“24/7 Wall Street” posted a piece on January 13 entitled “The Ten Companies that Control the Death Industry.”  http://247wallst.com/2011/01/13/the-ten-companies-that-control-the-death... The first surprise was that Wal-Mart, Amazon and 800-Flowers were all in the top 10 influencers….Discounters that wouldn’t even have been on the radar screen a decade ago. The rest of the article was same ‘ol,  same’ol at first blush.  The order that they were listed was kind of random.  The interesting stuff comes if you re-order them by industry sector.

They posted revenues and earnings for each.    All companies listed were publically traded. I left Wal-Mart, 1-800 Flowers and Amazon.com out as irrelevant for this comparison---death related revenue is such a small fraction of their revenue.   Net Income as a percent of revenue (Return on Revenue- below listed as ROR) provides a fair benchmark for comparisons of the 7 remaining true industry players.  So here are the results when you “Sector” order them:

Sector:   Manufacturing                                                                 ROR

        Rock of Ages (Granite Memorials)                                            13.9%
        Hillenbrand (Batesville Casket)                                                  9.4%
        Matthews (Bronze Memorials)                                                    8.0%

Interesting that three of the top four Return on Revenues are suppliers.   They always complain about skinny margins at the wholesale level and talk about how much better the margins are at the retail level, but manufacturing leads the way.

Rock of Ages has always enjoyed this snobby culture that was all about only providing the finest quality granite for a 50% premium. They refuse to compete on the low end.  Seems to be working for them, huh?

Sector:    Consolidators – Funeral Home and Cemetery

        StoneMor Partners: (Mostly cemetery and some combos)            8.8%
        Stewart Enterprises: (Cemeteries and combos)                          7.2%
        Carriage Services: (Funeral homes and some cemeteries)          3.9%
        Service Corporation International: (Mature consolidator –
            Mostly funeral homes)                                                         2.4%

It appears that the oldest and largest (SCI) of the consolidators with the highest percentages of funeral homes achieves the lowest return. The newest of the consolidators (StoneMor) are exclusively cemetery and combo with only a handful of free standing funeral homes.  It is the highest achiever.

Stewart is middle-aged (as opposed to mature) and prospers from their formula of mostly large cemeteries, with large combination funeral homes on their properties and few free-standing funeral homes. Carriage is mostly free-standing funeral homes and middle-aged as well.

Point Being: Top two are cemetery dominated. Bottom two are funeral home dominated.

Conclusion:

The 1990’s is often called the decade of consolidation, and funeral home companies were high flying in terms of returns, multiples and purchase prices, with cemeteries and suppliers just trying to stay alive.  What a difference a decade makes, huh?   The Tortoise seems to have beaten the Hare.

Ten days ago or so, my cousin died.  The story, which is somewhat fuzzy, went like this.  He was driving on I-10 in Palm Springs, in the fast lane, and was evidently talking on his cell phone to my Aunt about pains in his chest the intensity of which he had never experienced before in his life.  He had been dealing with “indigestion” for the last several days.

Eye witnesses said they saw the car move over several lanes of traffic, attempt to exit, hit the guard rail, careened off the exit ramp, hit several objects and came to a stop.  My cousin was pronounced dead at the scene.

When my mother called to inform me of his death I have to admit that I felt nothing remotely akin to the pain and anguish of human grief.  However, I did feel a sense of lost history, a haunting feeling that I probably had not done the right thing by my cousin for I have not seen or talked or had any type of interaction with my cousin, my Aunt, or his surviving sister for forty years.  Is that not sad – forty bloody years?  However this confession is true.

This was not always the case.  From the beginning of my life until around eighteen years of age, my cousin and I were buddies, although there were times I could have strangled him.  He was a bully, I was not.  He was a tease, I was not.  I was more reserved and quiet, he was the opposite.  Yet despite our differences we did spend a great amount of time together.  

For one thing my cousin’s father died when he was ten, and for quite a while my family became a type of surrogate family for him.  My cousin spent many summer weeks, many week-ends, many holidays with my family.  My cousin was a city boy, I was a hick farmer.  The farm however offered him more peace and substance in his crisis over his father’s death than the city could – it just seemed that everybody knew that fact of life.

Together he and I were creative.  What one didn’t think of the other one did.  For instance we had a great big barn on our property and I made one section of it a fire department, the other section, I know no one will believe this, I made into a pet funeral home (fifty years before pet funeral homes were even in vogue – I could be a consultant today).  My cousin predictably turned the hay loft into a gambling casino (an idea he got from watching the movie “Some Like It Hot” where the speakeasy was in the back of the funeral parlor).  I said we were creative.

That barn was the most popular kid spot in kiddom.  Kids from miles around walked just to see the place.  On any one given day we might have a dozen fires, two dozen funerals (I was always the funeral director), and between battling imaginary blazes and holding state funerals for real and true dead rabbits, we managed to get in games of 21, dice, craps, slots, in fact any game of chance you might think of, my cousin and I had one.  One problem existed with our gambling casino however – the house never won.  My cousin and I lost every time when somebody else would play one of our games of chance, but we were undeterred even when my own mother beat the pants off the house.

There were a thousand memories and experiences packed into eighteen short years, and looking back eighteen years is indeed nothing.  Eighteen year olds don’t believe this, but I can assure you 58 year olds do.

Shortly after our graduation from high school my cousin married.  I was one of the groomsmen.  After the wedding someone dropped me off at the front door of the Heafey & Heafey Mortuary, and I never talked or laid eyes on my cousin again.  That was it. Over, finished, done, and gone.  Eighteen years just vanished with the slam of a car door.

Over the last forty years I have thought about him off and on.  I have made some half-hearted inquiries concerning him, his mother and sister.  In all honesty however I really was not too serious about any attempts to find out what his life had become.  For some reason, which honestly is still a mystery, all connections with my cousin and his immediate family just broke apart, never to be again, and now it is way too late to bring things together or at least try to with my former chum and good buddy – way too late.  My cousin is a corpse.

I feel shame in writing this because in all honesty the block to connecting, at least on my part anyway, was simple willpower and stubbornness.  I come from a long line of stubborn and willful people (you ought to have attended one of my family's holiday dinners – shootout at the OK Corral), and I know in my own heart there were times I thought about simply offering him the olive branch and just making the call.  I never did.

I never knew his children, I know nothing of his mother or sister's status, I learned that he had been divorced, and had a significant other, and also that he had done well in the profession of golf instruction and country club management.  I found this information five days after his death.  If you had asked me anything about him over the last 40 years I would have just shrugged my shoulders.  Everything I gleaned about my good buddy cousin I learned five days after his death.

I realize that nothing lasts forever.  Everything dies, even our relationships.  Right now however that type of sterile intellectualization about the ultimate truths and realities about life offer me little comfort.  I don’t feel the deep pangs of grief or even of wrenching guilt, no not those emotions.  I just simply regret not calling him.  I ought to have called him.

I know full well what my life has been like without my cousin involved with it, and it has been overall really pretty good.  Today however I am wondering what my life would have been like, what experiences both good and bad I would have had, if I had kept up with him, tried to keep up with him, just called him here and there, now and then, even if I got rejected.  I know that had I taken the initiative, and abandoned my own willfulness and stubbornness, what I am writing right now would be much different, but I do not know and will never know what that difference would have been.

I feel the unsettling pangs of consciousness today in having to honestly face up to deal with the haunting phrase “Too late.”  I did not do the right thing.

I went to see the Disney version of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” a week or two before my cousin died.  The story always touches me, but as I write these words in view of what has happened since, I am thinking that I am a modern version of Ebenezer Scrooge, and I really need a visitation from three spirits to give me the wake up call.  I should have called my cousin.

I think I will write to my Aunt and see how things are going for her.

ELUO VICIS IS EST EFFERCIO VITA EST NO OF.  Don’t squander time; it is the stuff life is made of.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

Last week I spent a very nice day doing some training.  What a wonderful, professional group of individuals in the group – no grumpy, fussing complaining people – no, not one.  It was fun, energizing, focused, and above all dedicated to discussions and knowledge about one major subject – serving families better.  It was refreshing, and did this old undertaker’s soul a world of good.

During the time that I had to teach I posed a question that I always ask any group I am working with:  “What do you think is the greatest threat and challenge facing funeral service today?”  I believe it is a good question to ask because the question basically cuts to the chase of what I believe seminars should be all about and eliminates any potential “Pollyanna” stuff which one often encounters in what is called group thinking.  I mean, really, anybody can deal with the good times, when things are going really well, that takes little talent. But are these times in funeral service/cemetery work good times and going really well???????

Here are some of the responses I received to my question:  casket stores, WalMart (of course nobody liked WalMart), cremation increase, lost casket sales, government regulations, poor recruitment efforts, changed people, changed demographics, changed value systems, funeral director wannabes butting in, aggressive sales techniques, and general malaise and apathy concerning detailed funeral service.  One courageous funeral professional even remarked that they thought one of the major problems funeral service was experiencing was preachers who did not know how to preach and hence ruined all the good work of the funeral home!

It was a great discussion and all the responses were valid I, thought anyway, to one degree or another. 

