‘Jane Doe’ still not laid to rest
By Jessica Pierce, staff writer
Daily Messenger
Fri Jul 25, 2008, 08:44 AM EDTCanandaigua, N.Y. -
CANANDAIGUA — The body of an unidentified woman was removed from a downtown building five years ago after police learned it had been used, years earlier, as part of initiation ceremonies for a local fraternal organization.Since then, she has rested in anything but peace.

The body has been since then at the Fuller Funeral Home on Buffalo Street. Funeral home owner Bob Fuller said he has long wanted to give her a proper burial, and a stranger even donated a grave site, but his hands have been tied by red tape and the fact that no one wants to foot the roughly $500 bill for the needed vault.

“I’m doing my best to do what’s right,” said Fuller, who now wants to have the body cremated but first needs a municipal entity to claim ownership of “Jane Doe.”

The ordeal has been complicated by the fact that no one has emerged who knows anything about the woman. Fuller doesn’t know her name, age, where she came from or even when she lived.

The remains are mostly skeletal, with a small amount of dried flesh. The Monroe County Medical Examiners Office could determine only that “Jane Doe” was a woman and that she had been embalmed.

“I think it had been some kind of a medical donation,” Fuller said.

In May 2003, then-city councilwoman Sarah Hamlin contacted the city manager’s office and police about the remains, which she said were in storage with Halloween decorations and bingo supplies on the second floor of 65 S. Main St. The building is owned by Lodge 236 of the International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization that hosts Saturday night bingo games and rents its first floor to the Ontario County Arts Council.

“I went up during a bingo game just to see it,” recalled Hamlin, a nurse. “I said, ‘You know, this looks real.’”

Hamlin thought the remains had been buried after she called attention to their existence.

“That’s terrible — I had no idea,” she said when told otherwise. “That’s so sad.”

The lodge’s leader, Don Wagner, said in 2003 that a 50-year Odd Fellows member reported that the coffin was there when he first joined. It had been used in initiation ceremonies, a practice Wagner had discontinued several years earlier.

Reached by phone Thursday, Wagner’s wife, Pat, said the remains had “probably been there for years and years and years” before she and Don became active in the Odd Fellows. She said she never saw the remains, which were kept in a small, white casket with red lights affixed around the lid.

“Where it came from, we have no idea,” Wagner said. “We were as shocked as everyone else when we found out they were real.”

Wagner, who runs the bingo games and is the Odd Fellows secretary, was also surprised to learn the woman had not been laid to rest. She said the Odd Fellows would have been “more than glad” to cover burial expenses but couldn’t because of financial constraints.

“The money isn’t available,” she said. “Our taxes are so high on that building, we struggle to pay the taxes each year. We depend a lot on bingo to cover those expenses — in fact, we depend on bingo for just about everything.”

She said the Odd Fellows now “may be able to come up with a little bit” of money “because it certainly deserves a decent burial.”

Fuller, meanwhile, is trying to determine who can sign an authorization form so he can have the remains cremated.

“Normally,” he said, “it’s a member of the family.”

Hamlin said she is willing to donate “the first $100” toward a burial.

“I have a reverence for the body,” she said.

City police Lt. Michael Colacino said he hopes to organize a meeting with everyone involved in the matter “to put some closure to this.”

“We have to determine who, legally, bears the responsibility for the burial if at this point nobody has stepped up to claim ownership,” Colacino said.

He said coming up with the money needed could mean imposing a legal mandate or accepting donations from concerned citizens like Hamlin.

“That’s what we have to do, humanely,” he said. “A person deserves a burial, period.”

Contact Jessica Pierce at (585) 394-0770, Ext. 250, or at jpierce@messengerpostmedia.com.

Our first cruise. We’ve been planning this for a while.

On Thursday the 8th, our daughter Rachael picks us up at 8pm. We’re staying at her house in Rochester for the night, and then she’ll drive us to the airport. Rachael and Suzanne immediately launch into a Mother-Daughter gabfest. Halfway to Rochester, Suzanne remembers she has a husband, and that he’s sitting in the backseat. “How’re you doing back there, honey?” she asks. “OK.” I answer. Rachael tells her: “Dad can sit back there and think about stuff”.

