Would you go into debt for your pet? Some couples are.
For some, the cuddles, comfort, and joy they bring are worth going into debt. It's particularly true for 'DINK' couples – those with a dual income and no kids – 94% of whom view their pets as family members, according to a new Insurify survey.
Some 68% of these pet parents say they've made financial sacrifices to cover essentials for their furry friends. From taking a second job to stopping savings contributions to skipping medical care for themselves, DINK couples are willing to go a long way for their pets.
Kenzie Mollock and Wiley Garren, two married 29-year-olds living in Texas, consider their two-and-a-half-year-old miniature schnauzer mix family. They named her 'Hazelnut Frappuccino Whip Cream Paws,' or 'Hazel' for short.
Mollock is a teacher and Garren serves in the U.S. Army. They described their salaries as 'not huge,' but they always make room in the budget for Hazel.
'When I'm happy, she's there. When I'm sad, she's there,' Mollock said. 'Even if my husband's not here because he's at work and he's deployed, my dog is there. And she's happy to see me every time.'
More: Owning a pet isn't easy. But these species can make it a little easier
How much do DINK couples spend on pets?
DINK couples surveyed spend an average of $1,906 per year on their pets; a fraction of the $23,000 parents spent raising a child last year, according to a SoFi report.
The most common pet-related monthly costs for these couples are food, treats, and toys. Vet care, medication, and groomers are other common monthly expenses.
However, an unexpected vet visit can quickly throw a wrench in pet parents' budgets. The highest vet bill those surveyed have paid is about $1,449, but 13% said they had spent more than $3,000.
While that may seem like a lot, DINK pet parents say they would be willing to spend more. Those surveyed said they would spend up to $5,004 for lifesaving treatment and $2,835 per year to care for a pet's chronic health condition.
Even that may not be enough. Dr. Amy Fox, a veterinarian at Kinship said she has worked in several specialized animal hospitals where bills sometimes exceeded $10,000 after pets experienced accidents or had severe health conditions.
"This can put pet parents in a difficult position when their pet has an unexpected emergency and is another very important reminder to have pet insurance or set up an emergency savings fund for your pets," Fox told USA TODAY.
Whatever the cost, some pet owners seem willing to find a way to pay.
'I don't think there is a cap or a limit because you can just finance and pay it off slowly,' Mollock said.
What luxury pet items are people buying?
It can also be difficult to stick to a budget when your pet is giving you puppy dog eyes.
Only 11% of those surveyed said they never splurge on their furry friends. About 20% said they rarely buy non-essentials, 43% said they occasionally splurge, and 26% said they regularly spoil their pets.
Some of the most popular luxury items DINK couples buy for their pets include vitamins or supplements, luxury treats, gourmet or organic fresh food. High-end toys and clothing or accessories are also common splurges.
Mollock and Garren buy Hazel a salmon-and-rice-flavored dry food for dogs with sensitive skin and stomachs, tick and flea medication, and special bags she can sit in when they run errands or go hiking. They also buy her enrichment toys.
'We usually get her these puzzle boxes, and they can get a little bit expensive. She's so smart and inquisitive,' Mollock said. 'Then you are just kind of buying the next one and the next one. She's outsmarted them all.'
What are DINK owners sacrificing for their pets?
Even if DINK couples aren't splurging on organic food or outfits for their animals, pet-related expenses can put a dent in their budgets.
While 32% said they had never made financial sacrifices for a pet, 34% said they worked extra hours or took a second job to cover costs and 33% said they took on credit card or loan debt.
The poll also found 29% stopped contributing to savings, 24% delayed paying other bills, and 15% skipped personal medical care.
'Human relationships with cats and dogs have drastically shifted, with a growing focus on animal welfare over the past several decades,' Julia Taliesin, data journalist at Insurify, told USA TODAY. 'Pet owners care for their pets on a personal level, making it easier for them to excuse splurges for the sake of their pet's welfare.'
Some sacrifices are hard to measure, like the time spent training a dog to stop begging for food or from chewing through another pair of shoes. And training doesn't always end when puppies or kittens grow up.
