Indiana Daily Student Monday, March 19, 2018 Editors Dominick Jean, Hannah Bouff ord and Jesse Naranjo 2 idsnews.com FEATURE [email protected] The man in black NOBLE GUYON | IDS Funeral director Cory Graham, 27, takes a moment to sit down and rub his eyes after preaching at a funeral service at Stuart Mortuary in Indianapolis on Saturday. This funeral was Graham’s second and last of the day after being up until 4:30 a.m. performing house calls the night before. Cory Graham grew up surrounded by death. Now, as a funeral director during the most violent time in Indianapolis’ history, he works with death for a living. By Jack Evans [email protected] | @JackHEvans INDIANAPOLIS — Th e un- thought it was the only funer- mourn and celebrate life, to neighbors’ cats. got to close the caskets. dertaker would not watch al home in the world. accept inevitability and to re- He understands death as When friends went to fu- the local news anymore. He In recent years, as homi- ject the bleakness of the void. a part of life. He sees it as his nerals, he off ered to go with hated how the broadcasters cides in Indianapolis have Graham’s demeanor suits chance to help people in need them. At the cemetery, he talked of nothing but death. surged, many victims have the job. He has the gentle, — the despondent, the con- would walk up to the fresh He hated each mention of come into Stuart’s care. Th e knowing smile of a Sunday- fused, the angry. grave and stare down into the the city’s rising homicide toll killings — 149 in 2016, 154 school teacher. In the stillness But the killings are some- earth. and how the anchors seemed in 2017, most of them shoot- of the mortuary, he seems to thing else. Th e victims seem His mother didn’t imag- excited about the city setting ings — have rocked neigh- always speak at the exact right to get younger and younger. ine him becoming a morti- a new record in blood. He borhoods across the city and volume. And he has known so many cian, but she noticed his grace hated how a news item could around the funeral home. Th ough he’s a young man, of them. More than a dozen. around death, his knack for reduce a victim to a cause of Th ere was Phyllis Ander- just 27, he has a well-honed He’s lost count. helping others grieve. death: the number of bullets son, 65, shot in her east-side intuition when it comes to Every time he sees a young “Even though I don’t be- torn into them, the place their apartment, her granddaugh- helping people grieve and victim, he takes stock of his lieve he quite, as a child, un- body fell. ter arrested. Th ere were mourn. He knows when to fortune — that he gets to be derstood it, he still had that Most of the victims were Daquan Proctor, 23, and Jonte laugh, when to lower his the one outside the casket, compassion," she says. "He men, like the undertaker, and Williams, 18, both killed in voice, when to off er prayer. that he’s still able to use his prayed a lot." young and black, like the un- a double-shooting after an And sometimes, he says, he experiences with death to His maturity also showed dertaker. Some of them were argument with a third man. sees death in advance. help others. in his friendships with older friends, people he’d grown up Th ere was Jason McNeal, “I don’t want to say I had boys and young men who with. He knew they had emo- 25, who police found shot in the luck of the draw,” he says. took him under their wings. tions, motivations, lives too a parked car on the far east Often he looked down “But I had this opportunity, Th ere was Justin, seven years complex to fi t in a news brief. side, and Matthew McGee, 13, and I took it.” older, who took on Cory in Often he looked down at who died outside a Long John at a victim, laid out in a pickup basketball and Don- a victim, laid out in a casket, Silver’s while 10 other kids casket, wounds concealed * * * key Kong on Super Nintendo. wounds concealed by make- watched. by makeup or strategically Later, there was Doc, nine up or strategically arranged All this, in just 30 days last arranged clothing, and had When Debra Graham saw years older, who coached clothing, and had the same fall. her infant son, she thought he Cory through his fi rst real thought. Indianapolis Mayor Joe the same thought. would die. heartbreak. He told him the Th at could be me. Hogsett declared