Emilio Aguirre was not yet a U.S. citizen when he was imprisoned by Nazi Germany for more than 400 days, just a year into his Army service.
A native of Cuajimalpa de Morelos, Mexico, he was liberated by Soviet fighters in January 1945 and later awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Prisoner of War Medal, among others, for fighting in Naples and Rome, Italy.
But a half-century later, Aguirre was buried in an unmarked mass grave at a cemetery in Homewood for victims of the deadly 1995 heat wave who didn’t have family to claim them.
After a historian noticed the injustice, Aguirre was reburied Thursday, 30 years later, to the exact day, at the same site at Homewood Memorial Gardens with full military honors —including a new headstone that reads, in part, “Never forgotten.”
“He survived the hell of war and a POW camp, only to die in a heat wave in Chicago,” said retired Army Capt. Monica Stoy, who read the soldier’s known history to a crowd at the cemetery.
“We’re here to honor Emilio … and also to commit that we never let this kind of thing happen again,” added Eric Klinenberg, a Chicago-raised sociologist and author of “Heat Wave,” a book on the 1995 heat wave, at the ceremony. “That’s entirely within our power.”
The process for his reinterment started in 2019 when historian Charles Henderson, who grew up on the South Side, saw “Cooked,” a documentary on the 1995 heat wave, which mentioned Aguirre. An Army veteran himself, Henderson dedicated the next six years to ensuring Aguirre was buried properly.
After working with other military historians to track down his details, a break came when Henderson got connected with the mayor’s office. County officials found Aguirre’s belongings, including a gold watch, in a storage facility.
“Thank you Emilio. As my elder, you taught me things even in death,” Henderson said at the ceremony, before being presented Aguirre’s trifold U.S. flag. “I hope I’ve eased your pain.”
The new headstone is just feet away from one of the only memorials to Chicago’s victims of the heat wave, one of the deadliest disasters in city history. Another plaque, stating “they died poor and alone,” marks the mass grave where Aguirre was once buried, and where others still remain.
Aguirre, an 80-year-old widower and naturalized U.S. citizen who later worked for the railway, died alone in a North Side apartment amid the blistering heat, one of more than 700 deaths across the city that week due to the temperatures.
Thirty years after Chicago’s devastating heat wave, city efforts to keep people protected from extreme weather continue to fall short. While there have been just 45 heat-related deaths in the county since 2015, which Klinenberg credits to better emergency responses, he said Chicago still hasn’t tackled the deep-seated issues that made that heat wave so devastating.
“The city is not doing a better job at dealing with the underlying social conditions,” Klinenberg said. “Chicago is grotesquely segregated and has embarrassing levels of inequality. … People are most at risk of isolation in neighborhoods that lack accessible and welcoming public spaces.”
Northwestern recently released a Heat Vulnerability Index to find areas of the city most affected by heat, as well as the results of a 500-person survey on heat safety solutions. City officials have said they will review it and continue to poll residents for ideas.
Survey respondents wanted more trees and green space, more emergency shelter and cooling locations, and public transit stops with water stations or misting features. They also suggested the city toughen up laws to ensure cool spots in apartment buildings for tenants and protections for workers.
In a study of heat deaths and other high temperature-related emergencies released last month, city officials said the ZIP codes 60620, 60623, 60628 and 60651 saw the most calls for service during heat advisories in 2023 and in years since. Some of those communities are the same ones that saw the highest number of deaths during the 1995 heat wave.
“The collective research, preliminary findings, and perspectives from community and academia push us toward solutions,” said Angela Tovar, Chicago’s chief sustainability officer and Department of Environment commissioner, said in a statement.
But questions remain about whether any of the solutions will go into effect after the city’s top extreme heat expert was pushed out last year and as climate change continues to produce more heat waves that get hotter and last longer.
“We used to think of climate change as a problem for the future, but we live in a climate change world today,” Klinenberg said. “So I fear it’s just a matter of time before the next disaster hits.”
Contributing: Brett Chase