As they get older, their personalities can change and issues can arise. Dr. Valli Parthasarathy, another veterinarian at Kinship, advises owners be prepared for unwanted behaviors to start at any age and work with a vet or experienced trainer when they do.
Do pets replace children for DINK couples?
While 'fur babies' are a welcome addition to the family, 39% of DINK pet owners surveyed said they do plan on having children someday.
But 17% said raising children is too expensive to ever have them and 15% said they never wanted to have kids. Some 29% said they prefer a lifestyle that allows for more freedom.
Of those surveyed, 22% said they need to improve their financial situation before having children, and 5% cited medical or fertility issues as the reason they don't have kids.
For Mollock and Garren, having kids isn't a priority right now.
'We're still trying to find our way in life,' Garren said. 'We need to bring a kid into an environment where we have more things figured out than less.'
In the meantime, Hazel is 'something to take care of, similar to a baby,' he said. 'We consider her family.'
Reach Rachel Barber at rbarber@usatoday.com and follow her on X @rachelbarber_
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Would you go into debt for your pet? Some couples are.
How far would you go to care for your pet? For some, the cuddles, comfort, and joy they bring are worth going into debt. It's particularly true for 'DINK' couples – those with a dual income and no kids – 94% of whom view their pets as family members, according to a new Insurify survey. Some 68% of these pet parents say they've made financial sacrifices to cover essentials for their furry friends. From taking a second job to stopping savings contributions to skipping medical care for themselves, DINK couples are willing to go a long way for their pets. Kenzie Mollock and Wiley Garren, two married 29-year-olds living in Texas, consider their two-and-a-half-year-old miniature schnauzer mix family. They named her 'Hazelnut Frappuccino Whip Cream Paws,' or 'Hazel' for short. Mollock is a teacher and Garren serves in the U.S. Army. They described their salaries as 'not huge,' but they always make room in the budget for Hazel. 'When I'm happy, she's there. When I'm sad, she's there,' Mollock said. 'Even if my husband's not here because he's at work and he's deployed, my dog is there. And she's happy to see me every time.' More: Owning a pet isn't easy. But these species can make it a little easier How much do DINK couples spend on pets? DINK couples surveyed spend an average of $1,906 per year on their pets; a fraction of the $23,000 parents spent raising a child last year, according to a SoFi report. The most common pet-related monthly costs for these couples are food, treats, and toys. Vet care, medication, and groomers are other common monthly expenses. However, an unexpected vet visit can quickly throw a wrench in pet parents' budgets. The highest vet bill those surveyed have paid is about $1,449, but 13% said they had spent more than $3,000. While that may seem like a lot, DINK pet parents say they would be willing to spend more. Those surveyed said they would spend up to $5,004 for lifesaving treatment and $2,835 per year to care for a pet's chronic health condition. Even that may not be enough. Dr. Amy Fox, a veterinarian at Kinship said she has worked in several specialized animal hospitals where bills sometimes exceeded $10,000 after pets experienced accidents or had severe health conditions. "This can put pet parents in a difficult position when their pet has an unexpected emergency and is another very important reminder to have pet insurance or set up an emergency savings fund for your pets," Fox told USA TODAY. Whatever the cost, some pet owners seem willing to find a way to pay. 'I don't think there is a cap or a limit because you can just finance and pay it off slowly,' Mollock said. What luxury pet items are people buying? It can also be difficult to stick to a budget when your pet is giving you puppy dog eyes. Only 11% of those surveyed said they never splurge on their furry friends. About 20% said they rarely buy non-essentials, 43% said they occasionally splurge, and 26% said they regularly spoil their pets. Some of the most popular luxury items DINK couples buy for their pets include vitamins or supplements, luxury treats, gourmet or organic fresh food. High-end toys and clothing or accessories are also common splurges. Mollock and Garren buy Hazel a salmon-and-rice-flavored dry food for dogs with sensitive skin and stomachs, tick and flea medication, and special bags she can sit in when they run errands or go hiking. They also buy her enrichment toys. 'We usually get her these puzzle boxes, and they can get a little bit expensive. She's so smart and inquisitive,' Mollock said. 'Then you are just kind of buying the next one and the next one. She's outsmarted them all.' What are DINK owners sacrificing for their pets? Even if DINK couples aren't splurging on organic food or outfits for their animals, pet-related expenses can put a dent in their budgets. While 32% said they had never made financial sacrifices for a pet, 34% said they worked extra hours or took a second job to cover costs and 33% said they took on credit card or loan debt. The poll also found 29% stopped contributing to savings, 24% delayed paying other bills, and 15% skipped personal medical care. 