Project ECHO executive director remembered

A blend of toughness and tenderness was what Lori Heron brought to her workplace during the three decades she was involved with Project ECHO.

The executive board, staff and others in the Calvert County community are still reeling at the news Heron, who was 60, died in her sleep on May 29.

“She was the most humble person I have ever known,” Julie Fuller of the Project ECHO board of directors told Southern Maryland News. “She is impossible to replace. She basically did two full-time jobs.”

Heron started at the homeless shelter in Prince Frederick about 30 years ago.

“She was a remarkable woman,” Henry Trentman, the former board of directors president said. “She had a tough personality, but was most compassionate. She was like a strict mother. She loved you dearly, but held you to the rules.”

In a statement issued last week, the board of directors noted when Heron started, Project ECHO “was a small shelter for eight people on the grounds of St. John Vianney Church. Under her direction, it grew to a 40-bed, 90-day shelter for men, women and children. It became a shelter whose atmosphere is unique in that it is a family atmosphere whose mission is to give the residents time to regroup, put their lives back together and move on as a productive member of society, rather than the all-too-frequent institutional atmosphere of many shelters.”

Once someone left the shelter they still retained family status, in Heron’s approach.

“Old residents would come back to say ‘hi’ and reminisce,” Trentman recalled.

“She had the ability to recall names, kids, pets, everything about a person who had lived at the shelter,” Fuller said. “She genuinely cared for everybody.”

In 2015 Heron created the Tri-County Memory Walk. The event honors those lost to drug addiction.

“It was her brainchild,” Trentman said, noting that Heron saw the problems individuals were having with prescription medications long before many members of society did.

The memory walk includes a one-mile path through farmland, with posted photos of those lost to addiction.

Her husband, Jeff Heron, said in an email that Heron “passed away unexpectedly, but peacefully, in her sleep.”

The Calvert County commissioners remembered Heron during their June 4 meeting.

“Ironically, she sent us a letter that we received the day before she passed with some suggestions on how to improve the state of the homeless here in Calvert County,” Commissioner President Earl F. “Buddy” Hance (R) said. “It was very sudden, untimely. She was a great addition to the county and she’s going to be missed greatly.”

“She was one of a kind,” Trentman said.

A three-hour memorial service was held for Heron at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum on June 5.

The community is urged to make a donation in Heron’s name to Project ECHO Homeless Shelter.