Companions on a Journey was formed in 1997 as a ministry of St. Maximilian Kolbe Church by Sheila Munafo-Kanoza after the loss of her husband, Vince, to a 10 year battle to cancer. Widowed at the age of 37 with three children to raise, Sheila found it important to be able to understand the grief that she and her children were enduring and discovered the importance of grief support thought a support group she had attended at St. John’s Church in West Chester, Ohio.

Sheila, a P&G sales representative, at the time of her husband’s death left her job to do her own grief work after taking to prayer what she was to do with the rest of her life. God gave her the vision that she would one day open a Bereavement Center in the West Chester / Liberty Township area.

She began her study in the field of Bereavement and has traveled throughout the US training and working with other specialist and families in Oklahoma City and then in New York City, 6 months after 9/11. The one thing she found as she worked with the bereaved families is that they had one thing in common; they all wanted their loved ones to be remembered and they needed to know that they were not alone on their grief journey.

Overtime and as a response to their own personal grief experience, Tom Kanoza, Pat Buckley, Margaret Kast and partner Linda Sullivan joined Sheila in her work. The demand for COJ’s services beyond the bounds of St. Maximilian Kolbe parishioners began to grow quickly. In 2007 the decision was made to incorporate as a non-profit organization to allow us to better serve our expanding community.

As West Chester became the corridor for new medical facilities, notably the West Chester Medical Center the need for grief support has grown as well. On September 11, 2008 COJ received notification from the IRS of our status as a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization. The significance of this day that brought such grief to our nation affirmed to us the importance of our work, which is to support the needs of the bereaved of our community.