Privately, and I eventually shared this thought with the group, I have been haunted by an issue which just does not get discussed or explored much in professional circles, the almost silent issue of dwindling time.  In other words the erosion of the time that people spend these days in funeral and cemetery activities, in rites rituals and ceremonies, in leave-taking, in saying goodbye, in saying their final farewells.  This dwindling of time haunts me, and I believe we are already experiencing the consequences and they are not favorable.

When I was 14, my grandfather died in Southwestern Iowa.  He was 90 something, we really never knew how old he actually was, because he was born in Holland and never had a birth certificate.  He did not even have a Social Security number, and could not read or write English.  He smoked 20 cigars a day and had seven children.  I adored him.

Upon his death we called the trusty old Blust Bros. to come out to the farm to get his body.  What a nice way to describe an undertaker – trusty and old.  Later that day my grandmother and a few select family members, me included, picked out the casket in the showroom in the back of the furniture store.  Everything came to $800.  My grandfather had kind of prearranged his funeral without the help of the Blust Bros. by putting ten $100 bills in an envelope which was labeled “Funeral.”

My grandmother just handed Henry Blust the entire envelope and said “Take out of that what you will need.”  Mr. Blust counted out eight $100 bills and handed the rest back to my grandmother.  What a transaction – win/win in 1964!  Until the day she died my grandmother thought that Henry Blust was a saint from heaven because she received a “refund” on her husband’s funeral – two hundred dollars!   Trusty old undertaker Mr. Henry Blust did not take all her money – now there is a refreshing idea.

The first day at the viewing our horribly dysfunctional family gathered in the large room at the Blust Bros.  Some of these people basically hated each other and had not talked to each other for years even though they only lived maybe seven miles apart.  The Van Becks weren’t and are not today the Waltons. No one ever said “Good night, Todd Boy” to me.

That first day, seeing my grandfather, we all cried for six hours.

The next day new people started showing up.  There were some tears for some, but basically we were all standing around getting all the most recent updates on the gossip concerning our family.  You know the drill – who is back drinking too much, who is cheating on their spouse, who got kicked out of high school, who just lost their driver’s license, who is still borrowing money. You know, gossip – our family seems to thrive on it.

The third day at the funeral home the place looked like we were having a party.  Food was everywhere, people were laughing, some still crying, but most were just talking about what a long and useful life my grandfather had lived, and it was concluded by everybody that this fact was a comfort and blessing.

On the fourth day we had a funeral for him at 2 p.m. (that is when Protestants went to heaven in our little community) and buried him in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Hancock, Iowa.  After the funeral we all returned to the basement of the church, where the church ladies as usual had prepared a funeral feast.  Trust me, folks, Iowa church ladies know how to put on a funeral feast – nothing better not even at the Tavern on the Green in New York City.

Here are a few more particulars. The casket was a cloth covered wood, and looked real nice.  The outer box at the cemetery was made of wood which was an old railroad shipping case.  There were some nice flowers.  The preacher did a nice job.  It was a nice funeral, a nice experience, and in three days our entire family had moved from crying and weeping to celebrating. BUT IT TOOK THREE DAYS – IT TOOK TIME.

From a funeral service perspective, here are some particulars. First off the Blust Bros. building was used for three full days. The lights were on, the air conditioners were running full blast, the taped music was playing, the register book was out, the public was showing up by the tens of hundreds, the Blust Bros. were on the floor of the funeral home and not sitting in a coffee lounge watching a soap opera or Bob Barker giving away a new car.  They had embalmed my grandfather and he looked great.  They had dressed him and he looked really spiffy.  They had NOT put on too much cosmetics.  The funeral coach was not new, but it was shiny and clean, and the Blust Bros. were dressed impeccably. 

Here is a private thought.  I pangs me to drive by a funeral home at night and see that the entire place is dark – nothing is happening – nobody is going in or out, and I know that inside the building there are five deceased persons.  That bothers me. 

Looking back at my grandfather’s funeral, it was full of meaning, it was full of memories, it was full of emotion, and it was full of life.  It was definitely worth $800.

BUT IT TOOK TIME.

I have told this experience to thousands of funeral and cemetery professionals across North America and when I tell this story everyone gets a peaceful smile and pensive look on their faces.  I ask them “Do you think this was a valuable experience?”  They all nod in the affirmative – yes, indeed.

Last week when I was doing my seminar I flew into my old hometown Cincinnati, “The Queen City.”  I miss Cincinnati terribly.  I was getting my rental car and looked at the morning issue of the local newspaper and started reading the obituaries.  Here is one that caught my attention and sent chills down my spine.  “Calling hours at the mortuary starting at 11:00 a.m.; funeral will begin at Noon.”

One hour!  One hour!  One hour!  Now in these times, add to this immediate cremation, immediate burials, private graveside services, private services, services at the convenience of family. Well, here is a question:  If we have gone from memorializing our dead for three days of time say 35 years ago, down to 3 – 5 hours of time today, what will be the time that people use for funerals in the year 2020?  Three days down to three hours!  Dwindling ...

Dwindling, dwindling, and dwindling!  Fewer people attending funerals, less time being spent memorializing our dead – dwindling.  

I personally believe that dwindling time is the greatest threat to the future of the funeral.  Without time or without our making the precious little time we have to serve a family absolutely the most meaningful that it can be I believe we will continue to see the natural erosion of the funeral experience.  Funerals need time they always have and always will.

To this end I believe that just simple awareness on our parts of this silent issue is tantamount to our improving this situation.  Our awareness of this silent issue of dwindling time will stimulate professionals in funeral service and cemetery work to adapt, and adopt the new and improved methods which are being promoted everyplace and everyday to serve families to the best of our abilities within the time constraints that modern life and times are imposing upon us.  

We can and do have an influence on the decisions that our families make.  

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion. TVB

A new PLPA member recently hit the news in their local community!  Congratulations Vandemore Pet Cremations for the awesome press you received on your new services!  Read all about their business opening!  www.geneseorepublic.com/news/x927266317/Vandemore-now-offering-pet-cremations

This condition, also called icterus, is not a disease, but is a symptom of a disease or condition. Jaundice is one of the most frequent challenges encountered by every embalmer.

Over the years, literally every conceivable concoction, formula, procedure and technique has been studied, developed and implemented to deal with it. There have been some successes and, as with all embalming processes, some cases where things did not work as planned, so embalmers always ask what to do in these cases.

In my own experience, I can remember following the instructions on "jaundice fluids" to the letter. When I was finished, I was pleased with the color, but as I left the preparation room I got that old embalmer's gut feeling that something was not right. Sure enough, by the day of the funeral I could detect some odor which ought not to have been present.

The next time, I put preservation first and used a trusted arterial fluid with predictable results in tissue preservation, yet I would again leave the preparation room with "that feeling." The next morning I would be pulling out the phantom cosmetics to cover over the dreaded green.

Jaundice is characterized by the yellow staining of the tissues of the body, including the blood volume, by bile from the liver. The bile's color is from the blood's hemoglobin that the liver has converted to bilirubin.

Every embalmer in the world knows this theory and knows that when bilirubin combines with HCHO (formaldehyde) the result is biliverdin and the dreaded green color.

I have found that massaging the face and hands with a quality massage cream and then wiping the cream away with a soft towel and applying more cream in a thick coating helps. A consistent massaging of the face and hands does contribute to removal of some stain and distribution of chemical.

Now the big question: What about chemical solution, jaundice fluids, dyes and the like? At my first job, I was taught by the embalmer at Heafey & Heafey to stimulate as much drainage as possible, and drain we did! We used water to make our solution and added drops of dye as we went. All in all, my memory of this approach was that it worked.

However, you have to consider the fact that in those days, funerals usually were held within a couple of days, so we did not keep the remains for an extended period of time. Since those early days of my career, I have encountered more and more instances where family members require several days to get together. Also, new medical drugs have altered the old embalming formulas.

Therefore, I have searched for an improved method of dealing with jaundice cases. Nathan Minnich, a former student of mine who has become a good friend and now teaches me things, has passed along the following method.

Instead of mixing consistent solutions of arterial fluid and dye, Nathan's approach is to use a great amount of dye (16-32 ounces) in the first gallon, and just a few ounces of preservative chemical. The rationale is that the jaundiced tissue gets dyed first before the HCHO can cause biliverdin.

Then, as additional half-gallon or gallon solutions are mixed, the formula is reversed, until, in the last gallon, just a few ounces of dye are used with a generous mixture of preservative chemical in order to thoroughly embalm the remains.

When I first heard this, I raised my eyebrows as all old embalmers do when a new idea comes to the floor. However, I have used the method on a dozen cases and the results are remarkable. It is much easier to cosmetize tissue that is pink rather than green, and much more pleasant to prepare well preserved remains.

If you have not tried this method of dealing with jaundice, I encourage you to give it a try. The results are truly remarkable and your families will be pleased.

Protecting your funeral home or cemetery from lawsuits and bad publicity isn't just a legal and public relations issue, it's an ethical one. Creating an ethical workplace is not an indefinable goal; there are specific steps you can and should take to make sure you and your employees are behaving ethically to each other, to other businesses and to the customers whose trust we need.

(Editor's note: This article is excerpted from a workshop at the ICFA 2004 Convention & Exposition in Nashville.)

Today in the business world in general there seems to be a problem with a lack of ethics. We've all read about corporate wrongdoing, improper trading practices on Wall Street and, within our own profession, the Tri-State Crematory scandal.

