Families, clergy and local officials remember overdose victims
Marley Fisher, Sarah Luzier and Alexandra Slane never met, but they shared a common bond: a deadly addiction to opioids.
The three young women overdosed and died over the past year.
On Thursday — International Overdose Awareness Day — their parents joined other families on the portico of the City-County Building in Pittsburgh to remember the 613 overdose victims who have died so far this year in Allegheny County.
Several blocks away at Trinity Cathedral, a church bell tolled for 42 minutes — once for each victim — before a noon prayer service commemorating the dead.
“My daughter was gifted. She was taking (Carnegie Mellon University) classes in high school,” Cathy Slane of Frazier said. “She was smart. She was funny. Everybody needs to know it's not the scum of the Earth that has this problem.
“It's our children. It's our mothers and fathers. It's our brothers and sisters.”
Alexandra Slane, 26, died last October at her parents' home.
Dozens of chairs on the City-County Building portico held pictures of the victims with poems and other written mementoes from their families.
The display was the work of Jeanne Fisher, 59, of Whitehall who lost a daughter, Marley, to an overdose in April.
After Marley Fisher, 28, died in a Point State Park restroom, her mother and sister, Candice, founded Pittsburgh Won't Forget U. Fisher lived in Baldwin much of her life.
By last November, she was staying with a friend and family in Tarentum.
“I discovered there are a lot of parents who do have overdose family members, and they're afraid to talk about it,” Jeanne Fisher said. “To these families, they're more than statistics. They had a life they were hoping to live and this drug situation snuffed them out. These families want to be able to talk about this.
“We are solidified in the fact that we want people to know that's what they died from.”
Larry Luzier, 56, of Upper St. Clair said his daughter died at age 20 in her North Side, Pittsburgh apartment. She worked in a local restaurant and attended Community College of Allegheny County.
“You see these numbers in the paper — 613 deaths — but what you don't see is they're talking about somebody's brother, somebody's child,” he said. “They're not just a junkie. They're a person who had hopes and dreams and lots of people who loved them.”
At Trinity Cathedral, clergy and local officials prayed for the dead and praised first responders for saving lives by administering Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects of an overdose.
Robert Farrow, Pittsburgh's chief of Emergency Medical Services, said city paramedics are averaging eight calls per day for drug overdoses.
Paramedics in 2016 administered 1,400 doses of Narcan.
“This is a place of sorrow,” said the Rev. Shawn Malarkey of Trinity Cathedral. “But I also want to say this is a place of hope. “Where sorrow and hope meet, change can begin.”
Bob Bauder is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-765-2312, bbauder@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobbauder.
