May pay for funeral and/or burial expenses: Final Farewell helps grieving families when a child dies

Posted 8/23/18

The Gesner Street Fire in Southwest Philadelphia on July 4, 2014, killed two children from one family and two children from another family. The fire started on the wall of one home and spread to the …

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May pay for funeral and/or burial expenses: Final Farewell helps grieving families when a child dies

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The Gesner Street Fire in Southwest Philadelphia on July 4, 2014, killed two children from one family and two children from another family. The fire started on the wall of one home and spread to the entire block of homes. Final Farewell was able to provide, with help from others, the caskets for four children as well as the burial ground.

by Len Lear

“Can you imagine having a child with cancer or leukemia, and you’re spending all your time at the hospital. Maybe you even gave up your job to be with your child, and then he/she passes away. No way you have the funds to pay for the funeral. That is where we try to help.

“The parents don’t know what to say. They are so grateful. We get calls nationwide. I may negotiate by calling the funeral home and trying to get them to lower the price. The family’s heads are spinning. They don’t know what to think.”

The speaker is Patricia (“Trish”) Quinn, 50, an East Oak Lane resident who co-founded (with husband, Tommy, 60) a non-profit organization, Final Farewell, 12 years ago that helps impoverished families with funeral and burial expenses after the death of a child. (Tommy, a former third-generation funeral director of the Mary M. Givnish Funeral Home in Olney, which dates back to 1928, serves on the board of the Incarnation of Our Lord Church and was a coach for the Special Olympics.) Trish and Tommy both have cerebral palsy, for which Trish has had six surgeries, which only adds to their compassion and empathy for others.

An example of the tragedies where Final Farewell lends a helping hand was that of Amanda Brass, 7, who was playing with a group of friends outside of her rowhouse in Northeast Philadelphia on June 30, 2009. While they were playing, Amanda ran out into the street between two parked cars and was struck by a car and tragically killed. It devastated her family, which included an older brother, and they still struggle to this day. Final Farewell was able to provide all the funeral services for Amanda, although the family did provide cemetery costs.

I regret to say I had never heard of Final Farewell until I saw a recent piece on Fox TV-29 by reporter Bill Anderson, who does a regular heartwarming feature, “For Goodness Sake,” about people in the Philadelphia area engaged in humanitarian activities.

This particular segment was about Brianna Logue, 21, of Langhorne, who was identified as “a recovering addict.” Brianna had a daughter, Serenity, who lived for just two hours. The report was filmed at the baby’s graveside with Brianna and her mother. (According to the report, Brianna’s former addiction had nothing to do with the baby’s death.)

Trish Quinn, co-founder (with husband, Tommy) of Final Farewell, was seen recently on the Comcast Newsmakers broadcast and on the Fox-29 News at night (which will be repeated nationally on other Fox stations) to explain how the non-profit helps grieving families.

Final Farewell helped the Logue family with funeral expenses. “I love doing it,” Trish told Anderson. “I don’t know why” (as tears appeared to well up in her eyes).

The idea for Final Farewell came to Trish as she listened to a radio fundraiser for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Through their own funeral work, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn were often confronted with grieving, poor families who could not afford even the most minimal burial and funeral expenses for their deceased child. Occasionally, the Quinns were able to help by giving money and contacting other vendors willing to donate funeral or burial-related services.

In this way the couple were able to help one to three families per year, but the Quinns decided to start Final Farewell to help a lot more families. “I called all of the vendors we use and asked them to donate flowers, caskets, etc., and they all agreed,” said Trish. “We finally sold the funeral home in 2005 … CHOP provides money for research and health care for critically ill children but nothing towards a proper burial for those children who do not survive their illnesses.”

Final Farewell has no employees or paid independent contractors. The first family they helped was the Lichtenhahn family. Eddie Lichetenhahn, of Fox Chase, was the young son of a Philadelphia police officer. Eddie complained of a headache one day but went off to school and ended up dying of a brain aneurysm, devastating the family, which did not reach out to Final Farewell for help. “Sometimes it’s a social worker, sometimes it’s a family friend, sometimes it’s a religious person on behalf of the family who reaches out to Final Farewell,” said Trish.

“But since Final Farewell had just started, no one knew of our existence, so I reached out to the family by way of the death notice in the paper. I saw where he was being buried, and I went to the local stone monument company across the street from the cemetery where Eddie was being buried. I walked in and said, ‘I would like to donate $500 towards their stone,’ and I told the minister what my foundation was about and how I got started, and would he accept my $500? That was Michael DeChristopher.

Kevin and Peterson Taing, two children from an immigrant Cambodian family, died on Presidents Day, 2011, from a fire in their home in Olney. They were home from school because of the holiday. Final Farewell provided the funeral services free of charge for the Taing family as well the caskets.

“He said, ‘I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll knock the price of the stone in half, and then you walk across the street to Lawnview Cemetery and ask them if they’ll donate the foundation.’ So I did, and Lawnview Cemetery donated the foundation, which was about $500. Then Mr. DeChristopher cut the price of their $4,500 stone in half and accepted the $500, which took the engraving and stone below $2,000. And that’s how Final Farewell got started.”

Quinn said the hardest thing she ever has to do is say no to a request simply because the deceased person was over 18. For example, she was unable to help a woman in Massachusetts who wrote recently that she is homeless and living in a shelter after dealing with a severe illness. In 2015 her husband died, and in 2016 her son, 28, died. It took her two years to afford a gravestone, but she was unable to afford the engraving of her son’s name on the stone. “I just want to have my son’s name on the other side of monument for his honor and dignity,” she wrote.

Trish suggested, by the way, that anyone who goes to a funeral home to make arrangements for the recent death of a loved one should take along a best friend. That’s because the family may be “too grief-stricken to think straight,” and the friend may help to make sure the devastated family is not taken advantage of.

For more information, visit finalfarewell.org. Donations can be made to Final Farewell, 93 Old York Rd., Suite 1 #403, Jenkintown, PA 19046.

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