'Human relationships with cats and dogs have drastically shifted, with a growing focus on animal welfare over the past several decades,' Julia Taliesin, data journalist at Insurify, told USA TODAY. 'Pet owners care for their pets on a personal level, making it easier for them to excuse splurges for the sake of their pet's welfare.' Some sacrifices are hard to measure, like the time spent training a dog to stop begging for food or from chewing through another pair of shoes. And training doesn't always end when puppies or kittens grow up. As they get older, their personalities can change and issues can arise. Dr. Valli Parthasarathy, another veterinarian at Kinship, advises owners be prepared for unwanted behaviors to start at any age and work with a vet or experienced trainer when they do. Do pets replace children for DINK couples? While 'fur babies' are a welcome addition to the family, 39% of DINK pet owners surveyed said they do plan on having children someday. But 17% said raising children is too expensive to ever have them and 15% said they never wanted to have kids. Some 29% said they prefer a lifestyle that allows for more freedom. Of those surveyed, 22% said they need to improve their financial situation before having children, and 5% cited medical or fertility issues as the reason they don't have kids. For Mollock and Garren, having kids isn't a priority right now. 'We're still trying to find our way in life,' Garren said. 'We need to bring a kid into an environment where we have more things figured out than less.' In the meantime, Hazel is 'something to take care of, similar to a baby,' he said. 'We consider her family.' Reach Rachel Barber at rbarber@ and follow her on X @rachelbarber_
San Francisco Chronicle
12-07-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Carrying the torch': WWII soldier who died in prison camp in Philippines identified, buried in S.F.
During a routine visit to his parents' home in San Jose this past November, Eric Ulrich began to tackle a mound of mail, boxes and old packages that had accumulated over the past few weeks. As he sorted through a pile stacked high of envelopes and loose paper, Ulrich came across a FedEx package labeled with a return address from Fort Knox, Ky. 'U.S. Army,' read the envelope addressed to his father Gerald, Ulrich recalled. Confused as to why his 89-year-old father was receiving mail from the Army, Ulrich opened the package. Inside was a message from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or the DPAA — the federal agency tasked with recovering missing military personnel and prisoners of war. The letter would kick off an eight-month journey that culminated in an emotional ceremony Friday at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio. Cpl. Ernest Ulrich, a World War II soldier who died in the Philippines after being subjected to the brutal Bataan Death March, was finally laid to rest in the U.S. after 80 years of being labeled 'Unknown.' For several weeks, the DPAA had been trying to notify Ulrich's father that recent dental and DNA testing had identified the remains of an unknown World War II soldier as belonging to Cpl. Ulrich — the half-brother of Ulrich's paternal grandfather, or his father's uncle. 'It was pretty incredible,' Ulrich told the Chronicle, but 'I had no idea who this person was.' No one had ever mentioned him, not even his grandfather — a World War I veteran who would often tell his grandchildren stories far beyond their years. When Ulrich reached out to the DPAA phone number listed at the bottom of the letter, he learned that the path to his great uncle's identification involved several burials and subsequent exhumations, spanned two countries separated by the Pacific Ocean and took over 80 years. Cpl. Ulrich, who was from China, Texas, served in the medical department of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment during World War II, the DPAA told Ulrich (and later shared in a news release). After enlisting in March 1941, Cpl. Ulrich was transported with the rest of the 200th to the Philippines in October. When Japanese forces invaded the islands that December, the regiment provided ground support through several months of intense combat. Fighting continued until the United States surrendered the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor Island in the late spring of 1942. Japanese forces captured thousands of American and Filipino troops, including Cpl. Ulrich, as prisoners of war and subjected them to the 65-mile Bataan Death March, along with 78,000 others, toward the Cabanatuan POW Camp, DPAA officials said. Cpl. Ulrich, then 26, was admitted to the camp hospital for pellagra and beriberi — illnesses caused by vitamin deficiencies — as well as dysentery in September 1942, according to camp records cited by the DPAA in documents provided by Ulrich. He died of his illnesses on Nov. 22, 1942, according to camp records and other historical evidence. Cpl. Ulrich was buried in the camp's Common Grave 807, alongside several other servicemen. According to federal estimates, the camp saw upwards of 800 deaths per month and over 2,700 prisoners of war were buried in the camp cemeteries by 1945, when troops liberated the camp. After the war, American personnel relocated Cpl. Ulrich's remains from the Cabanatuan graves to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, where they were considered unidentifiable and labeled 'Unknown,' federal officials say. According to DPAA documents provided