In our profession, we rely on our families' trust, and in the current business climate we have to work to keep it. As managers, we believe an ethical organization can be created.

Successful leaders need to see that having an ethical system in place is important for the long-term success of the company, and that like most other systems, the pieces are interrelated—it's not good enough to have one piece, you really need a complete system.

You need to identify the ethical values important to you, and you need to communicate them to your staff. You yourself need to live by those values and hold the people who work for you accountable for doing the same.

You need to have ways to reward, recognize and celebrate ethical behavior when it happens. You need to have guidelines in place so people know what to do, whom to go to and how to get help if they are unsure about how to deal with something.

As a profession, we continue to base a majority of our sales compensation on commission and that can make it difficult, when you are rewarding only productivity (paying people according to how much they sell), to also stress the importance of ethics and the long-term health of your company. Think about that when you evaluate your compensation package, when you hire and train salespeople.

Finally, you need to monitor and audit constantly, because you can't just trust blindly.

Examples from the Field
In addressing this topic, we need to include a disclaimer: We know we're not perfect; we're not setting ourselves up as the epitome of ethical behavior. But this is a topic we are passionate about, one we try to address in our own organizations.

Three examples from our own workplaces:

• Toson Hentges: We have been doing random drug testing at our company, and not long ago one of the employees selected refused to take the test. He was a fairly valuable sales counselor, and I tried to convince him to take the test, but he refused. I gave him an ultimatum: Take the drug test or go to drug counseling. He quit. I was very upset, because, as I said, he was a valuable counselor and I didn't want him to leave, but I did not make an exception for him.

• Thompson: Years ago, when I hadn't been at Mountain View very long, I happened to learn that a body we had received from the medical examiner's office had been buried without the viscera being replaced in the abdominal cavity. I was appalled—this was part of the body that hadn't gone in the ground. I called the family, told them what had happened, apologized and asked what we could do to try to make it better.

To my great amazement, they said they were shocked that I was honest enough to tell them about our mistake, since there was no way they could have known if I hadn't. We talked about the situation and they were satisfied with the solution we reached, which was to commit the additional remains to the ground in a vault above the casket.

Over the years, I've had to deal with other difficult situations, some harder than that one, and I have yet to be disappointed by a family's reaction. My staff knows that when we make a mistake, I'm going to call the family. I make it clear to our staff that this is how we handle things. I've made that a kind of mantra that I keep in the back of my mind: "We have to be willing to tell families when we make it a mistake." I don't ever want to lose their trust.

• Thompson: In the category of "rules apply to everyone," I had a problem with one of our sales counselors, who had a tendency to "forget" that we have a lead protection system. This counselor got a call from a friend and, without checking the lead protection system, wrote up a funeral plan worth several thousand dollars for this person, who was an active lead for another counselor. The customer called to tell me she would cancel the contract unless her friend got the commission, but I felt it was important for my sales counselors to trust what I tell them. We returned the customer's money, and I think it will be a very long time before that sales counselor ignores our lead protection system again.

Avoiding Frog Stew
People who end up doing unethical things don't necessarily start out as bad people, as people whose goal is to cause trouble for your cemetery or funeral home. It often starts out very small. Maybe someone takes a little bit of money, gets away with it and from there, the situation snowballs.

We call this "boiled frog syndrome," or "frog stew." When you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, its reaction is to jump back out, and it survives. But if you put a frog in a pot of room-temperature water and then gradually bring the water to a boil, the frog doesn't sense the temperature change, doesn't hop out and gets boiled to death. The same thing can happen with people and ethics. Ethical behavior slowly gets away from us and before we know it-frog stew.

How do you go about ensuring ethical behavior within your company? You have to develop an ethical system, just as you have a financial system and a marketing system. After all, the presence of ethical behavior is just as intrinsic to long-term organizational success as effective communication, good planning or proper financial management. Once that system is in place, it must be supported by the company leaders and management practices. It can't be put in place and neglected; it must be supported all the time.

The first step is to identify the ethical values you want upheld, make them crystal clear and make sure they address everyone. Don't think only about how your employees interact with customers; think about how they interact with each other, with vendors and with the community at large.
Don't make assumptions. You may think that all of your employees know that it's not OK to go out to real fancy dinners with a vendor on a regular basis and refuse to see any other vendor with a similar product, but maybe some of them don't know. You need to make sure the values you want upheld are well communicated:

• Get your management team to write down your ethical values. It forces you to be specific, and it forces you to be accountable as managers. If you're going to put something out there for employees to follow, it's important that the managers do so.

• Make sure they're widely disseminated. I think all of us have had the experience of walking into a business where they have a section of a wall beautifully decorated with a picture of the founder, and maybe a list of the trustees and a copy of their mission and values statement. But if that plaque on the wall is the only place your values statement appears, you are a company looking for trouble.

You need to talk about your ethical values in the employee newsletters, in e-mails at company meetings, during performance reviews. You need to be talking about it all the time. Otherwise, next thing you know people are taking longer and longer lunch hours. After all, who's going to notice? And then maybe a sales counselor decides to cover the down payment in order to make a sale. After all, won't the boss just be happy about the sale? It's very easy to talk yourself into moving just one step away from OK, and pretty soon you're several steps away and then-frog stew.

• Talk about your ethical values when you're interviewing job applicants. Remember, it's a two-way process: You're evaluating candidates and they are evaluating your company. It's only fair that you tell people what your expectations are and that you make sure they know you take these ethical standards seriously as a company.

• Talk about ethics all the time. To quote Gary O' Sullivan: "Talk about it till you puke."

Embedding Values in Your Company's Infrastructure
• Consider ethics in hiring. Evaluate how well job candidates seem to fit in with your values. When someone is hired, include another discussion of values in the orientation process.

• Make sure your company's leaders and managers live the values they are preaching to employees. As a supervisor, you need to act like you're being watched, because you are. Every day, every action, your employees are watching you. Are you doing what you tell them they are supposed to do?

In doing research for this presentation, we read about a consultant working for a large Fortune 500 company. He was talking to the head of human resources, who was really upset because so many people in his department were cheating on their expense reports. "We're supposed to be setting the example for the whole company," he said, "and my department's one of the worst. I can't figure this out."

It didn't take the consultant long to find out that the department head, who traveled all the time and was entitled to fly first class, was trading in his first-class tickets and pocketing the difference. So it really was no surprise, for example, that his employees were charging the company for meals they could have had but didn't.

Your staff looks to you to set the tone, to set the example. You need to realize that the little things count.

Thompson: As an example, one day I caught myself doing something I shouldn't have. There was someone I didn't want to talk to, and instead of telling the switchboard operator to say I was unavailable, I told her, "Just say I'm not here." That wasn't true, and by asking her to lie, I was saying to my employee that under certain circumstances it's OK to lie.

Now, how long do you think it's going to take before that employee starts thinking to herself, "Well if it's OK to lie there, then here's another situation where it might be OK to lie. Cindy's not here to ask, but it was OK over there, so I'll do it over here." And if you've got 10 or 20 or 50 employees, that could multiply exponentially. You can't be there all the time, so how are you going to know when they do this?

You have to show zero tolerance for ethical violations. Decisions shouldn't depend on how productive an employee is. As in the case of the valuable sales counselor who refused to take a drug test, you have to make your decisions in terms of the values you have established.

• Avoid establishing internal conflicts. Make sure your company's reward systems and performance appraisals are congruent with your ethical values.

If you are telling employees, "We love our customers and it's important for you to spend a lot of time with every family—we want you to take all the time it takes," but then all they get rewarded on is the numbers, you've created a problem.

Maybe you've got someone who isn't quite as productive as some of your other sales counselors, but their customers love them. They get the best referrals because their families trust them. Are they not valuable? We say they are valuable to your company, but if you say, "We value people who value our customers" on the one hand and on the other hand, base payment just on numbers, you're putting employees in a no-win situation. (We don't mean to say that people who care about their families don't get the numbers; we're exaggerating to make a point.)

• Watch for and address external conflicts. The funeral and cemetery profession may not be as open to them as some other businesses, but we should be proactive.

Thompson: We have someone at our cemetery who works with outside construction companies who are doing projects nearby and want to bring us excess dirt from job sites. We make it very clear that the choice of which companies are allowed to do this is not a matter of slipping our employee some money.

Building an Ethical Toolbox
Your company has to build for each of your employees their own ethical toolbox, because they're not going to be able to call you every time and say, "I'm not sure what to do." You need to build their skills and abilities.

Awareness, skills and values are needed for an ethical toolbox.

Awareness means you need to raise the issue of ethical dilemmas to your staff. They need to learn to be aware that ethical behavior is something you want them to be careful about. Build their awareness so that when something is going on that's not quite kosher, they'll realize it.  

Next, you need to make sure that they have the skills to deal with any questions or problems that come up, or that there are resources at your company they can turn to. You can put systems in place to help your employees when they are faced with an ethical dilemma. One company we read about had an 800 line for people to call when they thought they had come across unethical behavior.

And third, you need to make sure that employees perceive ethical behavior as something they need to practice to be successful at your company.

If you have awareness without skills, for example, you've got a problem. An employee might say to himself, "I don't think that's really cool, he's giving all the business to his brother-in-law," but if your company hasn't told employees what to do in a case like that—there's no 800 number to call, there's no one on staff designated to tell—the employee is kind of stuck.

