Longtime DuPage County coroner's aide retires

Surrounded by death, Jan Frunzar learned to value life.

The Glen Ellyn woman retires today from a career she fell into by accident at the DuPage County Coroner's office after more than 14 years on the job.

Before she started, words such as morgue and undertaker weren't exactly part of the former small-town girl's daily lexicon.

But it was while caring for her mother, Thelma, who had Alzheimer's disease and was living next door at the DuPage County Convalescent Center, that Frunzar learned of the job opening. The daughter figured she could spend her lunch hours with her ailing mother.

"I remember thinking, 'Death? Oh, how depressing,'" she said. "That first week, there were a lot of people who died from Alzheimer's. I wasn't sure I could handle it but it gave me a better understanding of what was to come. I thought, 'OK. I can do this.' "

A few years later, when her mother died, it was Frunzar who prepared the death certificate and faxed it to the undertaker.

The longtime administrative assistant served as the office's liaison to the public, be it a grieving family member or police officer, funeral director, hospital official or pesky reporter trying to get the scoop on a murder.

"Jan is the interface between the office and the public," DuPage Coroner Pete Siekmann said. "She's had to deal with people at very difficult times and has always been extremely reliable and professional. She will be missed."

Her husband, Jim, used to grimace when she talked about her work at the dinner table. The 65-year-old grandmother said she always hears the same question when telling people what she does for a living.

"They always ask, 'Ugh. Do you have to see the bodies?" Frunzar said. "I tell them only if I want to, which I try to avoid. You do get used to it."

It's that kind of acceptance that helped sustain Frunzar through a battle with breast cancer. She's been cancer free for six years.

That doesn't mean she and her colleagues are immune to feeling loss. They grieved together when two beloved employees of the close-knit, small staff passed away in recent years.

"I guess you realize that flicker of life can go out in an instant," Frunzar said, reciting a Walton Payton quote that is displayed on the office's public announcement board: "Tomorrow is never promised to anyone."

During her tenure, the office's number of annual death investigations has risen to nearly 4,000, with an increase in drug-related deaths, especially heroin. They handle everything from discovered bones to suicides. For most in the office, deaths involving children are the hardest.

Frunzar recalls the panic that befell the office the moment the staff discovered Debra Evans' fetus was missing from the slain pregnant woman's womb in Addison's infamous November 1995 triple murder. Police later found the baby alive.

Another case that stays with Frunzar is the October 1997 drunken-driving crash that killed three Waubonsie Valley High School teens and a fourth woman in Aurora.

"It was horrible. Four young lives, snuffed out by a drunk driver," Frunzar said.

It's rarely been dull, she said, but Frunzar is eager to spend more time with her family, which includes three granddaughters. After more than 14 years, she knows quite literally where the bodies are buried.

Making good on something she's been known to say, Frunzar leaves walking out the door rather than on a stretcher. And she's taking her sense of humor with her.

"If someone finds bones buried in our back yard, don't worry, it's just our old cats."