by Ulrich, federal investigators in the mid-1940s identified three service members from the same grave, but were unable to identify any others due to 'inconclusive' dental records and forensics. At the time, an expert anthropologist said the remains were 'jumbled beyond belief' and in 'such a state of deterioration that evidence on which identification depends had been largely obliterated.' At the end of the Vietnam War in 1973 the Department of Defense designated an agency to search for all missing personnel and prisoners of war. At its launch, the DPAA's predecessor estimated that nearly 73,700 American soldiers who fought in World War II were missing. Today, only about 1,800 of those missing soldiers, or roughly 2.4%, are accounted for. After finding sufficient evidence to exhume several unresolved cases in August 2014, DPAA excavated the remains of nine unknown soldiers associated with Common Grave 807 in late 2018, agency officials said. The remains were transported to the agency's testing site in Hawaii. The agency's scientists identified Cpl. Ulrich's remains by using dental, anthropological and historical evidence, while personnel from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner system confirmed the results by using Y-chromosome DNA analysis, officials said. Ulrich noted that the DPAA used a DNA sample from Cpl. Ulrich's nephew, Boyce Ulrich, who has since passed away after providing the sample. Of the 999 service members from Camp Cabanatuan who were originally deemed missing, only 117, or just under 12%, have been accounted for, according to federal estimates. Cpl. Ulrich's remains arrived in the Bay Area on Tuesday, according to a Facebook post from Honoring Our Fallen, a nonprofit aiming to support military families. Personnel performed military honors at Oakland International Airport upon his arrival. The family knows little about their long-lost uncle. They have no photographs and merely one faded memory of him. Ulrich's father told him he recalled visiting Cpl. Ulrich on Angel Island before the regiment left for the Pacific Theatre; at the time, his father was less than five years old, and didn't remember anything about his uncle. After the war ended, all the family knew was that Cpl. Ulrich died during the Bataan Death March, Ulrich said. 'I didn't think I would have cried for a great uncle who I didn't know, who died in 1942,' Eric Ulrich said, describing Cpl. Ulrich's arrival ceremony. 'But with everybody standing around, everybody thinking about the historical moment — there are thousands of people that are never going to have this moment.' Since hearing the details of his great uncle's story, Ulrich's goal has been 'to do the right thing for this gentleman that did his service to his country,' he said. 'My role is to try to facilitate and see this through.' Wanting to learn more about his newly found relative, Ulrich looked further into the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment and came across a book, titled 'Beyond Courage: One Regiment Against Japan, 1941-1945,' which detailed the experiences of a small group within the 200th regiment via first-hand accounts and archival research. Ulrich was particularly drawn to a moment in the book when the ship carrying the 200th passes under the Golden Gate Bridge, prompting one soldier to tell another that 'some of us won't see that bridge again.' The Ulrich family originally wished to bury Cpl. Ulrich next to his half-brother in Palo Alto, or in the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. But in telling the story of the 200th and the Golden Gate Bridge, the family secured a resting place at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. The coveted resting place, reserved for military veterans and their spouses, is completely full, according to Greg Silva, funeral director and general manager of Twin Chapels Mortuary, Cpl. Ulrich's funeral home. All of its burial spots are either occupied or reserved for spouses. But a very select few of the reserved spots can sometimes become vacant due to spouses changing their plans or other extraordinary circumstances, Silva explained. 'We got lucky,' he noted. 'To have him return back to San Francisco to be buried at the Presidio in the last place he saw before he left America (is) amazing,' Ulrich said, 'It's a celebration of this man who has paid his dues.' Under a partly sunny sky Friday, with the Golden Gate Bridge peaking through the fog, Cpl. Ulrich's remains arrived in the Presidio, just a couple miles away from where he was over 80 years ago. Surrounded by a new generation of family members, almost all of whom were born after he passed, Cpl. Ulrich received a full military honors ceremony that included a playing of military taps, a six-gun salute and an emotional flag-folding ceremony. For Ulrich's wife, Marti, the celebration was the 'feel-good, happy ending' to a long journey of 'picking up the pieces and carrying the torch.' 'This whole process has been something else,' Marti Ulrich said at the ceremony. 'To see it finally come full circle — the pieces of the puzzle just kept falling into place.' One war and 80 years later, Cpl. Ulrich was laid into the ground on the northern side of the cemetery, with a picture-perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Chicago Tribune
10-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
There are few memorials for Chicagoans who died from heat in 1995. But there are remnants.
