At Grief Counseling Center,
New Name, New Program

On October 1, the St. Francis Center on MacArthur Boulevard became the William Wendt Center for Loss and Healing. Renamed for its founder, Episcopal priest Rev. Bill Wendt, the title reflects the broad goals of this renowned and widely respected Center.
And as of November 1, the Center added a significant new component to its grief counseling programs.
Sometimes a program seems so right that you can’t believe no one thought of it earlier. And so it is with Recover, the new program.
In collaboration with the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the Center will offer immediate help at the morgue to families and loved ones who survive a homicide, suicide, or other traumatic death. In the District, about 1,500 deaths each year—35 percent of the total—fall into this category.
Under the new program, a trained counselor will be on hand to help anyone who has to go to the morgue at 1910 Massachusetts Ave., SE, on the grounds of DC General Hospital, to identify a loved one.
The Medical Examiner must investigate any unnatural, sudden, or suspicious death, such as someone found dead at home alone, and a family member must go to the morgue even if the person was identified at the time to police officers. This provides an important opportunity for a grief counselor to establish a relationship with family members and let them know that counseling can help them adjust to their loss. Counselors then make a follow-up call a week later to see if they can be of assistance.
One of the goals of Recover is to find out how many children are in the home or will be affected by the death. Children are often forgotten in these situations, notes Kevin O’Brien, Education and Outreach Director at the Wendt Center, and they may internalize their grief and later turn to violence in reaction to their loss.
A second goal is to work with the local religious community in order to train volunteers in grief counseling.
The program is so far working with 20 churches and synagogues, hoping to train 30-40 volunteers. Families can then be assigned to people in their own communities for follow-up after initial counseling with Recover professionals.
This innovative program, the first of its kind in the country, came about like many inventions—serendipitously. In summer 1998, a consultant to the Center was dining on sushi one night at a local restaurant. He fell into a conversation about fish and other matters with Dr. Jonathan Arden, the District’s newly appointed Chief Medical Examiner.
Their chat led to Dr. Arden visiting the Center that September, initially to talk about a training program for his own staff. The collaboration that became Recover began at that meeting.
Dr. Arden’s office provides office space for Recover counselors and access to information on families who might need its services. Funds for the new program come from several local foundations, including Freddie Mac, the Starbucks Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and the England Foundation, established by former PCA president Richard England.
Indeed, the foundation community has been very receptive to this innovative approach thus far, O’Brien notes, and every grant proposal to date has been approved. This has allowed the Center to hire five new staff for Recover and to open a satellite office on U Street, NW, near the Cardozo-U Street Metro. Most of the follow-up counseling sessions will be held at this site, which is handicap-accessible, after initial contacts with families are made at the Medical Examiner’s office.
The Center has high hopes that this will become a model program for Medical Examiner’s offices around the country. By reaching out to all those who have just suffered a traumatic loss, the Wendt Center is breaking new ground in an important field of social services. Years from now, this may be considered standard care everywhere.
William Wendt Center for Loss and Healing, 4880-A MacArthur Boulevard, NW, phone 333-4880
—Linda Starke