BEND, Ore. — Sally Lybarger was exactly two months shy of her 80th birthday when she started having difficulty breathing. She was rushed to a hospital, but died hours later.
Her life was celebrated by tearful friends at a memorial Sept. 10 at the Family Kitchen in Bend. They sang “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King, lit candles in her memory and shared stories about her life.
Lybarger spent the bulk of her final years living out of her car in Bend. It wasn’t until months before her death that she got into the Quimby Street Apartments, affordable housing for low-income seniors.
Yet despite Lybarger’s transient lifestyle, she was well-known for her participation in Bend City Council meetings and voracious appetite for local news. At the memorial, her friends’ stories painted a picture of a woman who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, stood up for homeless people and enthusiastically volunteered at Bend’s Methodist Church to help run the shower truck.
“I loved her like a mother,” said John Regan, a Bend resident and friend who helped her eventually move from her van into her apartment. “I confided a lot in her.”
Yet the outpouring of love and grief in response to Lybarger’s death is not always the case when homeless people die. In many instances, friends and family do not grieve. The body isn’t claimed. Nobody says prayers, lights candles or sings favorite songs at a memorial service.
“It is really sad, because the majority of times there isn’t family to be contacted,” said Colleen Thomas, homeless outreach coordinator for Deschutes County Mental Health.
Neither state nor local agencies track the number of homeless deaths in Central Oregon. Local law enforcement estimates suggest about a half-dozen homeless residents die in Deschutes County each year.
Local and state officials say tracking the number of deaths is difficult because it’s hard to identify whether someone is truly homeless. For instance, people may be couch surfing or have listed a relative’s home as a permanent address, even though they aren’t actually living there.
“When we encounter someone not living in a residence of some type and it’s obvious they are living out of their car, RV, or a tent in the woods, we would use the term transient or homeless,” said Lt. Chad Davis of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
But otherwise, it’s difficult to label, Davis said.
Central Oregon’s homeless die from a number of causes — some die by suicide, others have medical problems, while a few freeze to death in the harsh winters, according to local law enforcement officials and service providers.
“It’s really heartbreaking,” said Amanda Lenke, board chairwoman of the Bend Community Foundation, which offers services to feed and keep homeless warm in the winter.
Aaron Adams is a funeral director at Redmond Memorial, which is owned by a company that has several funeral homes in the Central Oregon area. Since May 2016, the company has taken care of three homeless people who died, he said.
“It’s not overwhelmingly common,” said Adams. “But it’s not uncommon.”
When a homeless person dies, the death is handled like any other investigation. If law enforcement can’t get in touch with relatives, local funeral homes are required to try to track down family and hold onto the body until state law allows otherwise.
The rules for dealing with unclaimed, or “indigent” bodies are strict — sometimes it can take months before funeral homes can dispose of them, said Adams. Funeral homes are required to contact agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to the Oregon Department of State Lands before they’re allowed to dispose of the body in the least expensive way possible, said Adams.
“Typically, we have to move much slower with indigent persons because we have to hold onto the possibility that someone might come out of the woodwork to claim their loved one,” said Adams, adding that most often, the bodies are cremated.
Lenke, of the Bend Community Center board, said occasionally the homeless come to her organization to ask for a place to hold memorials for their friends and fellow camp mates.
“What happens a lot of times is there’s no one to recognize or remember them or even be able to make any kinds of arrangements at all,” said Lenke. “There’s no one else to remember them.”
While most homeless deaths may go largely unnoticed by the public, others are mourned by dozens of Bend residents. Over the years, several memorials for homeless people have been hosted at venues ranging from the Family Kitchen to Bend Community Center.
In 2009, David Wade, 59, and Greg Spikerman, 55, were stabbed to death at a homeless camp south of Bend by Jason Centrone, another homeless man, who was sentenced to life in prison. In response, the Bend Community Center planned a memorial sculpture dedicated to homeless people who have died or been killed in the region over the years.
But the project was never finished. Now, the public only learns of deaths of those who were well-known in the community — like Lybarger.
Cindy Tidball, who works at Family Kitchen, said she’s still tempted to grab a newspaper and save it for Lybarger — something she did for years whenever Lybarger would come to the kitchen for lunch. Unlike many other homeless who will die unnoticed, Lybarger will be missed, said Tidball.
“We don’t know her whole life; we only know little bits and pieces,” said Tidball. “She was a good woman.”
