Funeral director is 'calm in the midst of chaos'
Helps comfort families of homicide victims
In the aftermath of many slayings, a pattern unfurls: loved ones wail, witnesses look the other way, and politicians promise stricter gun laws or concoct ways to curb the killing.
And outside the public eye, in the basement of her Roxbury funeral home, Rebecca Ridley oversees the embalming of the dead.
Such work might seem incidental, even secondary in the chaos following a shooting or stabbing. But in city neighborhoods awash with violence, where funeral gatherings have come to outnumber holidays, an increasing number of people are turning to Ridley, 39, for healing in times of crisis. Last year, the prim and proper funeral director buried 17 of the city's 67 slaying victims, more than any other funeral director in the city.
The Rev. William E. Dickerson, a cofounder of the TenPoint Coalition and the pastor who presides at many of the services for the city's homicide victims, said he can phone Ridley day or night, asking her to meet with despondent families. She never refuses, he said, because she views her work as a calling.
"I've seen her hug a family member or the partner of a shooting victim," he said. "I've seen that on more than one occasion. To me, you can't fake that."
Dressed in a business suit with a diamond-studded butterfly collar pin, Ridley downplayed any suggestion that she is special or that the parade of bodies takes an emotional toll.
"I provide a service," she said in a recent interview. "I can't go around crying all the time."
But many view her work as miraculous. While she cannot revive gunshot and stabbing victims, with her makeup kits she can conceal the wounds in death. For that, mothers such as Arlisa Dottin of Dorchester thank her.
Dottin's son, Jerome Wells, 20, was shot in the head, neck, and chest on May 15, 2007, in Roxbury. But he glowed in his open casket, Dottin said, adding that Ridley made it so he "went to glory looking good."
Wells, a high school football star with a baby on the way, was followed in death in October by 18-year-old Charles Bunch Jr., a senior at Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester whose bullet-riddled body was found in Mattapan. That month, Ridley also buried 22-year-old dance instructor Shawndel Mitchell, shot to death on Oct. 7 in Roxbury, and T'shana Francis, a 20-year-old college student killed by gunfire while standing outside her aunt's Mattapan home. She was an innocent bystander.
For all, one of the last stops was Ridley's basement, two floors below the place she calls home.
Sitting in her airy, sun-filled, second-floor apartment, Ridley had her hands neatly folded in her lap. Her short fingernails lacked polish, but she said she often paints those of slaying victims, out of respect for the dead and their families, who often suffer with harrowing images of how their loved one died. In rare flashes of vulnerability, Ridley said she feels pain every time she sees a child left parentless from a killing. She said she listens closely to the eulogies for homicide victims, looking for words to borrow that will help her comfort the living.
"There's always this sense that something has to change, that this has to be the last one, that parents, churches, young people, the government have to do something," Ridley said. "After a while, it's easy to lose your sense of hope."
Ridley learned the business from Helen Davis, a Southern beauty queen who moved north, took over the funeral home after her husband died, and became one of the few women managing a funeral home. Davis, a pillar in the community often remembered for her insistence on good manners, buried generations of Roxbury and Dorchester residents, including Ridley's grandfather.
Ridley had just graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in economics when she started her career as an apprentice embalmer working for Davis and taking mortician classes at Mount Ida College. She began as street violence was reaching new highs, and Davis relied on Ridley to care for the bodies.
The Rev. Miniard Culpepper, pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, said that Ridley, like Davis, has brought a sense of continuity and calm. He added that Ridley probably doesn't get paid for some funerals she performs.
"Folks like Rebecca are helping bring peace to our community," Culpepper said. "I think that's part of her gift: the ability to create calm in the midst of chaos."
In 2001, Ridley bought the Davis Funeral Home, keeping the name and moving into the second floor of the neat, white Victorian with black shutters.
Like her mentor, she disapproves of the incivility she sees leading to violence. At one funeral, a group of young women nearly came to blows over the affections of the deceased, she said.
Sometimes a violent death triggers more violence, Ridley said, adding that a guest at a recent funeral was injured hours later in a drive-by shooting. Ridley shook her head disapprovingly.
Brett Nazareth, her husband, said she can handle the work because behind her wall of professionalism, she is tough, much like her father, a veteran of the Marine Corps. But she attended suburban schools through a program with Metco, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity Inc., and described a childhood largely removed from street violence.
"She's grown up with her feet in two worlds," he said. "She's very honest and to the point, and she's got street smarts."
For better or worse, Ridley said, the need for her services is growing. She bought a second funeral home in Mattapan two years ago, and she plans to expand the Roxbury parlor.
The apartment where she lives with her husband and two children, ages 2 and 4, is her refuge.
Ridley said the sound of gunshots at night is frighteningly common. But she has not moved. "People trust me," she said.
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com. 