A Conversation with Kendra Purcell: Remembering Bernie Bosnjak
Our conversation begins with Bernie’s “four besties,” as she called them, and their trip to San Francisco for three days last July to spread Bernie’s ashes. I’ve edited it lightly for brevity and clarity, and changed the names of the homeless people they served. - Judy
Judy Maurer
What's Bernie's connection with the Bay Area?
Kendra Purcell
She went down to school down there and she stayed down there during the late sixties and early seventies ‘cause it was like the place to be—she was a hippy. if you were on the West Coast, you got to San Francisco, right?
Judy Maurer
That's right. A Russian student once asked me, “Do you really have to wear flowers in your hair if you go to San Francisco?”
Kendra Purcell
I know we wanted to do that—we had so many ideas, but I was like, “We need a picture with all of us with flowers in our hair and to go to the grocery store with parsley, sage, rosemary... like going to Scarborough Fair. We wanted to do something Jimi Hendrix-y and have a Janis Joplin t shirt.
She lived in Haight-Ashbury. She was a true believer, in so many senses.
When you're at the Haight, like two blocks down is Panhandle Park, which funnels into Golden Gate Park. That goes all the way out to the ocean. So we just sort of followed the parks down and then we laid some ashes right at the edge of the waves, and we waited until the water just came to take it.
Bernie Bosnjak at a SCYMF quarterly gathering. Photo by Judy Maurer
Judy Maurer
Wow.
Kendra
So that was you know, it's just weighty, right?
Judy Maurer
It was the four of you?
Kendra
Yes, the four of us. And we were also the four that were with her when she passed.
We deeply felt like we were her family. We wanted to make sure that we honored her the best we could. She always wanted to go on another trip and she couldn't, and like we got to do that. We had the idea pretty early on that we wanted to take some of her back to San Francisco, and just kind of honor that “peace and love” spirit. That was a part of Bernie.
Judy Maurer
Yes—her “peace and love spirit”. Tell me more about that?
Kendra Purcell
I think she truly, deeply tried to imagine that everybody was Jesus. Not that she didn't have to contend with her own humanness and being Bernie, as we all have to contend with our own humanness and being who we are. But she really did treat everyone as if they just might be Jesus. And not consistently and not 100% of the time, all the time, every day. She could get her feelings hurt and then be very, like, “I can't talk to you right now." She would be honest and verbalize it. My grandparents were German. I know her family's Polish, like Bosnjak—it's easy to imagine. And I saw it in my Nanna, when she gets angry, she gets very closed, right? And you have to give them space and you're not going to talk it out right then you're going to have to let things cool down. And then you can revisit it later when everything's dissipated a little bit.
Judy Maurer
Did you all know her for a long time?
Kendra Purcell
Carmen met Bernie when she was six, and so Bernie was very much a mother figure to her. And when they started the mother's group, Carmen was there… Bernie felt a strong desire to help out young single moms that already had kids and that needed community and to be together. They would do book studies together. In her library there’s a ton of child development and parenting books—which is interesting, because Bernie was never a mom. But she was very much a nurturer. And she very much had a heart for helping people learn to parent well.
Kendra and I also discussed the programs Bernie help found, such as Home Plate, a service for homeless youth in Hillsboro and Beaverton. Hillsboro Friends offers three meals on Sundays and a place to be for three hours. They call it “Service for Service.”
Kendra Purcell
Home Plate still exists, and then Extra Innings was like, on the same baseball metaphor for when they would age out of Home Plate. We have a picture taken in like 2004 - 2005. Jessica’s in that picture. Bill’s in that picture. Earl’s in that picture. There’s still people in that picture who come to Hillsboro Friends as guests on Sunday. They had high needs in 2004 and 2005. And into in 2022, they still come.
Not everyone is going to get independent, get a job, get married, have a family; not everyone is going to follow that very normal cultural script, right? And like Bill is housed, and Earl. I don't know if David is housed right now. But Jessica is doing amazing, she's living with her boyfriend, but it's a very healthy relationship. And so like there are people that do kind of beat the odds and then there are people that just don't. They need a lot of care for their whole lives, they just do. And Bernie was really aware of that.
One thing that I like is that she could tell which people she could help. And she helped them. She could pick out people that were coming on Sunday, and be like, "Listen, we need custodial people here. Will you do that?" Or “Listen, we need landscaping help. Will you mow the lawn? Will you pull weeds?” And she could tell the people that could do that. Like Jana is in stable housing. And she still works for four hours a week for us.
Scott was literally sleeping underneath a tree when he started coming. And now he's in an apartment, and he's still doing grounds keeping for us. And now there's a guy called Justin. I bet Justin could be one of those, if he could get stably housed and maintain that. It's just tremendously challenging to have the stability of having a safe place to sleep. Yeah, because a lot of them don't feel deserving of that.
I was always stably housed, always, I never worried one minute of my life where I was going to sleep at night, ever. I never, ever had that experience of having no idea where to be and where to be safe. And so I don't fully understand when people are given information on housing, like “Listen, here’s where they can get you into a hotel, they can get you into an apartment.” And there have been people that we have literally said this to every single Sunday for years before they finally go down and register and start the process. And I don't get that. But they simply cannot for whatever reason, and usually it's not one reason—usually it's a cycling deal of 15 reasons.
Judy Maurer
Did Bernie understand that? I mean, did she have a grasp of that?
Kendra Purcell
I think she had a grasp of it, because she saw it for so long. Like she helped out this one guy, Sam, for so long.
He abused that in, in some pretty.… I don't even know what the most neutral way to say it. He abused that. And he still knows he can come and he can still get food on Sundays. And he still will be welcomed and given food.