Emilio Aguirredied July 17, 1995. He died because he was too hot. He received a headstone in the back of Homewood Memorial Gardens cemetery just last month. We know very little about Emilio Aguirre. We know that he was 80 when he died. We know that he had a wife who died long before he did and we know they had a child, but we don't know anything beyond that fact. We know that he had siblings, but the last of them died in 1969. We know Aguirre spent decades alone, in an apartment on the North Side. We know that he was poor when he died, so poor the city of Chicago buried him in Homewood Memorial because that's where Cook County keeps a longstanding agreement to bury unclaimed, forgotten or unknown residents of the city. Aguirre was buried in a long plot that holds 41 other Chicagoans who died the same week that he died, and for the same reason: It was way too hot in July 1995. The site is what some people would call a potter's field, and others would refer to as a mass grave. There's no nice way to put it. The headstone is small, the lettering gold, and gives additional, not minor details: Aguirre served in the military during World War II, he was a prisoner of war, he received a bronze star. Charles Henderson, a Chicago veterans activist who served in Afghanistan, is the reason Aguirre received a headstone 30 years later. He saw a flash of Aguirre's veteran's papers in 'Cooked,' a 2019 documentary about the Chicago heat wave of 1995. It took years of paperwork and research, but Henderson eventually learned that Aguirre, a native of Mexico City, crossed into the United States at 13, and despite his immigration status, served in the U.S. Army becoming a U.S. citizen. At the bottom of his headstone, it says: 'NEVER FORGOTTEN.' But that's more polite than true: Like many of the 739 Chicagoans who died of heat that summer, many elderly, many people of color, he was forgotten for years. His grave is one of two places in the Chicago area where you are even reminded of what happened. Thirty years ago, on July 13, 1995, the temperature in Chicago was 106 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat index — what it actually feels like outside — reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Melrose Beach was packed long after dark with families lingering on blankets. Supermarkets humored customers who came to buy milk and eggs and stayed for hours, lulled by cheap air conditioning. O'Hare International Airport — six years before our current TSA checkpoints — welcomed those without travel plans, who loitered away days, curled up in books, paying for airport food. That's one image of the 1995 heatwave. Here's another. Rows of refrigerated trucks, commandeered from the Taste of Chicago, to store the dead. Police wagons lined up outside the city morgue, dropping off one more heat victim, only to leave and retrieve many more. A mayor, through press conferences, decades before cries of 'fake news,' openly disrupted the unflattering mortality numbers coming from his own medical examiner. It was possible to be surrounded by disaster that summer without understanding what was happening. Karl Koball, now a funeral director in South Dakota, was one of a handful of students at Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling recruited by the medical examiner's office to handle the overflow of bodies: 'I lived on Clark Street in Rogers Park, and I remember sitting in a tub of cold water when I got called in at midnight on a Saturday. When I got to the morgue, it was like another world. And I didn't get home until Monday.' Even now, depending on who's measuring, the disaster lasted four or five or eight days, and was either the hottest period of time in Chicago history or merely one of the hottest. The exact duration of the heat wave — which, by most accounts, lasted July 13 to July 20 — is still somewhat difficult to settle on, partly because of all the dead Chicagoans still being found in homes and hotels after the heat declined to the low 90s. Even the final number of dead, 739, was only settled on months later. That's not far from the 844 who died in the SS Eastland disaster on the Chicago River in 1915, but larger than the number of dead in the Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903 (602) and more than twice the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (300). So why did the Great Heat Wave of 1995 become an afterthought? Why, 30 years later, are we pressed to find plaques, statues, remembrances or simply everyday memories of such a relatively recent disaster? Why did local culture move on? 