NORWICH - Mourners stood silently in a circle clutching a single candle and photos of deceased area homeless people earlier this week to remember 13 homeless and formally homeless who died in the region this year.
The 18th annual Homeless Persons Memorial was moved from the basement to the parking lot at Saint Vincent de Paul Place due to COVID-19 concerns.
Lee-Ann Gomes, Norwich's Human Services director, read the names to about 30 attending and added a memory of each person they were memorializing.
"We are paying tribute to the people that have either been homeless at the time of their death or been homeless in the past," Julie Way, outreach case manager at the Saint Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen, said. "At the time of some of their deaths they were inside and safe but many of them spent many many months or even years outside."