St. Timothy Episcopal Church in Chehalis has provided more background and context for an art installation that was installed by members of its congregation and others on Sunday, Sept. 13.
In a Thursday news release, the church stated that 73 tombstones were erected to “commemorate those who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention or during enforcement actions since Jan. 21, 2024.”
According to the church, the art installation is a collaboration between the congregation’s rector, the Rev. Kay Flores, Centralia-based nonprofit ROOTED in Lewis County, and Chehalis native and children’s book author Jess Hernandez.
Hernandez initially proposed the project, according to the news release.
“To me, evil begins when we stop seeing people as human beings and start seeing them as things,” Hernandez said in the release. “I wanted a visible, tangible way to remind folks that these were individuals with lives, stories and families.”
With funding provided by ROOTED, Hernandez and her family worked to hand-cut each tombstone over the course of a month, in addition to painting them and creating stencils with the names of each victim.
When she was looking for a location to place them, she “immediately thought of Rev. Kay (Flores) and St. Timothy.”
According to the news release, Flores was supportive of the project.
“In our baptismal covenant, we Episcopalians promise to seek and serve Christ in all others, loving our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being,” she stated in the release. “This project is a visible sign of the many people who have died as the result of violence and a broken system. The tombstones highlight the humanity of our immigrant neighbors, and remind us that we have promised, with God’s help, to work for a better world for them and for all of us.”
Members of the congregation painted names and biographical information on each tombstone.
“Just the sheer number of tombstones was incredibly sobering,” Hernandez said. “When I first proposed the project, I thought there were maybe 50 people. In the two months it took to coordinate and put everything together, the number kept rising. I even had to call Kay the week before it went up and have her make one more.”
According to the news release, Hernandez researched the deaths of each individual, and some stuck with her more than others, such as those who died of dementia while in ICE detention.
“We lost my mom from Parkinson’s dementia a couple of years ago,” Hernandez said in the release. “She was with people she loved, but she was still scared and disoriented sometimes. I can’t imagine how terrifying that would have been for those poor people.”
She added: “Too many of these deaths could have been prevented if these folks received timely medical attention. In a way, it reminds me of (Holocaust victim) Anne Frank. People think she was executed, but really she died of a preventable disease in a Nazi prison.”
According to the church, the installation will remain at St. Timothy Episcopal Church until the end of September.
Hernandez hopes others express interest in hosting the installation after that.
“I’d love for other churches or community groups to have it up for a week, to have it travel outside our town,” Hernandez stated in the release. “These folks deserve to be remembered. And people deserve to know what happened to them.”
In initially announcing the art installation on social media, ROOTED in Lewis County called the display “Deaths at the Hands of ICE,” though that title was not included in the news release issued by the church on Thursday.