You want your employees to realize what your ethical values are, to be aware of problems and to have the ability (skills) to do something about them so that when they become aware of a problem or are faced with an ethical dilemma of their own, they will act.

In doing our research, we ran across a page from the Enron code of ethics, distributed in 2000, which wasn't that long ago. Let's look at a few excerpts:

"Moral as well as legal obligations will be fulfilled openly, promptly and in a manner which will reflect pride in the company's name.... Employees will maintain the confidentiality of the company's sensitive proprietary information and will not use such information for their personal benefit…... Relations with the company's many publics—customers, stockholders, government, employees, suppliers, press and bankers—will be conducted in honesty, candor and fairness."

These statements probably look familiar to a lot of us. You may have something very similar in your own company's employee manual. We all know what happened with Enron: They ended up serving frog stew. So simply putting a code of ethics in place is not good enough.

Enron probably handed this out to every employee, maybe had all of them sign an acknowledgement form. But it looks like they never followed up. We need to educate our employees about ethical behavior all the time, on a daily basis.

For the 15 funeral service professionals involved in the ceremonial farewell for former President Reagan, being a part of history meant hard work, long hours and the knowledge that the eyes of the world were on what they did and how well they did it.

A lifetime of preparation, an "all star" team of funeral directors, a cell phone and a steady supply of Diet Coke got Bob Boetticher, Sr. through what he calls "the honor of a lifetime," directing the funeral preparations for former President Ronald Reagan.

Boetticher, based in Houston, Texas, spent the second week of June working at the funeral home chosen by the Reagan family, Gates Kingsley Gates, Santa Monica, California. Boetticher is director of special projects for Service Corporation International.

Because the Reagan ceremonies were split between the East and West coasts, Boetticher was on the phone constantly with Randy Weagley, president of Joseph Gawler's Sons, Washington, D.C., who headed the East Coast team. Gawler's, in business since 1850, originally was located on Pennsylvania Avenue, "right up the street from the White House," and has a long tradition of serving presidents and other dignitaries, Weagley said. Both Gawler's and Gates Kingsley are part of the Dignity Memorial Network.

The funeral directors involved (see the photos above and below for a full list of team members) are trained not only in their profession but also in the protocol involved in a state funeral, which involves coordination with the military, the Secret Service and other police agencies. Dealing with a rush hour motorcade from Andrews Air Force Base into Washington, DC, is quite a bit different from handling a procession from a funeral home to a cemetery.

"For all of the ceremonial portions of the service that you see on television we practice every detail,” Weagley said "Where your car will be, what you will do, where you will stand, how you will conduct yourself."

In addition to making time for long practice sessions, the funeral directors had to be ever aware of the photographers and television cameras. "When we would go outside the funeral home and adjust the flowers or pick up the letters and other things left for Mrs. Reagan," Boetticher said, "we tried to stay inconspicuous, remain in the background and get our jobs done without overshadowing the event. We were aware that we were representing funeral service; we always had our coats and ties on, so that if we were in a picture, we were dressed appropriately as well as acting appropriately."
Boetticher and Weagley don't go into a lot of detail as they talk about their experience. It's not that they simply don't feel like answering questions, Boetticher said. "Confidentiality is one of our No. 1 values as funeral directors. We were serving a family that had just lost a husband, a father and a grandfather. This is a family, they trusted us, and we cannot violate that trust, ever. That's what all funeral directors know. It doesn't matter that this was such a big event. In that aspect, it was a regular funeral, just a bigger one than normal."

Gates Kingsley Manager John Gerchas was part of the West Coast team. Other Gates Kingsley staff members concentrated on dealing with the funeral home's usual business. Though the media focus was on the Reagans, the funeral home "had other families to serve," Boetticher said.

"I hate to say 'East Coast team and West Coast team,' because it makes it sound like we’re separate, and we’re not,” he said, “We were 15 funeral directors who came together to do a job.  However, the West Coast team had a little different responsibility because the Reagan family had chosen Gates Kingsley Funeral Home, so we had duties in addition to those for a state funeral.

“From when the president died on Saturday until Monday, when the Military District of Washington was involved, we were working not so much with the military as with the Reagan family and the staff at the library."

The West Coast team handled the removal from the Reagans' residence, preparation of the body for the funeral, selection of the casket—all the usual duties performed for any family and details not covered by the long state funeral plan mentioned by the press—before the Reagans headed to Washington, DC.

The East Coast team worked to support the Military District of Washington, the Secret Service, family representatives and others involved in the motorcade, the horse-drawn caisson procession to the Capitol, the lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda and the service at the National Cathedral. "We were extremely involved in the motorcade operation," Weagley said.  The motorcade from the Air Force base into the center of Washington was a major logistical undertaking.

Constant Communication
If everything about the bi-coastal event seemed to flow smoothly, it was due to constant communication.

''Randy and I talked constantly," Boetticher said. ''We relayed messages and talked about changes. Even though there's a plan, there are so many details that have to be taken care of; so many things you have to make sure are done, so communication is vital. We made sure each knew what the other was doing."

When events switched to the East Coast, the members of the West Coast team were able to rest a bit and let the impact of what they were doing sink in.

"We were so busy, we didn't know what was happening on the outside, because we never watched TV," Boetticher said, "When you're constantly working, constantly moving, getting very little sleep, you don't really know what's happening on the outside because you're so focused on the job you have to do.

"The West Coast team members didn't realize the enormity of it until Wednesday afternoon when we watched the arrival in Washington on television, and then we just said, 'Whoa.' Seeing what Randy and his people were doing in DC is what really affected my team. I just can't describe the feeling."

Both teams found the work all-consuming. "We tried to be prepared for things," Weagley said, "but sometimes it just takes longer than you anticipated to get things done. You finish up late and then there's no place to get something to eat."

"That was one of the things we didn't anticipate—the lack of sleep," Boetticher agreed. "We only got about maybe three hours a night—if we even slept. And food was very hard to come by."

On Friday, after the service at Washington National Cathedral, which drew governmental representatives from all over the world, the Reagans returned to California, where the former president was laid to rest in the grounds of the presidential library following a private, family-oriented ceremony. However, there was one more public event.

"On Friday, Mrs. Reagan asked that the motorcade be slowed down and that we go through the residential areas to get back to the library," Boetticher said. "In the hearse, we were so close to the people that they could lay flowers on it, and we could see the grief in their eyes.

"At Gates Kingsley, people were coming 24 hours a day to pay their respects. As we watched them, one gentleman came in his World War II uniform and stood by the fountain and laid his medal on the ground in front of a picture of the president and saluted."

Honor of a Lifetime
Boetticher and Weagley both described the experience as a great honor, "the honor of a lifetime," as Boetticher put it.

"We are so honored to be asked to help each and every family we serve," Weagley said, "and certainly to be involved in a service for somebody who had such an amazing impact on our country and our way of life today as President Reagan did is truly awe-inspiring.

"As Bob said, you're handling so many things during the week that you're almost not too sure where you are sometimes, there are so many things happening. When it filters down to you what you've been involved in, it's truly inspiring. When I first entered funeral service, President Reagan was in office, and it's amazing for me to look back on those days and then to have had the honor to assist in his service and memorialization. We tried to uphold the highest possible professional standard of service and make everybody proud."

Both of them have heard from many of their colleagues in funeral service. "One of the proud moments for us has been the emails and letters we've gotten from people we don't even know, as well as our friends in funeral service, people we respect," Boetticher said. "When they say 'you represented funeral service well,' it makes you feel humble."

As a matter of course, the location of the wound and parts of the remains punctured by the bullet or charge from the gun will be of greatest importance in determining the degree of difficulty in taking care of these situations.

If the heart is punctured, and the remains not autopsied, it will probably be necessary to do a six-point injection. In modem embalming, instant tissue fixation (otherwise known as "freezing the head") is a preferable method to ensure minimum swelling of the facial features.

It is suggested that both common carotids be injected with a high-index arterial fluid diluted with a quality pre- or co-injection chemical. When I was teaching embalming at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, this method of "freezing" was used constantly.

Basically the injector is set at the highest pressure and highest rate of flow, and by intermittently injecting from the off/on switch at a ratio of on for 1 second and off for 15 seconds, the fluid is presented to the tissues so quickly that the chemicals literally fixate the tissues and hence stop swelling.

I realize that this method will shock many embalmers, but I have used it for years with good solid results.

If the gunshot entered the cranium, there will probably be black eyes and distention. In these cases, it is wise to turn the back eyelid, inside out and open the mucous lining inside the eyelids, then digitally remove the volume of clotted blood. This results in a reducing of the distention and removes some discoloration.

Also, injecting a bleaching agent will eliminate much of the discoloration.

Who made up the rule that funeral services will be at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. weekdays?
For whom is that convenient, other than the funeral home and cemetery staff?
With some planning and willing employees, you can offer families services seven days a week, including evenings, without overtime charges or a staff mutiny.

One night as I was on my way to buy medicine for my daughter, who had a fever of 102 degrees, I thought to myself. "Boy, kids always seem to get sick at night. It's a good thing this place is open at 11 p.m."