I do.
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{O N B O A R D}

This is our first real look at the ship. I was prepared for something huge, but this thing is a behemoth. The MS Norwegian Pearl is 995 feet long. It has five 100,000 hp engines that each consume 1 gallon of fuel per second. It cost over 500 million dollars and took two years to build. By way of comparison, the United States Navy’s Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are 1,069 feet long, just 74 feet longer than the Norwegian Pearl. The Nimitz-class carriers are the largest warships in the world.

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Our first morning comes, and we’re at sea. We have tea and coffee on our little balcony and watch the sun come up. Life doesn’t get much better than this. This is my first real vacation in over 20 years. We decide to head for the pool first, and then pick a restaurant for dinner. We won’t be in Mexico until tomorrow, so we have a full day at sea.

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Back on deck, I take photos of the lifeboats and other parts of the ship. We are sailing past Cuba, and I want to get a shot. Most areas of the ship have 6-foot high glass walls that are a little hard to shoot through, so I need to get higher. I’m up on the 13th deck, and see a sign that says Sun Deck next to a flight of stairs, so up I go with camera in hand.

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{S I D E B A R on N A T I O N A L S E C U R I T Y}

I use a messenger bag at work. Mine is just like this one. I carry notebooks, pens, pencils, business cards, etc. We brought it on the cruise as our carry-on for plane travel. We take it to the pool and keep Suzanne’s novel in it, sun block, etc. I’m rummaging around in the bottom when suddenly I find

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{M E X I C O}

We have an enjoyable dinner at the Italian restaurant and some wine. Up early tomorrow for a trip to Mexico to see the Mayan Ruins at Tulum.

Morning comes, coffee and tea, and then pick up a box lunch and we’re off. After being around me for a while, Suzanne has developed an extensive inventory of ‘What the hell’s the matter with you now?’ looks. This particular morning, she selects the What the hell’s the matter with you now? look #73 and asks me “You’re not wearing that into Mexico are you?”

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We get back on the bus and head for Tulum. Tulum is the third most visited archaeological site in Mexico. We get off the bus in front of… more souvenir shops! I deduce that the literal translation of Mexico is ‘Land of Souvenirs’.

We follow our guide down a long road through the jungle. It is very hot, and we hear all kinds of noises in the jungle, just like in the movies. The sides of the road are littered with trash and junk; lots of Corona bottles, bent and twisted rebar with chunks of concrete still attached, an old rusted truck almost overtaken by the jungle.

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King Jeffaxhlotlololol, Mighty High Priest of the Mayas, bows to the four winds and loosens the ceremonial obsidian knife in its sheath. He is wearing a grass skirt and an ornate feathered headdress. Bands of gold encircle his huge biceps, and he wears a necklace of jade and beaten gold.

He is here to perform a human sacrifice.

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We head back through the jungle to get to the bus so we can eat our lunch. We have to pass many souvenir shops, all of which have some variation of the name ‘La Trapaza de la Turista’, all of which sell exactly the same merchandise, and are occupied by Mexicans who attach themselves to you like leeches. They gesture pleadingly with you to come inside. In the middle of the jungle, surrounded by these souvenir stands, is a Subway sandwich shop, just like you’d see in Canandaigua. Our bus is just up ahead, and we’re making a beeline for it when we hear shouts of ‘¡Che Guevara! Che Guevara! You! Che Guevara! I see a Mexican running towards me, waving and hollering. He stops and touches me on the chest. ‘¡I have Che Guevara shirt! Hand-painted!’ He drags me towards his shop. He takes it down from the wall and holds it out as he inclines his head with modest pride. I look at it. It is actually pretty cool, but it’s a large. I need an XL. I say ‘I’m sorry. Too small.’ ‘¡Aya! Wait!’, he hollers and runs into his shop where he rummages in a box. He runs out triumphantly and holds the shirt out. ‘Thirty Five dollars American’, he says.

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