A GENEROUS GIFT

Six individuals honored at Mass, service for Anatomical Gift Program

Loved ones attending the 2024 Anatomical Gift Program Memorial Service at St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands watch from the mausoleum’s bench as the urn of their loved one is buried in its final resting place. Six individuals were honored this year: Patricia F. Cole, Melba D. Cribbs, Lorraine C. Hoyt, Theresa F. Ippolito, Mary V. Mikrut, and James V. Murray. (Emily Benson photo)

Melba D. Cribbs was a woman of strong faith and family. 

“She was a pip,” said MaryJude Cribbs about her mother-in-law. “She’d give the last penny she had or the shirt off her back.”

Even toward the end of her life, she knew she wanted to keep giving back, and she chose to donate her body to Albany Medical College’s Anatomical Gift Program. 

On Aug. 23, Cribbs and five others were honored at the annual memorial service and Mass for individuals who have donated their bodies to the Anatomical Gift Program in the past year. The ceremony was held at the Historic St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands and celebrated by Father James O’Rourke, parochial vicar for St. Clement’s Church in Saratoga Springs. 

The six individuals who donated to the Albany Medical College's Anatomical Gift Program were honored with a Mass and service on Aug. 23 for their generous donation.

 “I’m very familiar with this program that your loved ones have so graciously, and I really mean very graciously, donated to this Anatomical Gift Program,” said Father O’Rourke. “Each medical student who works on your loved one’s body, they know the name of that person and they’ll write it in their notes. And if they’re prayerful people, which many of them are, they pray for your family member.”

The program offers medical students hands-on experience in studying the structure of the human body through the provided donations. Father O’Rourke, who previously worked as a chaplain for St. Peter’s Hospital and a respiratory therapist at Albany Medical Center and St. Peter’s Hospital, knows that the program’s training helps to save lives. 

“It really is the greatest gift your loved ones can do for others,” he said.

The memorial service was held at the cemetery’s mausoleum with six individuals honored for the gift of their bodies: Patricia F. Cole, Melba D. Cribbs, Lorraine C. Hoyt, Theresa F. Ippolito, Mary V. Mikrut, and James V. Murray. 

All six individuals who donated their bodies were studied over the past several months. After their death, each body was taken immediately in for study, leaving many families to host a funeral Mass without their loved one’s body physically present. 

The Mass at St. Agnes offered a chance for friends and family to say goodbye to their loved ones one more time: “You may have had a funeral Mass without the presence of your loved one, but today, we will have one with the presence of your loved one,” Father O’Rourke said. 

All six urns were lined at the front of the altar for the Mass. Friends and family were given flowers to place on their loved ones and could watch their final moments of burial from the cemetery’s mausoleum, which overlooks the burial space down below.

“All of her children are here,” MaryJude said about her mother-in-law. “That huge group, that was us. They traveled from Texas and Tennessee.”

She added that her family’s Catholic faith had helped them know that, while Melba may be gone, she’s with God and at peace.

“She lived a very colorful life,” MaryJude said, “but she was very strong in her faith and her family.”