As I continued driving, I started thinking about something my boss, Bob Gordon Sr., CCFE, and I had talked about after an ICFA meeting in Las Vegas. At the meeting, Ernie Heffner of Heffner Funeral Homes & Crematory in Pennsylvania had described a program he called the Twilight Service.

If a pharmacy can be open at night for the convenience of families, why can't a funeral home do the same? Sure, we're available when needed to handle a first call, but why don't we make it easy for families to schedule services in the evening or on weekends instead of during the work week, during regular work hours?

As we thought about how we could offer families this service without charging for overtime, we decided it was mainly a scheduling problem. We further realized that our employees would have to buy into the idea for it to be possible. Our office staff would be affected, since we would be keeping the office open on weekends. And when families wanted to follow an evening funeral service with a committal service in our cemetery, the grounds department would also be affected.

Flex Time and Three-Day Weekends
We began by creating three teams, each of which included a funeral director as unit manager, two family service counselors, one or two office staff members and one or two grounds crew members.

We then set up three different weekly schedules, which each team would rotate through.

• Schedule 1: Work Sunday and Monday; off Tuesday and Wednesday; work Thursday through Saturday.

• Schedule 2: Work Sunday through Thursday; off Friday and Saturday.

• Schedule 3: Off Sunday; work Monday through Wednesday, off Thursday; work Friday and Saturday.
As you can see, between weeks 2 and 3 the team members get a three-day weekend. This "bonus" every third week provides some payback or incentive for employees to go along with the system.

This is not to say that everyone immediately embraced the concept. There were the usual threats of mutiny that any change of this type tends to generate, but in the end most people realized it would provide a real service to the community. We also provided employees who went along with the program a bonus for each twilight service held.

A few people chose not to participate, and that was OK; our staff is large enough to provide enough people to handle the special shifts without 100 percent buy-in. We eventually worked out all the bugs and created a Twilight Service program that offers services and interments seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., with no overtime charge to families.

Because of the 12-hour coverage, employee commitment to the program was essential, since it meant they were working a flexible schedule designed for the convenience of families. If staff has an interment scheduled for 7 p.m., they'll be coming to work at 11 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. so that they can stay late without overtime cost to be passed on to the family.

In addition to having the personnel in place, we needed to get our cemetery ready for services that might take place after dark through the addition of the following pieces of equipment:
•    generator,
•    halogen lights,
•    backhoe with lights and
•    tractor and trailer with lights.

Telling the Community
Once we were ready to offer twilight services, the next step was to let the community know. We created brochures which we placed on our arrangement tables and we placed television and newspaper advertisements.

We started marketing the new Twilight Service on a Monday. On Tuesday, I sat down with a family to make at-need arrangements. The widow, daughter and son-in-law of the deceased were there together. As we discussed the time for the service, the son-in-law said that Saturday would be fine, but that he was going through a year-end review at work and would not be able to leave his job until 4 p.m., so he would not be able to make it.

His wife and mother-in-law began to agree that he would simply have to miss the service when I spoke up to explain our new evening service option. They couldn't believe their ears, but happily agreed to schedule the service at 7 p.m. Saturday at no extra charge.

Saturday evening, the deceased's grandson closed his eulogy with a prayer and then raised his head just in time to see the sun setting behind the mountains that provide a scenic backdrop to our facilities. "Though my family and Eternal Hills planned this service for this evening," he said, "it is quite obvious that God has ordained it."

Since that first successful service, Eternal Hills has held many more Twilight Services. We are the only funeral home and cemetery in our area willing to accommodate families in this way, and the community seems to appreciate it. Seeing how families respond to our willingness to provide this service gives our employees a boost worth at least as much as the bonuses we give them.

From the brochure Eternal Hills uses to explain and promote its Twilight Service (the information is also posted on Eternal Hills' Web site):

-    Introducing the new Twilight Service. At last, funeral services when everyone can attend ... at no extra cost!
-    A Twilight Service is any service scheduled between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. and conducted at our facilities. It may be selected with either burial or cremation arrangements.
-    Evening visitations and services make a real difference! Many employers only allow leave from work to attend services for the closest of family without the loss of wages. The Twilight Service allows everyone to attend and celebrate the life of that special person without financial penalty or disruption of work.
-    Are only certain services available for Twilight Services? No. All of our 20 value-priced packages or any of our services are available for the Twilight Service seven days a week without additional charges.
-    We encourage you to share your thoughts and ideas with us so that we can arrange a meaningful service. We pay close attention to details.

One of the principal retrograde changes that takes place in a living body is gangrene. Gangrene means the "death of a part." It means that a certain area of the body's soft tissue has been deprived of one or all of the sources of elements that rebuild depleted cells. The result is the death and then decay of this area of tissue.

Gangrene is usually divided into two principal categories: dry and moist. Diabetic gangrene, which is very common today, and gas gangrene are in the moist category.

Basic mummification, which refers to local diminution in the blood supply due to an obstruction in the arterial system, is in the dry category. Dry gangrene usually occurs in the extremities. The tissues become dried out and eventually turn black.

With dry gangrene, the important point for every embalmer to remember is there is little, if any, chance that preservative chemicals used in the embalming process will reach areas that died because they have been deprived of the elements necessary for life.

Start by injecting the remainder of the body as you would do in an "average case."  It then will be necessary to either treat the gangrenous tissue by hypodermic injection or by applying cotton or gauze packs saturated with a penetrating preservative chemical and then wrapping the affected area in a plastic wrap such as Saran wrap.

Moist gangrene is a condition which can be found in almost any part of the body and is due to an invasion by saprophytic organisms. The invasion, which causes putrefactive changes, can be through a wound or from the respiratory or intestinal tract.

The embalmer needs to exercise great caution in personal cleanliness and safety in handling these cases. Furthermore, a liberal amount of disinfectant spray should be applied to the exterior of the body and a strong deodorant should be sprayed around the preparation room, as these cases generally produce a great and unpleasant odor.

A strong solution of embalming fluid (at least a 3 percent strength) should be used.  The common carotid artery should be the initial place of injection, and drainage should be taken from the internal jugular vein. However, these types of cases usually show little drainage. It is also advisable to use multiple injection sites to ensure tissue saturation.

Cavity treatment should be the regular aspiration of the cavities and the injection of two 16-ounce bottles of a quality cavity chemical.

THE MEANING OF FUNERAL SERVICE

How has the work of funeral directors and cemeterians changed?
What sorts of challenges do funeral service professionals face in the future? Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks' symposium on the American way of death focused on these issues.

Three renowned scholars recently examined the American way of death at a symposium hosted by Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks in Southern California. The symposium, organized by the Forest Lawn Museum, brought together experts in the fields of history, urban planning and religion to discuss cemetery history, funeral rituals and changing attitudes toward death in the United States.

Speaking in the newly renovated Hall of Liberty at Hollywood Hills Memorial Park, David Sloane, Stephen Prothero and Gary Laderman offered historical overviews of the cultural and religious foundations of cemeteries and funeral homes, as well as insights into current and future trends that could affect funeral and cemetery services.

More than 50 people attended the symposium, including members of the funeral profession, the Neptune Society, museum professionals, historians, university students and the general public. Forest Lawn Memorial Parks offered this program as part of its continuing effort to help the community celebrate life's meaningful moments.

The Forest Lawn Museum offers a year-round calendar of free events designed to enrich, inspire and educate the community through programs about history, culture and religion.

The three scholars approached the subject from different angles and sometimes differing viewpoints.  This article offers a summary of each of the presentations.

Cemeteries: The Challenge to Stay Relevant
By: David Sloane
 
Cemeteries today face a significant challenge: Staying relevant in a rapidly changing society.

One aspect of this challenge is the growing ethnic diversity in America. As new immigrant communities embrace traditional cemeteries, they also are asking them to incorporate modifications that reflect their own beliefs, values and ways of expressing grief. By accommodating these differences, traditional cemeteries can strengthen their service to new communities.

Yet another aspect of the challenge for traditional cemeteries is a renewed sentimentality that has reshaped both public and private memorialization. By recognizing different styles of memorial expression and experimenting with new styles, cemeteries will be better equipped to serve a broader clientele.

A major example of non-traditional expression is Maya Lin's 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the starkly modem composition of which caused innovations in public memorialization in the United States. The ''Wall,'' designed not as an unchanging monument but as a moving composition to be understood as we move into and out of it, has become a living shrine owned by those who visit the site.

In similar fashion, the AIDS Memorial Quilt begun in 1987 now includes more than 44,000 panels and seems like a type of ever growing "fabric cemetery" that serves not only as a poignant memorial but also as a tool for prevention and education. It is the largest ongoing community arts project in the world, incorporating messages of remembrance, awareness and hope expressed in highly personal ways.

Rather than depending solely on traditional avenues of public relations, many new and older cemeteries are demonstrating resiliency in the face of change and challenge as they forge new relationship" with their communities.

The incorporation of "friends" groups and the addition of nature walks, historic tours, contemporary art exhibitions and public lecture programs represent renewed efforts to establish and sustain community interest in cemeteries. Roadside shrines, virtual cemeteries and video biographies are alternative modes by which Americans express themselves with regard to death, grief and memory. Through these innovations, American cemeteries are demonstrating flexibility and adaptability to changing times.

