The Rev. Chris Ponnet was about to mark the burial of 1,489 people and needed silence for the short drive from St. Camillus Catholic Church to the county cemetery Wednesday morning.

He’d been up since 5 a.m. — like usual — and started with reflections on the Book of Psalms. He’d done many funerals in his 25 years as a Catholic priest and he could always draw on the stories of the deceased to comfort the families and memorialize a life. Music — his tastes ran to traditional Irish or Gregorian chants — often provided an assist.

But this service was different. The car stereo went off.

Los Angeles County has, since 1896, conducted burials in a common grave for the remains of those who died and were unidentified or unclaimed. The reasons are varied. Some were homeless. Some were addicts. Some came from poverty, and the cost of a private burial was too high for family left behind.

He drove the speed limit, past Los Angeles County USC Medical Center. Past the on-ramp of Interstate 10 west to Santa Monica. Past poor neighborhoods in Boyle Heights. The notes he’d been fine-tuning in the morning asked more questions than gave answers.

About 30 minutes he spoke at the cemetery to a crowd of about 100.

“Where was their meaning in their life? Were they individuals with broken families or whatever brought them to this place? What gave them hope? What encouraged them?” he asked the hundred who gathered. “And especially at this moment when we remember the unclaimed, where were the relationships that were maybe broken that needed to be healed?”

The circle of people who came to honor the dead listened and silence answered.

A life amid death

Ponnet, 57, said it’s probably not an accident that he’s orchestrated the burial for the unclaimed and unnamed for the past decade.

He said he grew up with a death and cemeteries. His father died when he was 4, which led to his mother taking them almost weekly to visit his East L.A. grave. He had a brother die in a car crash after coming back from Vietnam and a younger sister who died from health complications. His mother died when he was 37.

The cemetery, he said, never bothered him.

“It’s a place of stories. A place where people share fond memories,” he said. “It’s a place where the families retell stories. I think that’s why when I originally got connected to the unclaimed and unnamed, I just wanted to be there to try and make it a place where stories would be remembered.”

The common graves at the county cemetery are all marked with just the year that the buried died. The journey for the unclaimed in Los Angeles County takes two years. Wednesday’s service was for those who died in 2011.

Each year, he’s tried to personalize the service more. He gets the flowers, arranges for leaders in other faiths to come and speak or chant. This year, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian leaders gave readings and offered prayers. Ponnet also had poems by Maya Angelou read for those of no faith who might be buried in the grave.

“I want to honor that person who didn’t want a religious service at their grave site,” he said. “This is clearly not a moment for anyone to be preaching.”

Ponnet also introduced music to the service for the first time.

Allison Bush, a 25-year-old who hopes to be a pastor after finishing divinity school next year, was tapped by Ponnet to play the cello during the memorial.

Bush, who has been playing the instrument since she was 5, said she wanted to avoid religious-themed hymns and instead stuck to classical pieces.

Near the end, as some placed flowers on the fresh mound of dirt and trails of smoke from incense curled around them, she played “Vocalise” by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

She said the song is about the human voice and how each is unique. Bush thought about the 1,489 as she played.

“All of the people who are buried here were human beings and they all had their own voice,” she said. “I felt the song deeply.”

‘Lives that ended here’

Michelle Carr had never been to a service like it before, and she wept when it was over.

Hugging her boyfriend, Brian Wotring, the 45-year-old from Echo Park said she didn’t expect to have it hit her so hard.

“I just imagined the lives that ended here,” she said. “This is very hard to know that these people went through life and had nobody at the end.”

Ponnet said many of the homeless didn’t want to be with people in life. He said some wanted to be left alone, though they now find themselves buried as part of a collective group.

Still, he said, they were all individuals with their own story.

“They were children of someone, friends of others and relatives to others. They inspired others. They had questions and doubts,” he said. “They had concerns about life and addiction. We come and we say they existed, and as a society, we say we honor you. As much as we have done, this is what we can do in this moment.”