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Cemetery Superintendent
Has Gotten an Operating Education
interview by Susan Loving
How is this for dedication to fellow cemeterians: Scott Saltsgaver is delaying his graduation from ICFA University for a year in order to help get the Cemetery Operations & Maintenance Conference off to a good start.
Oh, he'll be in Memphis, Tennessee, while the university classes are being held-as will everyone who attends the conference. Since the ICFA is holding the two educational events concurrently this year, Saltsgaver had to choose one, and he knew his familiarity with ICFAU would help the ICFA Cemetery Operations Committee plan how to better incorporate university resources.
A relative newcomer to the cemetery business, Saltsgaver believes in making the most of every opportunity to learn more from experts, including his fellow cemeterians. He recently talked to ICFM about his background, his job as superintendent and cemetery operations manager at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, and his vision for the 2004 Cemetery Operations & Maintenance Conference, which he is co-chairing with Eudra Howell of Roselawn Memory Gardens, Glen Allen, Virginia.
Tell us a little about your background and how you came to work at Ivy Hill.
I'm a native of Alexandria. After high school, I attended trade school for a year in the automotive field and then spent almost 20 years in that field. I had decided I needed a change and through a friend I met Tom Bowling, president and general manager of Ivy Hill. I started here in June of '99.
That must have been a big change for you.
Oh, yes. It was learning by the seat of your pants, and see how many pairs of pants you can wear out.
I also attended ICFAU from 2001 through 2003, attending the Land Management & Grounds Operations College, the College of Administration & Management and the Sales & Marketing College. In 2001, I went to my first Small Cemetery & Funeral Operations Conference.
What does your job at Ivy Hill entail?
Everything from sales to customer service. At times I have to dig the graves. I handle memorial designs. I do a little bit of everything, so my job varies a lot from day to day. I go from meeting with families or funeral directors to making at-need arrangements to taking care of customer complaints, if there are any-and hopefully there aren't.
What size staff do you have?
We have two full-time groundskeepers who are responsible for the openings and closings, for setting up for the services and for handling basic maintenance. We subcontract out some services, including lawn mowing and chemical applications.
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
I really enjoy helping families. Doing memorial designs. Helping people get on with the grieving process.
What are some of the challenges Ivy Hill faces?
Like everyone else, money, trying to make do as inexpensively as possible. Having a small staff, it can be a challenge getting everything done in a timely manner. Those are some of the big challenges.
A more everyday challenge is simply dealing with families at a difficult time, when they've just lost someone and they're grieving. Our challenge is to help them get through that time and, in the case of at-need arrangements, help them make the right choices, choices they won't regret later.
What is the best experience you have in your job?
Family members coming up and giving me hug after a service, thanking me for making it easier on them. Maybe the surviving spouse, who's still trying to figure out which end is up, tells you that you've helped.
What is the most difficult?
Having to bury infants. Even people like us who deal with these deaths not on a daily basis, thankfully, but certainly on an occasional basis have a difficult time with it.
Virginia's had some harsh weather the past year, very wet even without factoring in Hurricane Isabel. How has this impacted the cemetery?
The grounds are wet, that's for sure. We just have to take more time in moving equipment around the graves to make sure we're not tearing up the grounds. Prevention is better than having to go back and correct things later after you've put ruts in the grounds. We use Mud-Traks, which really help a lot.
It's important to keep the cemetery looking nice no matter what the weather throws at you. We had a family in here recently who actually decided to move their loved one to Ivy Hill from another cemetery because the markers at the other cemetery are muddy and when they complained they were told, "It'll be three or four weeks before we can get to it."
With a little bit of effort, that cemetery would not have even had a complaint. You have to take the time to do the little things that are important to families.
What do you find has changed during the time you've been at Ivy Hill?
Everybody's computerizing more, which is making life a lot easier, from computerized databases to memorials designed on computer to easier communication with families. A lot of times when we're working with families to design a memorial or even to handle some of the arrangement details, we're dealing with people through e-mail. It's nice because you don't interrupt them with your questions. Even older people will say, "Just send me an e-mail-it's easier."
Getting back to your involvement with ICFA educational programs, what is your history with what used to be the Small Cemetery & Funeral Management Conference, now the Cemetery Operations & Maintenance Conference?
The first year I attended the "Small" was 2001, and that's one none of the people who were there will ever forget. The conference was in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and we heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks as we were headed for a cemetery tour in northern New Jersey. We returned to the hotel but decided to continue the conference-no one could find flights home.
I found out this was a good group of people, and my boss sent me to the conference again in 2002. Members of the Small Cemetery & Funeral Management Committee asked me to join and I did. And lo and behold, now I'm co-chairing the conference.
What do you find to be the main benefit of participating in conferences?
Contacts, networking, getting to meet other people who have the same problems we have every day. I've gotten to know people so that I can pick up the phone and give them a call, or send them an e-mail saying, "This is what I'm thinking of doing to correct this. What would you do?"
Then you go out to your grounds crew and say, "Why don't you try doing it this other way? People are saying it works real well, even though we've done it the other way forever." This is a great way to get suggestions for things you may not have thought of.
And, of course, by attending these events you meet people who become good friends.
Why did you want to get involved as co-chair?
I've attended ICFAU in Memphis for the past three years, so when it was decided the conference would be in Memphis, I offered to step up. They want to take advantage of the speakers the university attracts, and I felt I would be in a good position to help work this out.
What do you hope to accomplish with the Cemetery Operations & Maintenance Conference?
The committee felt the conference needed to get back to the basics, to the nuts and bolts of running a cemetery. As we select speakers and schedule sessions, we're going to be looking to emphasize grounds maintenance, equipment maintenance and office operations. We want a program focused on making things work better and simpler.
The university brings in some of the best speakers in the profession, so we're going to be drawing on the ICFAU faculty. I think that when people are exposed to the level of expertise available at ICFAU, there will be some cemetery managers deciding to send their people to the university in the future. I've found that you just can't get the information you learn there anywhere else.
How do you define "operational" issues, which is what this conference will focus on?
An operational issue is all about asking "How do you do it?" How are you digging the graves, maintaining the grounds, keeping the cemetery looking and running its best with the resources that are available to you? We want to help people figure out better ways of doing some things, with less effort and better results.
Scott Saltsgaver is superintendent and cemetery operations manager at Ivy Hill Cemetery, www.ivyhill.org, Alexandria, Virginia, a nonprofit, nonsectarian cor-poration charted in 1856. The cemetery encompasses just under 25 acres. Saltsgaver can be reached at (703) 549-7413 or scotts@ivyhill.org.
Susan Loving can be reached at sloving@icfa.org.
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Copyright ICFA 2004
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