Editor’s note: On Staten Island, unique in New York City, the public administrator back in 1999, Gary Gotlin, decided that stillborn babies, indigent persons, and homeless individuals (known collectively as ‘unclaimed bodies’) should receive dignified burials instead of being sent to the Potter’s Field on Hart Island in the Bronx. These burials occur if the parents of a stillborn infant cannot afford a burial for them, as well as for others who died without someone to claim them and arrange a funeral service for them.
Staten Islanders should know that this dignified burial is afforded to those whose families cannot manage the costs of a funeral, ceremony, flowers, gravesites, and other associated services. These services traditionally cost families $8,000 to $14,000 across the island, with the average being around $10,000 for everything. This can be an incredible cost for some families to bear, but in other parts of the City, not being able to afford it means that their loved ones remains are simply gone. No ceremony, no headstone, no flowers, nothing. Like they simply stopped existing and weren’t remembered just because they were poor. Instead of having no gravesite to visit, which is what happens in the other boroughs, where there are also many more unclaimed bodies each year, islanders can be assured that no matter their loved ones’s financial condition at the time of their death, their bodies will not simply vanish into an unmarked grave that would be in a general area, making it impossible to visit an actual gravesite. Staten Islanders are instead buried in a cemetery with a headstone, a funeral ceremony, flowers, and other accoutrements, provided by local businesses that want to help their community. This is not actually practical in other boroughs, where raising the funds to do it would be a massive undertaking. Not impossible, but just much more challenging and time-consuming.
Donations and volunteers are always needed, and you can contact the foundation through their website here if you are interested in assisting with this noble effort, affording dignified burials to those who cannot afford it themselves. Members of the public are always invited to attend funeral services for stillborns and others when they occur.
Stllborns in the arms of angels. Image Credit – Foundation for Dignity
From the Staten Island Advance’s reporting on an actual ceremony for stillborn infants back in 2024: “Following a time-honored tradition unique to the borough, 10 stillborn babies received a dignified burial courtesy of the public administrator, keeping their bodies from being laid to rest at Potter’s Field on Hart Island, New York City’s municipal burial ground.
The burial’s professional services, caskets, flowers and gravesites were donated by the John V. Scalia Home for Funerals and Resurrection Cemetery, with additional funding provided by the offices of Council Speaker Adrienne Eadie Adams, Council Member Kamillah Hanks and state Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton.
From the Foundation for Dignity:
The Foundation For Dignity was formed in 2014 to help the Public Administrator at the time. The Foundation For Dignity helps raise money to support the burials of homeless, indigent and stillborn babies on Staten Island. We work with the Public Administrator, the funeral directors and the cemeteries on Staten Island. Anyone that dies on Staten Island that’s homeless, indigent or stillborn baby gets buried on Staten Island. They do not go to Pottersfield. We take care of the least, the lost and the left behind.
At The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd., we’re raising funds and promoting initiatives to help those who need it most. With an array of fundraising events and volunteer projects, we welcome you to join our endeavors aimed at making Staten Island a better place. Read on and contact us to learn how you can help support us.
The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charity established itself on Staten Island in 2014. Through the Foundation for Dignity, we do all within our power to prevent stillborn babies and indigent and homeless men and women from being buried in unmarked graves in New York City’s Potter’s Field.
Twelve stillborn infants were buried on Staten Island. Image Credit – Foundation for Dignity
The picture shows the twelve babies that were buried last year at the Guardian Angels section of Resurrection Cemetery in the Pleasant Plains area of Staten Island, New York. Indigent and homeless Staten Island adults are buried at various cemeteries on Staten Island, including Resurrection, Oceanview and Mount Richmond. Our goal is to ensure that all Staten Island residents receive a dignified burial on Staten Island, and that no one be relegated to Hart Island, New York City’s Potter’s Field, for burial without dignity.
The Honorable Edwina Martin, Public Administrator of Richmond County, assumes jurisdiction for stillborn babies and indigent men and women when there is no one else to bury these forgotten Staten Islanders. In other boroughs, stillborns for whom a dignified burial is not provided by the biological parent(s), as well as indigent men and women who have no one designated, qualified, and willing to bury their remains, are routinely sent to Potter’s Field at Hart Island. The will of the people of Staten Island, as expressed through their Public Administrator, is that all must be afforded a dignified burial on Staten Island. As pictured above, this is exactly what The Foundation for Dignity is committed to doing. The Foundation for Dignity, Commissioner Martin, and the people of Staten Island strongly feel that anonymous consignment to a municipal burial ground in the waters off the Bronx–where 700,000 stillborns and indigent men and women are currently buried is not acceptable.
The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd. in cooperation with the Office of the Public Administrator will find a way to bury all stillborns and indigent men and women. If we did not, the Staten Islanders pictured above, and many others, would be sent to Potter’s Field.
We read about the Public Administrator’s efforts, and decided to use our established not-for-profit vehicle to deliver desperately-needed funding for these burials. Our foundation has won praise from Commissioner Martin as critical for the long-term success of the program.
These are real people—people who, in the absence of our efforts, would have been sent to Potter’s Field. These were real deaths. These were real losses of life. Whether the parents or families of the stillborns were able to be involved, these children, as well as the indigent men and women, are just like the rest of us–our equals in deserving human dignity..
This effort is about saving children, women, and men from a common grave. Through our work and charity, they will not be buried in Potter’s Field, but will instead receive a dignified burial on Staten Island..
The Foundation for Dignity speaks for those who cannot speak.
Please help give these babies a dignified burial.
Donate today!
Inspirational quote. Image Credit – quotesblog.net via Foundation for Dignity
Banner Image: The Least, the Lost, and the Left Behind. Image Credit – Foundation For Dignity