'I think some of the vagueness about this is residual from the mayor's office, which took the attitude of 'Let's not make such a big deal, OK?'' said Robert T. Starks, who founded the African American Studies Department at Northeastern Illinois University and became an outspoken critic of then-mayor Richard M. Daley's handling of the crisis. He never forgave Daley, and never failed to call out Black aldermen who remained silent. 'But 30 years on, I am surprised no one's stepped up to memorialize these people. I'd hope Brandon Johnson heads up something before leaving office.' Eric Klinenberg, the Chicago native and sociologist who has done more than anyone in government or beyond to keep the memory of the heat wave alive, puts it this way: 'If four airplanes crashed into each other over O'Hare during a heat wave — roughly the number of people who died in the heat wave — we'd talked about it constantly. It'd be local lore. But for a lot of reasons, the 1995 heatwave got a strange status in Chicago.' Those reasons, complicated and damning, are all too obvious. The closest thing we have to a true memorial is not even in Chicago. It's the headstone of the mass grave in Homewood, a short walk from Emilio Aguirre's new marker. It's about 5 feet tall and sits at the back of a plot that abuts a parking lot for trucks and trailers. It's thoughtful, but unless you know it's there, you'd never know it's there. And while it means well, it avoids anything like context. The inscription reads: 'They died poor and alone,' then takes a contradictory turn: 'But were cared for and remembered by the compassionate citizens' of Chicago, in the form of a collective headstone. That marker, installed less than a year after the heat, 'gives honorable closure' to the crisis. Klinenberg says that 'you can almost see a lack of an honest remembrance in how the city and local media framed the heat wave 30 years ago.' He laughs even now thinking of 'how much work it took' to make what happened seem as though no one was to blame. When the mayor's office published a report months later, he notes how it said many of those in need of help didn't trust the government, and that churches, community groups and 'ethnic associations' should have reached out in a time of crisis. It also twists itself into linguistic contortions to describe a heat wave as 'a unique meteorological event.' Even the title seems opaque: 'Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions.' Klinenberg, you can probably tell, has refused to let the heat wave fade from memory. You could argue his account of that summer, the 2002 best-seller 'Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,' is the only real memorial to its dead. Consider that Henderson learned about Emilio Aguirre from 'Cooked,' a Kartemquin Films documentary by a New York filmmaker, Judith Helfand, who was partly adapting Klinenberg's work. Both Henderson and Helfand didn't know much at all about the heat wave until reading Klinenberg, who, for two decades, has largely framed the way we have discussed that summer. He grew up in Old Town and taught sociology at Northwestern University before leaving to become the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He started 'Heat Wave' in the late 1990s, when he was not yet 30, and found the city had already moved on. 'I would go block by block asking people if they knew anyone who died during the heat wave and there were so many solitary deaths where the people who died were isolated and frail, you could live next door to them and unless they noticed a city vehicle take them away, they might not have know anything happened there. There was literally no conversation at all about what happened not long before.' The theme of the book, in many ways, became: Why did we forget this happened? The answer, he says, can be boiled down to: 'The people affected were largely poor and depleted and didn't get a lot of attention or sympathy from the city on a regular basis because they died — mostly on the South and West Sides — where Chicago expects bad stuff to happen.' But the book's power is in how Klinenberg walks through the systemic failures of both the mayor's office and the local media to recognize their own historical blindspots — there's an entire chapter on how the Tribune reported and, he writes, downplayed the severity of the disaster, rarely challenging Daley's handling of the crisis. (One Mike Royko column was headlined 'Killer Heat Wave or Media Event?') He never heard from the mayor's office about the book but, through back channels in city hall and beyond, he heard he wasn't wrong, and that the Daley administration was not happy. When he spoke at book events, readers told him to expect his property taxes to spike, expect parking tickets. 