Kip Tiernan founded Rosie’s Place, the nation’s first shelter for homeless women.
Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard deftly summed up what Kip Tiernan was known for in the first sentence of her obituary.
Kip Tiernan, who founded Rosie’s Place, the nation’s first shelter for homeless women, and whose persistent, raspy voice echoed from the streets to the State House as she advocated for the poor, died of cancer Saturday in her South End apartment.
Then Marquard painted a more detailed picture of the 85-year-old with words.
Usually clad in a canvas hat and work pants, a cross and a skate key dangling from a leather strap around her neck, Ms. Tiernan helped create an A-to-Z of agencies that assist the disadvantaged in Massachusetts.
Among the people Marquard interviewed for the obit was Beth Healy, a Globe reporter who is writing a biography of Tiernan and said:
She had this soft spot in her heart for broken people, whether they were sick or mentally ill or struggling with addiction. Kip would hug a person dying of AIDS back in the 1980s when everyone else was running away. She would talk to someone living on the streets that no one else would talk to.
***
This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer who lives in Northeast Ohio. She is director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers.
