Bagpipes sounded from the top of the Indian Mounds on Monday afternoon as affiliates with the University’s School of Social Work gathered for an “Honoring and Remembering Ceremony.”
Participants listened to music, read poetry and gazed at candles, carnations and American flags.
Sherry Smelley, social work instructor, has been hosting the ceremony as part of her “Grief and Bereavement” class since Sept. 11, 2001. Smelley said the ceremony partially serves as a way for graduate students to learn the value of helping others grieve.
“We understand that nothing can lessen the pain of grief, but somehow ceremonies such as this seem to comfort,” Smelley said.
The ceremony stressed three main themes — supporting those with loss and grief, honoring those who serve in the military, as firefighters and elsewhere, and coping with the loss of a loved one.
“We understand that only when one loves does one grieve. … That loss could be from death, from deployment, from disaster and many other forms,” Smelley said.
The Corps of Cadets and Pershing Rifles presented the colors, and within each theme was a poetry reading and a musical selection. At the end of the ceremony, Stanley Masinter, a licensed clinical social worker, played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes as attendees released a bundle of balloons, each representing a different kind of loss with notes written to loved ones attached.
“This is a demonstration of how we can cope with grief,” said Craig Pierce, social work graduate student. “We’re all going to lose somebody or something.”
  Video: Honoring and Remembering Ceremony
 
Denise Head, Social Work accounting technician, and Rebecca Cavalier, Social Work administrative coordinator of student services, attended the ceremony with signs featuring their sons, crafted by Glenda Banta, Social Work executive administrative specialist, who also attended the ceremony.
Both Head and Cavalier used the ceremony as a way to honor their sons, both of whom are members of the Marine Corps. Head said her son, Cpl. Michael Head, will be deployed for Afghanistan in three weeks, and Cavalier said her son, Lance Cpl. Clark Cavalier, has been serving in Afghanistan for more than three months.
“It was a beautiful ceremony — very uplifting,” Cavalier said.
 
 
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Contact Andrea Gallo at [email protected]