Coming from a family that for four generations has designed, landscaped and managed cemeteries in Ohio and New York, Sloane is uniquely positioned to explore the history of cemeteries in America. He holds a doctorate in American history and serves as an associate professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development and holds a joint appointment in the Department of History at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 1991, he published "The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History," which traces the transition from churchyards to urban cemeteries to suburban memorial parks and explores how the landscape of the cemetery is created and altered by economics and practical needs, by institutions and powerful ideas.

Rituals Do Matter
By: Gary Laderman

Within all human societies there are questions, indeed dilemmas, regarding death that require culturally relevant answers.

Why do we die and how do we make sense of it? What should be done with the body and who should handle it? How should the living relate to their dead? What meaning does death give to the living?

Far from shunning or fearing death, 20th century Americans have been obsessed by it and the material culture surrounding it. Popular culture both reflects this behavior and attempts to make sense of death in a manner that reveals the issue's complexity and its relationship to larger societal trends and events.

Rituals matter, and most cultures place a great deal of emphasis on the disposition of the body. For many people, such rituals ultimately have a bearing not only on the living but also on the post-mortem destiny of the deceased. Herein lies the value of the American funeral.

The story of disposition in the late 19th century reflects the rise and triumph of the funeral home and the funeral director. Most of the social and cultural transformations that resulted in the modern funeral profession were complete by the 1950s. Today, the anchor and focus of the profession remains the funeral home.

Within a larger cultural context, the rise of the funeral director and the funeral home parallels the rise of the hospital and the doctor. It is significant that both gained authority over the body, removing the care of the dead from friends and family and placing it in the hands of experts. In the same manner, the funeral director and funeral home also relegated priests, ministers and other religious figures to subordinate roles. However, despite what may be seen as an increasing secularization of death, American religious values associated with death are deeply rooted and remain strong.

Examples from 20th-century popular culture that document America's fascination with death and the religious meanings circulating in the rapidly changing century include Thorton Wilder's "Our Town"; the early animated films of Walt Disney such as "Bambi," "The Skeleton Dance" and "Fantasia"; contemporary animation, including "Finding Nemo" and "The Lion King"; horror films; rock and roll, hip hop and heavy metal music; and the high-profile funerals of Rudolph Valentino, whose body was displayed in a funeral home window, and John F. Kennedy.

Tracing the stereotype of the funeral director in popular culture before Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" reveals that a negative image existed long before the publication of her 1963 book. There is the corrupt, exploitative undertaker in Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi," the damning depiction of the mortician in Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward Angel" and the friendly and ridiculed undertaker Digger O'Dell in the radio show "The Life of Reilly."

The true complexity of funeral directors is only beginning to appear in the public arena, with a fuller picture finally emerging in the eyes of the media through shows such as HBO's "Six Feet Under," in which the profession is portrayed as a respectable one that supports the community's deepest needs and wishes.

In the latter half of the 20th century, numerous events shaped the funeral industry and American attitudes toward death. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Vietnam War gave rise to questions about the meaning of and necessity for death in the service of our country, questions being raised again today. In the 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission's investigations into the funeral profession led to consumer empowerment. In the 1980s, AIDS brought a number of changes, including an interest in cremation in some cases because of the condition of the body.

Also during the past few decades, new immigration patterns have brought increased populations from East Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central and Southern America. They bring with them different traditions and customs surrounding the handling of the dead that they want to see continued in their new country.

Laderman is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University, where he serves as director of the Graduate Division of Religion, is associate editor of "Journal of the American Academy of Religion," is on the editorial board for the electronic-only "Journal of Southern Religion" and directs the department's Pluralism Project, which studies and documents the growing religious diversity of the United States. He wrote "Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America" as a follow-up to "The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883." Most recently, he published the three-volume "Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity and Popular Expressions." 

Cremation: Why the Rate Has Risen -And Why It Isn't Higher
By: Stephen Prothero

How did cremation make the transition from being a radical idea to a practice that any American can comfortably choose?

Why has the cremation rate reached 27 percent in America and why is it not higher still, as in Great Britain (71 percent), Japan (98 percent) or Sweden (68 percent)?

Following a 1874 landmark article published first in Great Britain and immediately afterward in the United States, cremation gained widespread attention as a possible solution to urban epidemics. For the remainder of the 19th century, intellectuals, health practitioners, theologians, ministers and the general public debated the issue, either supporting cremation for public health reasons or opposing it based on traditional religious values.

By the end of the 19th century the practice of cremation was widespread enough that more crematoriums were being built. During this time, the handling of cremations moved from the non-profit to the profit sector, from the control of intellectuals and ideologues promoting it on principle to the purview of profit-driven business people equipped with economic strategies.

From 1945 to 1963, the growth in cremation remained flat, with the rate hovering around 4 percent. Two events in the 1960s the publication of Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death," which among other things promoted cremation, and the end to the Catholic Church's ban on cremation caused the cremation rate to start rising again.

The 1970s saw further growth, as direct cremation businesses developed new business models for efficiently and inexpensively making cremation available to more people, notably in the West, where cremation rates today range from 47 percent to 60 percent. The 1980s and 1990s brought cultural values such as environmentalism and simplicity into the mainstream with the aging of the baby boomers, further increasing the cremation rate. Cremation has also benefited from today's "customization" culture, in which Americans are increasingly intent on expressing their individuality, with a need to put a personal stamp on everything, including funeral rituals.

Cremation rates in the United States remain lower relative to many other countries for a couple of reasons. First, neither federal nor state laws mandate a type of disposition—the free market reigns and personal choice prevails. Second, the American public remains strongly religious. Data documents lower cremation rates in states where traditional and evangelical religions remain strong.

Cost is not the reason for the cremation boom, since data show the wealthiest people are the most likely to choose cremation, while the poorest are more likely to spend more on traditional funerals. Burial choices are not typically made for financial reasons.

More important to the cremation boom is a change in the theology of everyday life that has become increasingly evident over the past 20 years. American religious thought is migrating toward a gnostic view of the self, viewing the soul as external from rather than one with the body. Under this view, sited memorialization—which is not universal—may be seen as unnecessary. This offers a challenge to traditional funeral and cemetery practices.

Prothero is chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University, where he teaches a popular course called "Death and Immortality." He is co-editor of "Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History" author of "The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott" and co-author of the Encyclopedia of American Religious History. His 2001 book "Purified by Fire" is the first historical study of cremation in the United States.

Asphyxiation is a term applied to death starting with the lungs. Death due to asphyxia can be caused by several contributing factors: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, drowning, hanging or strangulation.

One interesting aspect of this type of death is that by the time the person has actually died, the heart has often undergone such intense effort to carry oxygen to the body that its muscular walls have broken down and it is dilated.

This can cause embalming problems. The aorta is dilated, the aortic valve is useless, and when embalming chemical is injected arterially toward the heart, the chemical flows into the heart through the aortic valve, filling the left ventricle. Then the chemical fills the left auricle and follows the pulmonary system to the lungs. This most often will result in a persistent lung purge.

If the right side of the heart is also dilated, the flow of chemical will return to the right heart, carrying a volume of blood ahead of it, and will be forced into the vena cava. The main course of this flow will take the course of the superior vena cava, and the face will become discolored and possibly distended.

There are a variety of procedures which can be used to prevent this, but one sure and safe process is to inject the head separately using both the right and left common carotid and drainage from both the right and left internal jugular veins. The injection should be slow; this is not instant tissue fixation. A low index arterial, mixed with a quality co-injection chemical to the embalmer's discretion is recommended.

Once the head is cleared of stain or blood congestion, the rest of the body can be embalmed in the normal manner. Also, little or no trouble should be encountered in carbon monoxide cases, since the blood is cherry red and will remain in a liquid state for a considerable time.

Is cremation an afterthought at your funeral home? Will your business still be viable—not to mention profitable—no matter what the cremation rate is in 2010, 2015 and beyond?
The time to reconfigure your business model and how you market to cremation families is now, not when your "traditional" business has all but disappeared.

Although today I continue to operate a business my parents founded nearly 50 years ago, the business my Mom and Dad ran and the business I operate are hardly the same. One of the more significant of the many ways they differ is that today nearly 50 percent of the folks prearranging their services choose a different form of disposition, different items of service and different merchandise—if any—from what was delivered by my parents beginning in the 1950s and continuing well into the 1980s (in Pennsylvania).

Picture in your mind for a moment the funeral of President John F. Kennedy.  Now, picture the funeral of his son, JFK Jr. Those two pictures speak volumes about changing consumer attitudes and preferences with regard to funeral service.

This change in consumer preferences, the fragmentation of services selected, the reduction in merchandise purchased and increased competition have created great financial challenges for the funeral profession.

It's Time To Bury The Old Financial Model
Since the advent of "direct cremation," most of us funeral directors have based our financial model on a system that increasingly burdens the consumers who choose a traditional funeral with covering the funeral home's overhead, while treating the direct cremation financial transaction as an "add on." This model does not work, and its failure is ever more accentuated as the cremation rate rises.

Over a period of many years, our funeral service forefathers brilliantly created a system that supported the outcome of the arrangement. They introduced items of service such as embalming, the rental of funeral home facilities, coaches and limousines. They introduced various types and models of caskets and burial vaults. They developed a system that supported the outcome of the arrangement when a consumer came to them to "bury Dad."

