Highland Park shooting victims’ funeral begin: ‘We are inconsolable’

Mourners began the heartbreaking task Friday of saying goodbye to victims of the Highland Park shooting, cherishing what made their loved ones special while decrying the sudden, senseless violence that ended their lives.

Jacquelyn “Jacki” Sundheim, 63, and Steve Straus, 88, both of Highland Park, were memorialized at separate funeral services Friday, the first to be laid to rest among the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire Monday at the local Fourth of July parade. A visitation also took place Friday evening for Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, who was visiting family from Morelos, Mexico.

Also killed were Katherine Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park; Irina McCarthy, 35, and her husband Kevin McCarthy, 37, who also lived in Highland Park and left behind a 2-year-old son; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, of Waukegan. More than 30 others were also wounded in the massacre, including an 8-year-old boy who was critically injured and a CPS teacher, who was shot along with her husband, father and brother-in-law

At Friday’s services, daughters, sons, siblings and grandchildren shared their rage and disbelief, but also their resolve that the horrors of their loved ones’ deaths will not take away from the beauty of their lives.

“If there is any purpose to this day moving forward,” Rabbi Wendi Geffen said of Sundheim, “it is to ensure that her memory will abide solely and wholly as a blessing, now and forever.”

Hundreds of mourners gathered at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe on Friday morning to honor Sundheim, who not only worked there for decades but was a lifelong member. Among those paying their respects were Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who also attended Straus’ funeral and the visitation for Toledo-Zaragoza, and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, who had been preparing to march in the parade Monday when the gunfire began.

Speaking through tears, Geffen opened Sundheim’s service by saying: “We invite you to just be with us. We should not have to be here today. There is nothing, not one single thing that makes us being brought together to mourn Jacki acceptable. We are horrified. We are enraged, sickened, aggrieved, inconsolable for the terror that has befallen us and robbed us of Jacki.”

“Jacki died because she was murdered, and in that there is no comfort for us to take away as we mourn Jacki’s death. There is no silver lining, no light over the darkness,” Geffen said.

Sundheim taught preschool at North Shore Congregation Israel and, as coordinator of events such as bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, touched many lives in the community.

“There was not one inch of this space that Jacki did not touch,” Geffen.

She spoke of the volumes of pain and despair Sundheim’s loved ones are feeling, and the risk of “coming to see Jacki’s life only by its end. … We cannot allow that to happen,”

Later, Rabbi Lisa Greene recount Sundheim’s journey as a congregant, from early childhood to her teen years leading youth groups to eventually joining the staff.

Sundheim’s survivors include her husband Bruce and their daughter Leah.

Later Sundheim’s daughter Leah spoke, saying she “cannot process” that her mother won’t be present “when I have my baby or meet the love of my life, and that fills me with a rage and emptiness that scares me.”

Addressing the mourners, she said: “I want each of you to take that fear, that sadness and that rage and I need it to let it fuel you. …. Let it remind you to find joy in little things and treasure the big things. I want you to use this horrible, overwhelming hurt and turn it into a drive to help heal our world and our community.

“Do not let this sadness, this fear, rage turn you indifferent or bitter toward our world, because the world is darker without my mom in it — and it’s up to us now to fill it with a little extra laughter and help replace her light and love.”

Just as that service was ending, another was getting underway for Straus at a synagogue a few miles south in Evanston. It followed a private burial, where the opening theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey” was played as his casket was lowered into the ground.

“We are here this morning with brokenness. We are here this morning in shock and disbelief and despair and grief,” Rabbi Rachel Weiss said at the start of the service at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation. “We are here in a painful incredulity that this is the world we are living in.”

Straus’ family had described him earlier as a lover of culture — from the Art Institute of Chicago to “The 2000 Year Old Man” comedy sketch — with a curious mind who still commuted five days a week to his stockbroker office downtown.