'The very first event for the book, huge, thick guys came and sat in the front row with their arms folded and just stared,' he said. When the New England Journal of Medicine reviewed 'Heat Wave,' it assigned, bizarrely, John Wilhelm, the deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, the chairman of Daley's heat wave commission. He found the book 'fascinating,' but didn't appreciate how it portrayed the mayor's response or fixated on the race of the victims. Ten years after the heat wave, to recognize those victims, Nicole Garneau, an artist from Chicago who had just read Klinenberg's book, decided she wanted to mark the 10th anniversary of the disaster. She decided to perform and document herself marking 739 deaths, every day of 2005, in ways profound and minor. She named the project 'Heat:05,' and the point, in a sense, was merely to acknowledge what happened here. 'In winter, I made a pile of 739 ice cubes on a beach,' she said. 'In spring, I lined up 739 blades of grass. It got very conceptual! I weighed 739 stones, dissolved 739 grams of sugar. On the 739th day of the strike outside the Congress Plaza Hotel on Michigan Avenue, I walked 739 steps with strikers. When it came time for the actual week of the disaster in mid-July, I decided, from July 14 to July 20, I would set up 739 cups of water on Daley Plaza. I had volunteers and as we did that first day, security came, of course. They ordered me to break it down or they would call the cops, and they called the cops, and the whole thing became so unnecessarily dramatic, and we just ended up doing it in Millennium Park instead. But I knew Daley, who was still in office on that anniversary, wouldn't want to draw a lot of attention to it, and sure enough, 10 years later, a lot of people didn't know that much about what happened. The city had failed to understand.' It's the same reason why, five years after 'Heat:05,' Wiley Edmundson, a now-retired Chicago associate judge, decided to write a one-act play titled 'The Meltdown,' to tell the story of July 1995 from the perspectives of three sets of Chicagoans who saw the worst: a rookie cop making an unusual number of wellness checks; paramedics struggling to keep up with emergency calls; and a sanitation crew in Englewood that notices the elderly woman who regularly makes them brownies hasn't shown her face lately. He wrote it as a one-night performance for Elgin Area Leadership Academy. He's written similar one-acts for the school about the Rwandan genocide, the Our Lady of the Angels fire in 1958 and Hurricane Katrina. 'I end up telling the same story again and again,' he said. 'Because they come out of feeling frustration at a lack of preparation and then the predictable outcome. Chicago made all kinds of changes for heat waves since then, but it's always easier to do the right thing after the fact, right? I admired Richie Daley but his downplaying of the disaster always bothered me, and sure enough, 15 years later, when I had conversations with people about the heat wave, nobody seemed to remember.' The city does have one formal marker of the disaster, a plaque in the entranceway to a senior center on Ogden Avenue, on the West Side. It was dedicated in 1996 by then-alderman Ed Burke. When I went to see it recently, it seemed no one had ever noticed or read it, including those at the front desk. Such rote memorials are easily ignored. What's interesting about it is the dedication, which calls what happened a , though qualifies what happened, defensively, as . 'America is most comfortable memorializing war and violent attacks and the people involved with them and it tends not to grapple with natural disasters in anything like the same way,' said Alex Jania, who teaches history at the University of Chicago. Specifically, he teaches disaster studies and the environment, and is an expert on Japanese disaster memorials: '(The Japanese) bind the national character together so that everyone acknowledges the same risks, with the point of alerting people to some future disaster.' A year ago, during the spring semester, Jania, who grew up in the Far South Side neighborhood of Hegewisch, had his students design and build a temporary memorial to the victims of the heat wave, taking them through issues of environmental injustice and climate change and the ethics of constructing a thoughtful remembrance. They made a temporary geodesic dome — a nod to the 'heat dome' that sat atop Chicago that summer — lined the inside with a brief history of the disaster and erected it on campus. The difficulty with creating a lasting public memorial in Chicago, Jania said, is the heat wave did not 'inscribe itself on the physical landscape of the city,' the way a demolished building might. 