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GLENCO, Ill. – Rabbi Wendy Geffen was clear. Jacqueline “Jackie” Sundheim — a longtime preschool teacher and member of the North Bank Congregation in Israel — was killed. And there was no comfort in that.
“Our hearts are broken,” she said, her voice shaking. “We shouldn’t be here.”
The first funerals for the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park began Friday as community members tried to reconcile memories of happier times with feelings of anger and sadness over how they died.
Congregation Israel on the North Shore in Glencoe, overlooking Lake Michigan, was packed with nearly 1,000 people for Sundheim’s funeral, one of three held Friday. Services were also held for Steven Strauss, 88, and Nicolas Toledo-Zaragosa, 78.
Authorities have charged Robert E. Crimo III, 21, with seven counts of first-degree murder and say he confessed to the massacre. Investigators believe he spent weeks planning the attack, which came as the nation is reeling from a series of mass shootings and traumatized communities like Highland Park are figuring out how to regain a sense of safety.
At Sundheim’s funeral, a group of officers stood post around the room.
Geffen told family and friends that the woman who was a constant presence at the synagogue should not be defined by her death. She recalled how Sundheim worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure every detail was appropriate for all of the life events of the North Bank Congregation in Israel – happy and sad.
The crowd laughed between tears as Geffen described how “no caterer would mess with her” and how “she had no sense of direction unless she was in a mall.” The congregation grew accustomed to seeing her running up and down the aisles setting up services and events, always with a smile, Geffen said. And while she gave great hugs, she was also a nobody.
In this community of 30,000 residents, they are just beginning to understand what happened on July 4th – and many are just beginning to recover. Dozens were injured, including an 8-year-old boy who was shot and remains in hospital in critical condition with a severed spinal cord.
Elsewhere in the Chicago area, family members held a service for Toledo, described as a loving father of eight from Morelos, Mexico, who spent most of the past three decades in Highland Park after immigrating to the United States. His grandson, David Toledo, previously told The Washington Post that his loss was “just horrific.”
Family members also gathered to remember Strauss, whose niece Cynthia Strauss told The Post after the shooting that he had a “seize the day” about life, exercising, going to the symphony and loving his wife, two sons and their four grandchildren.
“He was devoted to his family,” she said. “And he should never have died this way.”
At Sundheim’s funeral, speakers recalled her close relationship with her sister and how they acted as second mothers to their children. They also recalled her strong ties to Judaism, even celebrating an adult bat mitzvah in 2010. And they talked about her happy marriage to her husband Bruce, who always said he knew their relationship would last.
Sundheim’s daughter, Leah, then addressed the crowd. She stepped onto the bimah, the raised platform in synagogues from which services are conducted, and remembered that the last time she had stood there, she had been with her mother, preparing for services.
“I shouldn’t stay here,” Leah said.
Instead, her mother has to be nearby, “right here in the corner to make sure the microphones are working.”
She described the sadness that came over her when she thought about how her mother would not be present at her big life events. But she urged the congregation to take their fear, sadness, rage and emptiness and “turn it into a quest to heal our community.”
“I want to laugh … to heal the broken,” she said. “The world is darker without my mother in it.”
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