“This was not the way that we thought Steve would or should ever be on the cover of The New York Times. It would be more like Steve to be in the book review section because he read them all,” Weiss said during the funeral. “But now he joins a very difficult group, as do we all, whom death through trauma and terror and hatred has touched.

“We tell his story. Steve was a good guy. We will never be the same, but we will carry him with us,” she continued.

[ These are the victims of the Highland Park July 4th shooting ]

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Straus was “very much a Highland Parker” and went to the parade every year, one of his sons told the Tribune.

Straus, said his son Peter Straus, was “curious about the world.”

Straus’ survivors include wife Linda and another son, Jonathan. Straus’ brother Larry Straus spoke at the service, saying utmost among his sibling’s qualities was loyalty.

He told a story about how he and his brother went to different high schools and their respective basketball teams ended up playing each other.

“When I would score a basket, my brother would scream, ‘Atta boy, Larry!’ … I’ve never forgotten. It’s been with me my whole life, that loyalty,” he said.

Jonathan Straus also spoke at the service saying: “Just thinking about what a good, giving, loving person he was, it just makes the cruelty and the horror of his death just that much harder to take. And I’ve been pretty good at keeping it together over the last few days, but when I see pictures of him, it’s just like he’s right there. Then it just really sweeps over me just what we’ve lost, who I lost, my best friend.”

Amid the heartbreak, there were also moments of levity.

Peter Straus closed his remarks by saying he’d “like to share with you a secret about my dad that I was reminded of by an old friend who extended his condolences recently. My dad, who worked in the Loop for (at least) six decades … made a point of pressing his nose — the side of his nose — against the glass of every revolving door he encountered, leaving a naughty nasal signature. What today’s kids might call tagging that marked once again and forevermore that Steve Straus was here.”

Steve’s granddaughter, Maisy, sang “Run to Me” by the Bee Gees as her father, Peter, accompanied her on guitar.

Steve’s grandson, Toby, read “In Flanders Fields,” by John McCrae, which Toby found in a World War I poem book in his grandfather’s study.

“My grandfather was a very gentle and peaceful guy,” Toby said, “but he really was killed in a war.”

Friday evening, under tearful clouds, the large family of Toledo-Zaragoza and other mourners gathered at Iglesia Evangelica Bautista Emanuel church in Waukegan for the visitation of Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza.

The parking lot was brimming with cars from visitors, some of who had tears in their eyes before going in. Friends, family members and churchgoers of all ages gathered inside to mourn and share memories of a man who was father, grandfather and great-grandfather to many.

Inside the church, a smiling photo of Toledo-Zaragoza welcomed guests. A choir of dozens of family members — wearing matching black shirts with Toledo-Zaragoza’s picture on them — sang the Spanish hymn “Más Allá del Sol.”

“Beyond the sun, I have a home, a beautiful home,” they sang. “Christ can, to every human race, offer salvation.”

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The church was standing-room-only as people congregated around a simple yet elegant pale blue coffin with silver accents and decorated with white flower and wreaths.

“He was like a star for me,” said Sotero Alarcon, Toledo-Zaragoza’s nephew. “He was a hard-working man. He scolded me a lot, but it worked.”

After such an unexpected loss, senior pastor Jesse Padilla reminded the mourners, “we need each other.”

Padilla offered an effusive speech in which he thanked the English-speaking community for showing love and support to the migrant Hispanic community and Toledo-Zaragoza’s family.

He also said not to focus on the “what ifs,” but rather: “Remember what you did receive. What he liked, what he said, the moments you shared with him.”

Toledo-Zaragoza’s family has said he’d planned to spend three months in the Chicago visiting family, something that had been delayed because of COVID-19. During the parade, he’d been surrounded by relatives when the shooting began.

“Today Nicolas is our guardian angel,” his granddaughter Xochil Toledo wrote about him. “We ask you (to) please keep our family and all the families of this horrible tragedy in your prayers and stay strong as a community.”