Sister Grace Miller smiles as she props herself up in her hospice bed and gently teases her strands of chestnut brown hair.
“How does my hair look?” she asks.
It’s the type of remark one would expect from Miller. Sister Grace is many things: a radical compassionate, a devout follower of the Catholic faith, a civil disruptor, and a wielder of a sharp, slightly sardonic wit.
You could still see that this week, but her edge seemed a little dull. She spoke with a slower, raspy cadence, sometimes losing focus on the topic at hand before returning to the point.
The 89-year-old champion for the homeless and destitute is dying, in hospice care at a congregation home on Carter Street.
But her spirit is alive and well.
“I would fight with them over whatever, whatever the people needed,” Miller said, referring to the county and city administrations she often tangled with over the years. “I would fight for the people.
“I thought, I'm going to help the people no matter what,” she continued. “Because they have a right to shelter, they have a right to housing, they have a right to food. They have all these rights.”
A house of mercy
Miller is part of the Sisters of Mercy, a progressive Catholic congregation founded in 1831 by Irish Sister Catherine McAuley. Its teachings revolve around social justice initiatives, ranging from anti-racism to support of environmentalism and migrants. The Sisters of Mercy strive to emulate the life of Jesus in their actions.
Miller found her calling in 1985. It was a cold night, and she recalled going out and finding three men wandering the streets. She set out to find them shelter, only to meet dead ends when shelters turned them away.
“I argued with them and struggled with them, and finally they let them in,” she said. “But that's when I decided that I needed to open up a place for homeless people who could come at any time, day or night and not be questioned.”
She began that mission by requesting $20,000 from the Sisters of Mercy to start the operation that would become known as House of Mercy. They gave it to her — but told her that she would need to fundraise for whatever else she needed to start the shelter.
“I had never done any fundraising in my life, but I didn't tell them that,” she said with a laugh. “I just took the money they gave me and ran before they had a chance to change their minds.”
The vision of House of Mercy was radical in its simplicity: The shelter would accept anyone, anytime, with no questions asked. It opened that same year in a modest one-bedroom house on Central Park.
The shelter later moved to a location on Hudson Avenue, and again to its current location on Ormond Street, always carrying the same ethos of radical acceptance. The barely 5-foot-tall Miller led the site, now grown large enough to offer 76 beds, and worked directly with virtually every person who came through the door.
Miller’s vision was as pure as it was uncompromising.
Over the years, she would be arrested half a dozen times in her advocacy. Among those arrests were during a 1996 rally against the fingerprinting of social service recipients, in 2014 for trespassing at the Monroe County Office Building during a protest of homeless residents being locked out of the Civic Center Garage, and in 2018 during a protest in support of low-income residents at the Cadillac Hotel.
Sister Rita Lewis has been Miller's partner in crime over the years. Lewis joined the House of Mercy two years after its founding. Today, she sits at Miller’s bedside.
She said the pair’s philosophy has always been very simple.
“Love is the answer,” Lewis said. “For just so many problems, love is the answer.”
For decades, Miller and Lewis kept the House of Mercy in shape. Thousands of homeless people came through its doors. Some were just seeking a place to stay for the night or a hot meal. Others stayed for months.
The pair saw some walk away into a better path in life and more stable living. Others were less fortunate.
The wall of Miller’s office at House of Mercy was a monument to the latter. It was plastered with dozens of obituaries documenting the lives of the many they had lost.
Miller’s belief in homeless people’s right to basic respect extended to the grave. She would often go toe-to-toe with the county to help ensure funeral costs were covered, including burial.
She pointed to the AIDS epidemic as one of the most dire time periods for the shelter.
“People kept dying left and right, one after the other,” Miller said. “We just had so many funerals, and we wanted to sure these people died and were buried with dignity.”
Forced out
In 2022, Miller transitioned from the head of House of Mercy to a position as “spiritual leader,” with Tammy Butler tapped to serve as executive director by the nonprofit’s board of directors.
A brutal slaying would ultimately lead to Miller’s exile from the House of Mercy entirely.
On the evening of Aug. 7, 2022, 40-year-old Nathaniel Jeanpierre III was among the people spending the night at the House of Mercy. In the middle of the night, for unknown reasons, Jeanpierre allegedly used a machete to stab 68-year-old Michael Nairy to death and severely injure 20-year-old Cameron Schuler.
Jeanpierre was charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder. That case is currently pending due to his competency to stand trial.
Schuler later sued House of Mercy, alleging that Jeanpierre had told staff at the shelter that he was going to Walmart to buy a machete and “kill people,” yet was allowed to re-enter. That lawsuit is ongoing.
In the aftermath, the House of Mercy temporarily closed, and Miller was pushed out of the organization she founded.
Nearly three years later, Lewis described the situation as still “very painful.”
It’s a similarly bitter moment for Ed Hourihan, chairman of the board of directors at House of Mercy. He recalls sitting and crying in his car with Miller after the attack.
“I love Sister Grace,” Hourihan said. “I think she is an inspiration. She's an institution in this community, and it's all love and good things, as far as I'm concerned."
Hourihan said he hopes to visit Miller, make clear that the House will continue, and maybe make amends before she dies.
"We have not forgotten Sister Grace,” he said. “Nor have we forgotten Sister Rita, nor have we forgotten the history.”
'Lady of the Streets'
In the center of a metal decorative sun dangling above Miller’s hospice bed is a card reading “House of Mercy.”
As Miller talks about her legacy, a volunteer comes into the room and replaces the card with a printout of baby Jesus being cradled by his mother, Mary, drawing a scattering of applause from others in the room. Above the image are the words, “La Madonna Della Strada.”
In the aftermath of Miller’s ouster from House of Mercy, she and Lewis set out on a new venture, named with those words, which translates to “the lady of the street.” Lewis said it was a fitting moniker for Miller.
In 2023, Miller and Lewis held a news conference alongside other homeless advocates at the site of a freshly cleared homeless encampment on Loomis Street. The group vowed to build a new shelter, in the same vein as the original House of Mercy.
“There are many (unhoused people) now who are scattered all across the city. We need to let them know that we care for them, that they are not forgotten,” Miller said at the time.
That project is still underway, and Lewis said she hopes to make strides to bring the shelter to fruition in the coming months.
Miller’s fervent, unwavering commitment to her cause is something other homeless advocates and shelter workers say they aspire to.
“She's always been just so on fire for the work that she does, and she inspires all of us to be more like her,” said Anna Valeria, chief executive officer of the Open Door Mission. “I would tell her, ‘You know, you’re who we all want to be when we grow up and never can.’”
Valeria had visited Miller earlier in the week to talk and pray. It was a moment that led Valeria to reflect on what made Miller such a unique force, and how she can carry some of that torch.
She said it was, ultimately, an undying, uncompromising commitment to the work she does as a fierce and fearless advocate for the poor.
“That's what I'm going to try to do. That's what I'm capturing from her,” Valeria said. “What I'm committed to trying to carry out as well is how do we stay the course and commitment and serve in the work that we do, and not be swayed?”
Miller has reflected as well — on the countless faces who came through the shelter door: A young boy seeking refuge from an abusive mother with whom he later rekindled a relationship. A man who broke down in tears after she served him a hot plate of food.
She believes that Rochester has the means to solve homelessness, but an establishment that lacks the will to do so.
“I don't think there should be homeless people here, I think they should all be taken care of and given a place to live,” Miller said. “No matter what it takes.”