Today, we have in place in many markets a not-so-brilliant system in which the outcome supports the arrangement. You've seen the ads: "Cremation—$595."

Personally, I cannot comprehend that anyone's primary consideration in making final arrangements for a loved is the lowest possible price, but research tells us that about 27 percent of cremation consumers make a buying decision based on price. The problem is that as an industry, we've educated the other 73 percent of cremation consumers on how to make a purchasing decision based on what that 27 percent wants.

We have made cremation a commodity. In many instances, the outcome (low price) supports the arrangement. So what's the difference in the eye of the consumer between the cremation services you offer and those offered by your competitors? The price!

By and large, a significant problem in the funeral service profession today is that this model does not support our true overhead. The answer to the problem lies in creating a model suited to today's market conditions that supports the outcome of the arrangement just as the one our forefathers created in the past. That answer lies in the system we choose to put in place for the 73 percent of cremation consumers for whom the primary purchasing decision is something other than price.

To be specific, to support "Full Price" we need to differentiate ourselves from our competition in order to give consumers a reason to call us and pay full price.

One example: having a private, consumer-friendly crematory on site, a facility with a non-threatening and non-sterile appearance operated by certified crematory operators and open for inspection at any time.

At our funeral home, we spotlight value (as opposed to price) in our ads, such as:
•    "Your Loved One Never Leaves Our Care."
•    "Where will my Loved One be Cremated?"
•    "Funeral Directors at Bean are Crematory Operators Certified by the Cremation Association of North America."
•    "There's No Doubt with Bean, our Trained Professional Funeral Directors Handle Everything."
•    "Only Bean has a Private On Site Crematory, Available for your Inspection at any Time."

In light of the events at Noble, Georgia, these messages address issues important to consumers. My friend and colleague Ernie Heffner has run an ad with the direct and thought-provoking theme: "Whose Ashes are in the Urn?"

When meeting with a family to make cremation arrangements, we conduct ourselves in the same manner as when we meet with a family who has chosen a traditional funeral. By that I mean that we make no assumptions as to their wishes.

I hope that, at a minimum, everyone in this profession today insists on an identification viewing prior to the irreversible process of cremation. This is an ethical and a legal necessity, given the litigious nature of our society.

One of the most important questions we ask a family when making cremation arrangements is if they would bring in clothing for the identification viewing. This immediately communicates a high level of respect and signals the fact that we are providing a dignified level of care for their loved one.

We need to focus on the fact that the family has just suffered the loss of a loved one. As Trust 100 President Alan Creedy says, we need to remember Mom, remember Dad.

Many families at first will say they don't want a viewing. However, we have found that after the cremation arrangements have been thoroughly explained, the date and time for the identification viewing have been set and the clothing has been gathered by the family for the viewing, many people will arrive for the ill viewing accompanied by several other family members—sometimes as many as 20 or 30—and sometimes with their minister for a short prayer service.

In fact, this occurs so regularly that we have factored this overhead into our overall pricing strategy. It is a "win-win" situation in that consumers are more satisfied and the funeral home receives a fee proportionate to the level of service provided. The outcome supports the system simply by focusing on people, not on price.

Another means of creating value is package pricing, or compressed pricing, in which you create several packages and include them in your General Price List. As an example, we have a package called "Direct Cremation with Memorial Service Including Ceremonial (Rental) Casket For Private Family Viewing with Committal Service,” which includes the following:

•    basic services of funeral director and staff and overhead,
•    transfer of remains to funeral home within 20-mile radius,
•    preparation of remains for private family viewing,
•    staff and use of facilities for private family viewing,
•    staff and use of private crematory for cremation,
•    up to three days' use of refrigeration facilities,
•    use of ceremonial casket for private family viewing,
•    staff for memorial service,
•    staff for visitation up to two hours prior to memorial service,
•    funeral coach,
•    urn ark,
•    limousine (local),
•    flower/service vehicle (local),
•    committal or other disposition service,
•    acknowledgement cards (25),
•    guest register,
•    personalized memorial tributes & prayer cards, and
•    temporary grave marker
The package includes most of the services and merchandise found in a traditional funeral service, and we price it accordingly, including a proportionate share of our true overhead. We have found that families are more than willing to pay the necessary charges because they perceive value in the many services covered by the package, even though historically the arrangement may have been thought of as "just a direct cremation."

Over the past couple of years, we have seen the introduction of memorial tributes that incorporate several photographs of the deceased along with service information, poetry and scripture or thoughts written by loved ones. These tributes can be tied into a seemingly endless array of themes, from which the family can select, such as the ocean, civil or military service, hobbies or nature.

These types of memorial tributes can be pricey and time-consuming to produce, but we have found them to be invaluable to consumer satisfaction, so we incorporate them into most of the package selections we offer.

Why are the memorial tributes so important? They give family and friends a keepsake of photographs they will treasure all their lives. Recently I met a gentleman in a social setting who could not thank me enough for the memorial tribute we had provided at the service for his best friend.
 
He told me he framed the tribute and keeps it on his desk, where he can glance at the photographs and remember his friend every day.

This type of product can differentiate your funeral home from your competitors. It can communicate that your funeral home is special and offers something valuable that, because of the cost and effort involved, few of your competitors offer.

When factored into your overall pricing strategy, these tributes will infinitely impress the people who attend services at your location, will offer something of tremendous value to the families that you serve and will differentiate your funeral home and promote your brand.

Be Brand A, Not Brand X
What do I mean by promoting your brand? A brand is a promise to fulfill a consumer's expectation of a certain level of integrity, quality and consistency. A premium brand is a recognized product for which consumers are willing to pay a premium based on their higher expectations.

We see brand recognition in everything from facial tissues to ketchup to automobiles. Recently I've noticed that hospitals and homebuilders are focusing on promoting their brands in their marketplaces by differentiating their services from those of their competitors.

Rather than focusing on the price of an arrangement, those of us in funeral service would be well advised to focus on differentiating ourselves with special products and a higher level of service—and promoting the same at every opportunity. By doing this, we are developing a special brand in our marketplace, one that leads families to expect a premium level of quality, integrity and consistency, a level that our companies deliver.

What are some specific concepts you can use to develop a brand? We develop our brand by delivering on our promise to deliver that premium level of integrity, quality and consistency. We do it by reinvesting in our facilities and in our staff, by offering special products (such as those memorial tributes) and by having a private on-site crematory that communicates a special level of care. We do it by offering a level of care and consideration that our competitors do not offer, by personalizing services with photographs and mementos that hold special meaning to those attending services.

We develop our brand by focusing on people, not on price.

You also need to communicate that brand, that level of integrity and quality of service, in all of your advertising. Develop a unique logo and brand your signage, your Web site, your newspaper and television advertising, your newspaper death notices, the memorial tribute folders and memorial folders you offer—everything you can think of.

It may seem adverse to our ingrained funeral service logic to take this contrarian approach by offering more for more. But simply by remembering "Mom," remembering "Dad," by focusing on people rather than on price, you will ensure your client family's satisfaction and your financial success as you adapt to the changing funeral service environment.

Deaths from alcoholism may be from causes that are either acute or chronic. In the acute cases, there has been an ingestion of sufficient alcohol to create poisoning sufficient to cause death. In deaths from chronic alcoholism, there has been a steady breaking down of the nervous system, the circulatory system and the digestive system or a complication has arisen from a combination of these conditions.

Carcinoma of the stomach, intestines or liver; stroke as a result of arteriosclerosis; jaundice; or even insanity which terminates in paralysis may be the direct or indirect result of alcoholism.

There is nothing unusual encountered in embalming these cases unless the terminal disease or complication presents specific problems, i.e., jaundice, edema, etc.

Massage thoroughly with a high-quality massage cream formulated by one of the embalming chemical companies. Cover the face and hands liberally and continue to massage throughout injection. Wash out the circulatory system with a pre-injection solution using 4 ounces of the solution to make a half-gallon solution. Half-gallon solutions do take more time, but the process helps in not over- or under-embalming the remains. Generally a low-strength fluid is recommended in sufficient volume to ensure complete distribution. (Specific concerns regarding edema and jaundice will be covered in future segments of this series.)

Alcoholism often dilates superficial capillaries. This is the reason so many people who use alcohol to excess have highly colored skin and, especially, colored patches of skin. In these highly colored areas, we may easily create desiccation or fluid burn spots unless we are careful in our massage techniques and embalming solutions. Use a gentle touch in these cases.

Thoroughly aspirate the cavities and treat with cavity chemical. Reaspiration may be necessary before casketing.

Talking to groups about funeral service, whether at your facility or at the meetings of community and civic organizations, generates a following and builds relationships, yet few funeral service practitioners make full use of its benefits. One of the profession's best speakers offers a how-to guide for starting—or polishing—your public speaking career.

As funeral service practitioners, we are selling a valuable service, but we should realize that nothing positive happens until a relationship is established. We all strive to build, in our work, a large community network of relationships, old and new. Like any business, we need to constantly find new and innovative ways to generate positive public relations. This goes beyond a simple advertisement, a leaf through the phone book or a referral, all of which could result in contacts. To succeed, human relationships must be established and nurtured with great care.

