He Buried The Unclaimed Dead On A New York Island. He Wants Others To Remember Them

As an inmate at Rikers Island, Cas Torres dug graves for the bodies of the unclaimed and unidentified people on New York City's Hart Island, one of the largest cemeteries in the U.S.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's Friday, which is when we hear from StoryCorps. And today we have a story from the archipelago that is New York City. Most of the city rests on islands, of which Manhattan may be the most famous and Hart Island may be the most bleak. One million people are buried there in a potter's field, a graveyard for the poor. They've traditionally been buried by people who are incarcerated, people like Cas Torres, who arrived there in the 1980s. Hart Island was once closed to the public. Nobody could memorialize the dead. Cas came to StoryCorps to keep their memory alive.

CAS TORRES: My mother was an alcoholic. And she couldn't take care of us. So I pretty much grew up in different types of juvenile institutions. And the day after her death, I was arrested for selling pot. I was released because the cops found the funeral card in my pocket. Sure, I was a kid. But that doesn't mean I necessarily had a childhood. When I was in my late teens, I was arrested for a robbery. They moved me to Hart Island, the city burial ground, where people who were too poor to afford burial or just unclaimed bodies - and they're buried there. I initially was on the cemetery crew. And I would bury the bodies.

I don't think I was ever at the breaking point. But I can tell you this much, one thing that took a little bit more effort to really deal with was the babies. It's not something you should be seeing. I think back on it. And I just can't understand it. I don't see how this can happen. But, you know, at the same time, I do understand. I do understand there's things happening in this world that a lot of the public are not aware of. The people who are unclaimed, I think they would want somebody to remember them, as simple as that. I think they would want somebody to come and see them. I think they would want somebody to care where they're at. And I think they would want somebody to mourn them. At least one person in this world you want to love you. And I think everybody wants that.

INSKEEP: Cas Torres at StoryCorps in New York City, where he now helps people transition out of life in prison. By the way, the city has stopped using incarcerated people to bury the dead on Hart Island. And this month, the New York City parks department takes control of Hart Island operations from the city's department of correction. This interview is archived at the Library of Congress.

(SOUNDBITE OF YUSUKE TSUTSUMI'S "UNTITLED #5") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.