Bernie just was always able to give grace, even if it was, "This isn't the place for you. We can't help you anymore. But like, here's some places that might be able to." I don't know if that's a gift. I don't know if that's a skill that you can hone, if that's just experience. But I would like to have that too. Maybe it's just being tuned into God and listening.
We were so proud that we didn't lose anyone to COVID until Donnie. We lost Donnie last September. And even with that, she's like, “Well, we're going to teach our guests Sunday morning, like how we grieve and like how you hold space for being sad," and we let them express themselves.
Judy Maurer
So Donny died of COVID? He was one of the people who came on Sundays?
Kendra Purcell
Yeah. He was just a regular, like they always talked about that 10 to 15% of homeless people that will choose to stay out. And he was one of those guys that chose to stay out. He was very kind; he repainted our sign. It's down now, but he asked for a job. So for a week, he was painting a sign of ours last summer, and Bernie just knew the right amount of, like, " We can do this. And we'll do this for $150. And then we'll see."
She could just understand that some people just need $150, and they need to to earn it and come when they say they're going to come. And even then, if she told them to be there at 10, and they showed up at 11, they got to work, right? Because it's like in our world, this is how you move forward. You make an appointment, and you show up. And for the unhoused that's especially challenging. Bernie just has an amazing capacity to see that she could help people and then she just did.
Once she was like, “we can feed people on Sundays." Then she just brought people. Bernie couldn't go up stairs for the last year, but she brought people around her that understood what she was doing—like me—this silly, very Suburban Girl saying, “I can come for Sunday's, right? I can do that.”
Judy Maurer
And what do you miss most about her?
Kendra Purcell
That she just truly took everybody as they were—you didn't have to pretty up anything. You didn't have to take a shower before you saw her. You could come to Bernie exactly as you were. And that was everybody. You could be sad, and just be sad. You could be angry, and just be angry. You could be happy, and just be happy. And she really just let people be.
She didn't ever say, “You need to do this, and this and this and this and then you can do something." It was “if you want to help, that's great. What do you like to do? Do you want to help cook? Do you want to help serve? Do you want to clean up afterwards? Do you want to organize resources?” She really wanted people to be themselves when they were at Hillsboro friends.
So if you don't want to touch a single homeless person the whole time, and you'd rather not even see them, you come in on Saturday, and you make sandwiches. And there's people that do that, you know, and it's their way that they can support what they're doing. And homeless people and unhoused people can be very erratic, and not always tethered to the same reality, right? And not always sober. And most of those times they don't smell anywhere near nice, especially in summertime. And I think she realized that if people wanted to be part of it, that you let people be part of it in the way that they want to be part of it.
She just had a way of being like, “What part of you wants to help us? Because these are all the things we need help with. Where do you want to fit in?” It's really interesting, and I miss that.
Bernie’s “four besties,” Tiz Walker, Sarah Navika, Kendra Purcell, and Carmen Campuzano in San Francisco last July to spread Bernie’s ashes.
I miss her laughter. We laughed so much. She was in constant pain the entire time I knew her. I think at the end, she was just tired on almost every level but she wouldn't ever say that. In fact, right before we called the ambulance—because we realized that we were not enough to help her—she's like, “Well, I'm still in my right mind.”
And I was like, “Yes, Bernie, you're still in your right mind.” So whatever fear she had about not being in her right mind, it was okay.
So she went to Tuality Hospital in the ambulance early early Saturday morning. They very quickly realized they couldn’t care for her there. She needed the ICU at OHSU. Sometime between going into the ICU and like one in the morning Sunday, she became non-responsive. They called Sarah Navika on Sunday and honored Sarah's wishes—they basically kept her alive until Sunday afternoon when we could all get there. It was just kindness. Yeah, if they had given her just palliative care, she would have passed. It was just Sarah and me, when Sarah gave permission for them to stop all life-continuing measures. So we saw this all literally happen. And then I think Sarah just asked, “Hey, can you get people together?” But even then, even when they stopped everything, and the doctor told us, “it might be minutes,” it was three and a half hours.
It was a beautiful, sacred time—we prayed, and we laughed and told stories. And I was like “What a beautiful way to go.” Even if you can't respond, you know that people that you love are in the room, singing and laughing and praying.
I don't get to choose, but that wouldn't be so bad for my last three and a half hours, right?
Judy Maurer
That's true.
Kendra Purcell
You know, I like the bookends. I like being at births and there's something very sacred about being at a death. The nurses were like, “she might make sounds—it might look like distress.” Nothing, just calm the whole time, which is good. Cuz no one wants to see the struggle in any way. I feel very honored that I got to be one of those people.
And I'm glad she's not in pain anymore.
Oh, I have to tell you this. She grew up Catholic, like Catholic traditional, not really practicing. And one day in the car on the way to Burgerville we were talking about heaven. And she's like, “Well, I think I'll get up there and St. Pete will ask me, ‘Well, why should YOU be in heaven?’" And she's like, “And I think Jesus will be further down the wall, and he'll open a little door, and he'll just go like this." (She makes a beckoning gesture with her finger.)
And I just love that's how she envisioned us getting into heaven—that we have to give reasons to St. Peter, and Jesus is mischievously calling us in from the side door. If anyone got snuck in through the side door, it would be Bernie. So I hope she got that.
Judy Maurer
Thank you, Kendra. That's beautiful.
Bernie's ashes in the sand near Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. Photo by Kendra Purcell
Kendra Purcell is a mother to two, wife to one. Her hair is often not naturally toned. She is a member of Camas Friends, where she served as administrative assistant for four years, ending July 2022. She now attends Hillsboro Friends, closer to her new home in Hillsboro.