the city to Cory stopped breathing pain would only make him be in the midst of a public That could be me. as doctors pulled him from stronger. * * * safety crisis at the end of 2015, the womb. Th ey diagnosed As Cory grew, he saw but nothing has stopped the him with a breathing disorder death in many of its cloaks. It Sometimes the call comes carnage. In 2017, one person and told Debra he had a slim swelled in tumors in his gran- on a holiday, on a weekend, in died in the city in a homicide, Weeks before his grand- chance of survival. Th en the ny’s belly and head, felled an the middle of the night. Cory on average, about every two mother died, he saw her slip doctors suggested a last-ditch uncle with a brain aneurysm. Graham has woken at 3 a.m. and a half days. away in a dream, then pre- option, a then-new treatment It chased the bullets that tore to retrieve a body more times Community leaders and dicted, almost to the minute, called extracorporeal mem- into friends and acquaintanc- than he can recall. Sometimes residents have struggled to the time she'd die. He had a brane oxygenation, in which es and family members. it takes him through restrict- pinpoint the causes. Ralph troubled friend on his mind an artifi cial heart-lung ma- When Cory was 12, Justin ed access doors into chilly Lemmon, a local police chap- all one day, then heard of his chine would keep him alive. was shot and killed. Cory was morgues, where he fi nds boys lain for two decades, sees death the next. He ran into But at Riley Hospital for too young to know the con- and men with bodies cool arguments settled with guns another friend on the street Children at IU Health, when text of the murder, only that and shrouded and broken by where fi stfi ghts would have and saw a darkness over him. Debra looked down and saw someone went to jail and that bullets. once done the job. James Dix- Six hours later and seven the tubes coming from Cory’s Justin had been “set up.” Graham works at Stuart on, a funeral home owner on blocks down, the man died. head and neck, she felt more At Justin’s funeral, a min- Mortuary, a family-owned the west side, sees Old Testa- He took the premonitions as despair than hope. ister urged the young man's institution just north of down- ment sin — envy, greed, wrath signs from God. “Do you think he’ll die?” friends to point their lives in town. A painting of thorn- — combined with modern “I wouldn’t call it a sixth she asked her sister. the right direction. Maybe crowned Christ hangs by the weaponry. Any given shooter sense,” Graham’s mother, “Let’s pray on it,” her sister they could meet their friend front door. Th e mortuary’s a Cain, any victim an Abel. Debra, says. “I would call it an said. in the afterlife. slogan: “‘Open to Serve’ since “Nothing has changed,” anointing.” As he grew, he tagged By the time Cory got to 1948.” Dixon says. From childhood on, Gra- along when his grandparents Broad Ripple High School, As a teenager considering Amid the turmoil, Stuart ham seemed destined to wind went to Stuart to make funeral some of his peers were fi ght- the funeral business, Gra- Mortuary stands as a rock. up as an undertaker. As a boy, arrangements for his aunts ing, stealing or getting into ham shadowed undertakers Like the church, a funeral he watched, intrigued, as fu- and uncles. He grew fond of drugs. Some were his friends at Stuart. His family entrusted home provides constancy, neral processions passed. He the services, curious about or mentors. So much of the so many loved ones to the a place to confront death in presided over funeral services the work of the funeral home mortuary that as a child, he the strength of numbers, to for his mother’s goldfi sh and employees, these people who SEE GRAHAM, PAGE 3 Carley Lanich Editor-in-Chief Matt Rasnic Creative Director Andrew Hussey and Katelyn Haas Managing Editors Get news Vol. 151, No. 6 © 2018 Eman Mozaffar www.idsne ws.com Managing Editor of Digital headlines sent Roger Hartwell Newsroom: 812-855-0760 Advertising Director Business Office: 812-855-0763 straight to Matthew Brookshire Fax: 812-855-8009 Circulation Manager your inbox. The Indiana Daily Student and idsnews.com publish weekdays during fall and spring semesters, except exam periods and University breaks. From May-July, it publishes Monday and Thursday.