Hiram Delgado remains in a small cardboard box perched on a shelf at an Aurora strip mall, a daily reminder he’s been there almost a year.
“I probably notice him more now than anyone did while he was alive,” said Lequita Taylor, proprietor of Taylor Funeral and Cremation Services – the resting place to date for Delgado’s ashes.
“He’ll be here on my shelf forever unless somebody takes him home,” Taylor said.
Delgado is one of 1,132 people buried or cremated last fiscal year at a cost of $1.2 million for the state of Colorado.
Burying the poor has been a community obligation from ancient Rome’s Garden of Macaneas potter’s field to the unmarked graves of Virginia City’s Boot Hill.
In Colorado, burial assistance is available to people whose personal estate is valued at less than $2,500 – even those with a wealthy family are eligible.
The state will pay up to $1,500 on a funeral that cannot exceed $2,500 – and only those on public assistance qualify.
Counties are left to pay for the burials of the truly indigent – anyone with no income or possessions and not receiving any form of public assistance. The stipend: $700.
Still, Colorado ranks among the most charitable states when it comes to burying its poor. Delaware pays only $450, while some states don’t even provide a box and wrap the embalmed body in a sheet before placing it in a grave.
Denver’s Department of Human Services buried or cremated 466 people in 2005 – the most of any county – at a cost of $431,765. The state covered about 60 percent of that amount. The rest came from city property taxes. The number of publicly funded burials in Denver has remained about the same over the past three years.
Taylor and her husband, Michael, received $16,115 from Denver for 19 indigent burials, tops in the city.
In all, the Taylors handled about 50 indigent cases last year from across the Front Range – including Delgado’s $900 cremation, paid by Jefferson County.
Lequita Taylor says her approach to burying the poor is simple: “They’ve been kicked enough. They should at least have peace and dignity.”
In business for three years, Taylor isn’t a typical funeral home.
“This was a telemarketer operation before we came in,” Taylor said, motioning toward empty caskets on the sales floor.
Nestled in the back is a tiny chapel with about 60 chairs and a podium.
One recent burial the Taylors handled was that of Charles Rosa, a 55-year-old Denver native who died of cancer April 28.
Denver contributed $600 toward his cremation, and without the city’s help, Rosa’s sister, Priscilla Peña, said she would have had to take out a loan to pay for the burial.
“It was a beautiful service we wouldn’t have been able to afford without the help,” Peña said.
The memorials are spartan. There are no urns, no headstone or marker, and the coffins are cardboard with rope grips.
Burying the very poor – the $700 funeral – is hardly a moneymaker, Taylor said.
Michael Taylor delivers the coffin and “makes sure to say a few words at the grave,” she said.
Not everyone gets help. Denver turned away 112 families last year with excessive income – 19 percent of the applicants, the fewest in the past several years.
Unless the deceased is cremated, the Taylors are directed to local cemeteries for burial plots.
Most indigent burials are at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge and St. Simeon Cemetery in Aurora, both owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver.
Government-owned grave sites are scattered among a handful of cemeteries with plots usually donated by families.
Cemeteries sometimes offer plots at a price the government is willing to pay, typically about $300. Many cemeteries won’t accept indigent burials, funeral home directors say.
William and Kate Duncan bought a large family plot at Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge. William was buried there in 1913; his wife 25 years later.
There were 18 Duncan graves unused and unnoticed until 1993, when great-grandson David Riley discovered them while tracing family ancestry.
After unsuccessfully trying to sell the plots and seeking a charitable organization that would accept them, Riley donated them to Denver human services.
“It meant very much to my mother that the plots were made available to the needy,” Riley said.
Sometimes the few dollars the state contributes make the difference between a pauper’s burial and a memorable funeral.
“It’s important that people know that in death they are taken care of,” said James Walker III, who relied on Adams County to defray the cremation costs for his father, James Walker Jr.
Walker died nearly penniless in a nursing home three years after suffering a debilitating stroke, his son said.
The Taylor Funeral Home pulled out a few stops for Walker, and he was memorialized at a service held at a local church that donated its worship space.
“It was a classy ending,” Walker’s son said.
And what became of Hiram Delgado’s ashes?
Following Denver Post inquiries last week to St. John’s Hospice, where Delgado died, the Lakewood facility said it was going to buy an urn and retrieve him from the funeral parlor.
“Our motto is that in life or death, no one should remain forgotten,” St. John’s counselor Rachael Bixler said in a May 18 interview.
The hospice would be Delgado’s final resting place, she said.
“He’ll be remembered by those who knew him,” she said.
As of Wednesday, Delgado was still on the Taylors’ shelf.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-820-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
