a name and a sentence from a death notice. But still, everyone gets their own page.

. . .

Loring Henderson, executive director of the DARE Center, has been keeping the binder over the years, and has collected the tributes inside with the help of volunteers and people who knew those who died. Henderson said that there is a story for everyone, and collecting them — for nearly 20 years now — just seemed important.

“It just seemed like the thing to do to be respectful of their memory because so many of them were estranged from their families and they didn’t have a process,” Henderson said. “And the rest of the homeless community didn’t have a process — there was no way for closure on some of these relationships.”

The poems included in the binder are ones that friends wrote following the deaths. Next to one woman’s photo, a poem begins, “(She) stomped in khaki camouflage, proud and tall in her combat boots.” A poem next a photo of a man with long dark hair parted down the middle is titled “Miss me but let me go.”

Henderson was the longtime director of the Lawrence Community Shelter, but retired from that position in 2014 and now runs the DARE Center, a drop-in day center run by volunteers that gives people a place to do laundry, get snacks or coffee and access other resources. He said that originally the photos of those who had died hung on the wall of the Lawrence Community Shelter, but at some point someone took the photos down and made copies of them. He said the binder started with those copies and includes people who died from 2004 to the present day.

Henderson said the binder was not a complete record of everyone who has died while experiencing homelessness in Lawrence since 2004, but that whenever those who work at DARE hear of someone, they bring the binder out. One person in the binder had been homeless in Lawrence but had moved on and died elsewhere. He said many of the people in the binder never had a formal funeral service, but across the street from the DARE Center, at LINK, they circle the chairs. A photo of the person who died is put out if they have one, and people share stories and thoughts about them. The photos, poems or other remembrances from those gatherings are later included in the binder’s plastic sleeves.

photo by: Rochelle Valverde

A three-ring binder contains memories of some of the people who have died over the past 17 years while experiencing homelessness in Lawrence or soon thereafter. It is pictured on Nov. 17, 2021, at the DARE Center, 944 Kentucky St.

The people pictured are not particularly old — many appear to be in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Henderson said though he is aware of some who likely died of medical issues and some that died of cold, the circumstances vary and an exact cause of death is often not readily known, and he doesn’t pursue that information. He said the binder is really meant to be about the fact that they lived.

“It’s more about what they did, who they were,” Henderson said. “Because when these other homeless people who are still alive, when they pass away, don’t they want to know that somebody is going to pause for a minute and think about them?”

. . .

Masterson-Algar said when she first looked through the binder that day, it moved her. She said she saw the act of collecting the photos, newspaper clippings and poems over the years as an expression of care and an act of love, and she wanted to do something to honor those who have died and those who knew them.

“When I saw the binder, the initial idea that I had was, I wish that there could be an homage done for all the people in this binder that would be healing in a way,” Masterson-Algar said.

Masterson-Algar, who started the outreach group Somos Lawrence, ultimately helped bring about a community ofrenda, or alter, for Día de los Muertos that included the people from the binder.

photo by: Emanuel Ramírez

The DARE Center and Somos Lawrence organized a Day of the Dead tribute Nov. 1, 2021, for people who have died while experiencing homelessness.

As part of the project, students and volunteers made artistic photo frames and other small art pieces for all 31 people. Each piece is different and reflects what is known about the person, sometimes working off a single detail.

The photo of the man in the Bass Pro Shops hat was placed within an illustration of a man fishing in a stream. For a woman who was killed while riding her bicycle, a painting on a small square canvas shows a bike with white wings ascending upward from the road. The chess player’s photo was decorated with pawns, rooks and knights, and a mechanic’s photo with actual nuts and bolts. For a man whose name and story was unknown, his photo was placed on a blue background and framed with twine.

The DARE Center and Somos Lawrence collaborated with The Ballard Center and students from the First United Method Church Art Café and Free State High School’s Key Club for the project. Masterson-Algar, along with Tami Clark with the Art Café program and Jacob Larson with the Key Club, helped students and other volunteers create the art pieces to place on the ofrenda.

Key Club Secretary Lady Ortega-Perez, a sophomore at Free State, said the project caused her to think about the struggles people without housing have to deal with and the loneliness of facing those things. As part of the project, Ortega-Perez decorated a frame for a woman who had died in her 50s. Around its edges she placed marigold flowers that she cut from her own front yard and that her family uses to celebrate Día de los Muertos.

“I enjoyed making an ofrenda for people that would probably have nothing else, and just coming together as a community to mourn all these people that didn’t get proper funerals or send-aways,” Ortega-Perez said.

The art pieces were set on the ofrenda with flowers, candles and other decorations as part of a Día de los Muertos celebration earlier this month. Other residents also brought photos of their loved ones for the ofrenda, and Masterson-Algar said the event brought together various sectors of the community, including people experiencing homelessness who knew some of those who have died.

photo by: Emanuel Ramírez

Eloise McDaniel, left, and Sofía Romero join with many friends and neighbors on Nov. 1, 2021, in North Lawrence in a Day of the Dead remembrance.

Masterson-Algar said she saw the ofrenda as a way to recognize those who died and also as a way to humanize people often put in a category separate from others.

“I think it’s the need for celebrating the life, the need to see the diversity of ages, ethnic backgrounds, life journeys, of this population that we lump into the category of homeless,” Masterson-Algar said. “And then the need to really see that it could be any of us.”

For now, the binder is back on its shelf at the DARE Center, and it will stay there until there is a need to add to it again. But Masterson-Algar said she hoped the project was a reminder that the problem of homelessness is not the person, but the system, and that more people might be moved to action.