'And more importantly, that summer was an indictment on how we deal with loneliness and poverty, and any effective memorial would have to call all of that out.' Such a memorial would require the city of Chicago to acknowledge failure. It would mean recognizing the deaths of those Chicagoans who remain unrecognized in life. 'People don't want to be reminded every day of large tragedies,' said Ivan Rayner, a funeral director at A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood. He recalls 'chaos, mass casualties,' yet 'stretched over a long period, and so personal' any kind of big encompassing memorial could be difficult. Helfand, the documentary filmmaker, remembers interviewing passersby on the streets of Chicago nearly 20 years later, 'and what they remembered was totally based on class and race.' So maybe a cooling center can be a memorial. Maybe a single day teaching the history of the heat wave is a memorial. After I left that plaque at the senior center on the West Side, I passed a brownstone in North Lawndale, one of the corners of Chicago with the largest loss of life caused by the heat wave. Sitting outside was Richard Gross, 67, a semiretired Loop office worker. He was visiting a much older, more frail friend. Until he moved, they were neighbors here. The temperature was 96. Gross stopped by, just to see how she was doing that day. That's a memorial, too. Here's one last memorial of sorts, though most Chicagoans will never see it. Inside an auction house on Western Avenue in Rogers Park are cardboard boxes. Each holds personal items, mostly papers and letters, left by 125 or so residents who died from the heat that summer and had no one to handle their burials or what remained of their estates. Their bodies were sent to Homewood Memorial Gardens and their papers to the little-known Office of the Public Administrator of Cook County; its whole job is to manage the belongings of residents of Cook County who die without any known relations. Some of what is in those boxes was never connected to living relatives because, well, decades ago, the department wasn't nearly as good as it is now about tracking down relatives. What is in those boxes are many mountains of clues as to who the victims were. Dolores Adams of Sheridan Road left her Medicaid card. Lillian Boyer of W. 63rd Street left an insurance policy. Jimmie Floyd of Rockwell Street left 80 cents in change. James Grady and Edward Hoffman lived blocks apart in Mayfair and though there's no indication in their possessions that they knew each other, they are bonded in loneliness: Hoffman left behind a returned letter in which he asked a friend to 'please' visit soon, explaining that he lost his left leg and several fingers to frostbite; Grady left a letter from his mother written 25 years earlier, who explains: 'There is not much more I can say,' other than she is now too old to help him, but she will always love him deeply. Geraldine Buttersworth of W. 69th Street left a birthday card from a sibling, who boasted, from her home in Iowa, that she had central air, and even signed the card: 'Hot enough for you?' Luis Mendez left a black-and-white portrait of a woman with a bouffant and a large stack of Christmas cards from friends and relatives, many received at least 30 years earlier. James Ordile left his Blockbuster card. Others left wallets, some left savings books showing amounts too small to pay for groceries, never mind a funeral. There are passports and back-rent notices that would never be paid. Some folders contain Polaroids shot by investigators, showing small apartments and a fan in a corner. Jerry Van Houten of Aldine Avenue left a Post-It note apparently stuck to his front door: 'Cynthia from Michigan has been trying to reach you.' Some left lives amounting to thick folders, some to folders so thin it's surprising there's anything inside at all. Emilio Aguirre, the Bronze Star POW who just got his headstone, had a thicker folder, containing his wristwatch, military papers and naturalization papers. Charles Henderson was able to get Aguirre a headstone 30 years later because Aguirre had left the paperwork. But the fact it took so long for Aguirre to receive his headstone infuriates the veterans' rights activist. 'Someone back then could have easily seen what's in (his folder) and called an American Legion or a VFW hall and said 'Hey, we got this guy here…' Cook County wouldn't have even had to pay for a burial! Every veteran is owed that. Instead, someone just saw the possessions of a poor old Mexican guy. 'I truly believe that. Emilio didn't have to go to World War II, he could have returned to Mexico. And he didn't, then he died alone. But at the end of the day, it's poor people who suffer. No one wants to talk about that. Certainly, no one wants to remember that.'
