7 Moms Angered Over Abandoned Baby Organize Ceremony to Help Community 'Heal'

WHEATON, IL — Seven moms with seven different stories banded together in recent weeks with a common cause in mind: They all wanted to give the community a way to mourn the death of a baby found abandoned in a backpack near Wheaton last month.

Baby Hope will be remembered during a non-denominational, multi-faith service starting at 7 p.m. on Thursday at St. Michael’s Church, 310 S. Wheaton Ave. The service will be hosted by Rest in His Arms, a Wheeling non-profit, and is meant for anyone who has been touched by the loss of Baby Hope. It is also meant for all those grieving their own experience of infant or child loss due to miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, failed adoption, illness or accident or any other similar instances, said Susan Walker, founder of Rest in His Arms.

Suzanne Luchs of Wheaton spearheaded the cause. The news of Baby Hope — the name authorities gave to the currently unidentified infant — devastated her.

The baby was found on Aug. 15 by landscapers on a private drive in the area of the 25W400 block of Plamondon Drive in unincorporated Wheaton. The baby's body was in a black Everest brand backpack. Authorities are still searching for Hope’s mother.

For Luchs, who has struggled with infertility her entire life, the mother's choice to abandon Baby Hope is extremely distressing. Luchs tried for 14 years to have a baby before she decided to adopt her first daughter from China. She would adopt another girl five years later. Both girls had been abandoned before they were adopted and are now 15 and 20 years old.

“For me, to hear a child was abandoned with no hope of having a life when there are people like me who would do anything for a child .... I couldn’t let it go,” Luchs said. After a couple sleepless nights, Luchs posted a simple question on a private Facebook page set up for Wheaton moms.

“I asked, ‘Is it just me, or is anyone else struggling with this?’”

The response was immediate.

“Moms started private messaging me, telling me about their own stories. I was hearing about their miscarriages, moms who were infertile, quite a few moms who had their babies pass away because of SIDs (sudden infant death syndrome),” Luchs said.

During that thread of posts, one mom mentioned Susan Walker, the founder of Rest in His Arms. Rest in His Arms gives funerals and burials to infants like Baby Hope. A couple days later, Suzanne Luchs gave Susan Walker a call.

“We started talking, and the rest is history,” Luchs said.

Planning the Ceremony: 'The Community is Grieving Now'

Since the investigation into Baby Hope’s death is ongoing, it could take awhile before Rest in His Arms can perform a proper funeral and bury Baby Hope's body. But since so many within the Wheaton community have been rocked by news of the infant’s death, Walker and Luchs decided a ceremony was needed sooner.

“The community is grieving now,” Walker said. “We want some sort of closure. At least this type of service can help those who are in shock or who are angry.”

And for those who have dealt with the loss of a baby or with infertility, there is a lot of anger.

“There is this sense of, ‘Well, I would have taken that baby,’” Walker said.

So, Luchs and Walker got the ball rolling, and Luchs posted another message on the Facebook page asking if anyone would like to get involved. Again, area moms started coming out of the woodwork.

And some of it was a bit serendipitous.

“I had so many people come forward. One mom, a pastry chef, said she could make cookies for the reception. She envisioned pale heart-shaped cookies with ‘Baby Hope’ written in white. That same afternoon, a woman who said she would design the poster shared her design, and it also had pale pink hearts,” Luchs said.

Another mother who had adopted a baby who was handed over under the Safe Haven law, offered to write a letter to her daughter that could be read at the ceremony. The Safe Haven law allows any mom the legal right to leave their baby with a staff member at any hospital, fire station, police station or emergency medical services provider in Illinois up to 30 days after that baby was born. The mother had not yet told her daughter she was a Safe Haven baby, and so Luchs initially planned to read the letter at the service.

"But I just knew that I would not be able to keep it together to read it," Luchs said.

The next day, a voice actress from Wheaton sent her a message and said, "I don't know how I could help, but if there is anything you need me to read during the ceremony, please let me know."

Those connections were being made at rapid speed. Little Penguin Creative in Wheaton offered to handle the marketing, Phillip's Flowers and Gifts and Winfield Flower Shoppe are providing flowers for the ceremony and Gracie D. Photography will take photos. Costco and Target donated gift cards, Einstein Brothers will bring the coffee and Jewel and Marianos are also making donations.

Other than Luchs and Walker, the core group of women who ended up pulling the event together include Stacey Anderson, Amy Miller, Kathy Jirsa, Rosalyn Pophom and Rebecca Sietman.

Walker said she is not surprised the group of women were able to work together to make the ceremony happen.

“It’s just another reminder that moms really can do anything,” Walker said.

Details on the Ceremony

The service will start at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 15 at St. Michael’s Church, 310 S. Wheaton Avenue. It will run for 30 to 40 minutes.

Pastors from the Catholic church, as well as Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Bible and Evangelical churches will all participate in different parts of the service, which will include a welcome, opening prayer, words of consolation or sermon and a candle-lighting ceremony.

During the candle-lighting ceremony, attendees can take one candle, or as many as they’d like, to signify a child they are mourning.

Following the service, there will be grief counselors on hand, and all pastors will stay for anyone who would like to talk to them. There will also be information available about the Safe Haven law. Donations of old wedding dresses will also be accepted — those gowns will be turned into “angel gowns” for hospitals to hand out to parents whose babies die during or after birth.

Walker is hoping the ceremony will help to further get the word out about Illinois’ Safe Haven Law. Since the law was passed in 2001, 115 babies have been saved, but 79 have been illegally abandoned, and of those, 41 have died.

“We are ready for Baby Hope to help with her burial if we are needed," Walker said.

"Then we are hoping to go out of business,” said Walker, expressing a hope that no more abandoned babies would be found and Rest in His Arms would not be needed.

As for Luchs, she is hoping the ceremony will help give her, and many other moms, closure over their own struggles when trying to have children.

“Moms don’t really get to grieve miscarriages. Especially if it happens very early. I think a lot of women don’t have a way to grieve that,” she said. “I hope they will have that opportunity on Thursday.”

And, of course, the ceremony is all about Baby Hope.

“I want there to be a sense that Hope was recognized. That this little life, however brief it may have been, mattered and that this baby didn’t leave us unloved,” Luchs said. “And that the mother’s love this baby never got is now being heaped on her by an army of moms … any one of whom would have taken her."

Photo credit: Helen Nam and Stacey Anderson