In the community presentation, we have discovered an invaluable tool that helps build relationships and, at the same time, is cost effective. It provides an information exchange for people and a place where they can ask questions that they would not otherwise have the chance to ask. The group setting is less threatening, and lets people confront topics related to funerals and death in an atmosphere of mutual support. Those who automatically plan ahead in life immediately recognize the community presentation as a not-to-be-missed educational opportunity. They will plan to attend without fail!

This article will provide you with:
• the how-tos of the community presentations,
• tips on developing the talent of public speaking and
• help in understanding the positive impact a presentation can have on our business.

As you read more about this powerful marketing idea, I hope you will decide to embrace it—to put it in Latin terms, carpe diem—seize the day!

The Power of Presentation
The community presentation can be an extremely valuable part of your cemetery or funeral home's overall outreach plan. While selling is described as a marketing task, marketing is a long-range plan with strategies. A long-range strategy for funeral practitioners is to generate a following and build relationships.

More than any other medium, a well-planned community presentation will bring you into direct contact with the people in your community who are receptive to you—they either have invited you as their guest speaker or been invited by you and chosen to attend. All of these are people with questions about your profession, people who, in many ways, want to establish some kind of relationship with you.

Few businesses fully make use of the potential of the community presentation. Perhaps they don't understand its value, or they don't know what to do or don't think they have the personnel or the time to implement it. Up until now, they, and perhaps you, have overlooked a truly effective strategy.

Will Rogers defined speaking as "organized verbal communication that gives a person greater personal power." As with anything else you become good at, public speaking takes practice. It's up to you to view it as an opportunity—it will take extra commitment, especially if you've never done it before and never imagined you would. Rogers would convince you that the personal power you gain is well worth the effort. Can you lose anything by trying?

As you explore the ideas put forth in this article, you will see that speaking before a group is a skill that can be mastered. If you feel ill at first, realize that you are not alone—public speaking is regarded as the No. 1 fear. But there are many, many people who have overcome this fear.

Think about this: If you had the choice of making 50 cold calls or giving a brief talk to a group of 50 people, which would you prefer?

Talking About Death
In reality, funeral directors handle the dead and take care of the living. Perhaps the most sensitive part of your presentation will be explaining to the group how you perceive and deal with death and grief. You may want to start off your presentation with a brief, professional video on the subject to help your audience relax.

Tell the truth about funeral service. People can see the truth behind emotions, whether it's fright, anger, happiness or sadness. Therefore, it is important to be truthful when addressing a group. People tend to listen more when truth is being communicated and the message hits its mark. As a speaker, you will learn to rely on, and fully use, the truth force! By tapping into it, you will find the strength you need to overcome your fears and begin to feel the personal power.

Tell the truth about funeral service, and people will listen.

Communication Tips
You may feel that you're able to prepare your presentation on your own without assistance, but don't be afraid to seek help. The library has excellent guides on writing speeches. If time permits, you might even sign up for a university class on how to make an effective presentation. Often, the classroom experience will offer a chance for a personal videotape and critique. Also, consider the Dale Carnegie course or Toastmasters group (available in many communities) for additional training and support.

Here are some valuable tips on presentations:
•    Thoroughly know your subject. Research, read and double check your facts so that you feel confident.
•    Outline your speech in writing.
•    Memorize the points to be made in the order you want them to unfold. Memorize certain phrases that paint a word-picture, but never recite a speech from memory. Communicate with your audience as if you were having a one-on-one conversation.
•    Tape yourself both in practice and at the actual presentation.
•    Watch your vocal tone. Change that monotone!
•    Expect to have butterflies. They're normal! If you are feeling nervous, concentrate on the message. You're eager to tell people all about your topic. You can't wait to ask for questions!
•    Prior to preparing your talk, don't be shy about asking for constructive ideas from any people you know who are already dynamic speakers. People love to give advice!
•    Familiarize yourself with the facility, where you'll speak and its management a few days before your program. Check the room to know where things are. Make sure you can operate the basic equipment—-test the lights, the sound system (microphone, video cassette recorder and monitor), and locate exit doors and restrooms.
•    Arrive at the location early on the day of the presentation.
•    As the group arrives, mingle with them and introduce yourself in a friendly manner. (The more friends you make before the presentation, the more people you'll have rooting for you during it!)
•    If you decide to use audio-visual aids during your presentation, remember that a person's attention span is about 6 minutes. Stories need to be told in short vignettes or cameos since there is usually only time for two or three points to be made in this short time.
•    Videotapes, audiotapes, slides or films should be quick and to the point. You may have time to show only a portion of your audio-visual.
•    Plant one or more questions in the audience beforehand. People are generally happy to oblige and that one question will help get the audience going.
•    Provide the program chairman with a glossy photo of yourself and a short biography beforehand for publicity purposes. A separate written introduction will also help the chairman. It should be double-spaced and, if possible, ask that it be read exactly as it is written. This will set up your opening remarks.

Types of Community Presentations
There are two types of presentations, the type where you are invited to speak to a group and all of the basic arrangements are made for you; and the type that you initiate yourself, which may occur at your funeral home or another facility.

A general rule about host organizations: Realize that professional organizations or service clubs are notorious for giving you 20 minutes to talk, particularly at lunch time, and then starting late. People may leave to get back to work on time. For this reason, gauge your speech to end in 15 minutes in order to have time for a few questions and answers. Likewise, when you know you have a long time to speak, wind up the presentation 10 minutes early to allow for questions.

If you are hosting the presentation yourself, you must handle a number of important logistical details to ensure success.

•    First, work with your staff to set a convenient date that does not conflict with any other major event in your business or in the community. Also, select an alternate date in case a funeral home or cemetery need arises.
•    Establish the length of time for the presentation (1 to 1.5 hours) and decide where you will hold it. A tour of the cemetery or funeral home is an option, if you are holding the presentation there.
•    Allow plenty of time for questions and answers following your talk.
•    Assemble a guest list. In preparing it, determine how many people usually attend such meetings, based on similar presentations you've given or attended. Perhaps you'll decide to limit it to the families you already know or to reach out by promoting it to the entire community as a free public event. This will increase the turnout and enhance your company's visibility. As part of the guest list for a larger, community-wide presentation, you will want to include prominent business leaders.
•    Prepare and mail invitations. Compose a professional, dignified invitation on stationery, using your funeral home's logo.
•    Create a promotional news release. A news release gives the who, what, when, where and why of a subject. Take the time to prepare it carefully so that the basic information about your event is crystal clear to the reader. Send the news release to selected media, especially to the newspaper that covers your neighborhood, as well as to interested groups. This is the basic promotional tool you'll need.
•    Give your facility a thorough inspection. If you're planning to hold your presentation at your cemetery office or funeral home, take the extra time to make sure it shines, as you would prepare for a party in your own home. This pertains to any size group you are expecting. Although your facility should always be meticulous, now is the time to scrutinize it completely.

Arrange for any special cleaning required of carpeting, draperies or upholstered furniture. Replace bad light bulbs; make obvious repairs-touch up the paint if it needs it! You want your facility to look its best, and it's the attention to minute details that will payoff.

You may have to temporarily rearrange or even remove furniture.

Examine your outdoor parking situation.

Do you need to rent additional parking spaces?

Make sure your funeral home's cars are washed, waxed and polished. Also, examine the building exterior, landscaping and lighting. Take action to make improvements where needed.

•    Arrange for refreshments. An appetizing food table heightens the social aspect of the event and promotes relaxation. (Be sure your state allows the serving of food in a funeral home/cemetery.) Consider light refreshments such as soft drinks, coffee, tea, cookies or small pastries. You may want to recruit a friend or family member to assist with the preparation and serving.
•    Order flowers. Fresh flowers will add beauty and a pleasing fragrance to the atmosphere. They can be attractively placed on your registration or food table, or in your arrangements office or chapel/visitation area.

Assembling Information Packets for Your Audience
People love to take handouts and written materials home with them after a presentation. Professional folders can be purchased that will keep all of the information in one place. Items to include are:
•    a funeral home or cemetery brochure (which often contains the history of the home and a list of services);
•    a calendar of any future seminars or support groups; and
•    articles or additional pamphlets on topics such as retirement, preplanning, the value of the funeral, embalming and memorialization.
•    A newsletter kit is also popular. This specifically includes a two-sided quarterly newsletter, retirement information, "Did You Know?" sheets, financial information and light subject matter, such as a recipe.

Prior to your presentation, find out how many packets you'll need. These will generate excellent public relations for your funeral home.

Evaluating the Presentation
Most community groups and professional organizations recognize the value of obtaining written evaluations from attendees at the end of a meeting. Check with the program chair to find out if the group you are speaking to handles its own evaluations or if it would be possible for you to distribute a short questionnaire. (See Sample Questions For an Evaluation Form below)

Sample Questions
For an Evaluation Form

    Was the speaker informative?
    What did you expect to hear?
    What did you learn? (Describe one point)
    What was the most interesting? (Describe)
    Did you feel comfortable throughout the talk?
    Did the video add to the presentation?
    How could we improve future presentations?
    Was the information helpful?
    Can we supply you with more information?

Likewise, you should do this if you are in charge of arrangements. Evaluation is an important step in the process that can help you improve future presentations.

The form should look professional and appear on funeral home or cemetery stationery. Make enough copies for all attending and distribute them at the end of the event. Encourage all attendees to complete the form before they go home. Reiterate its importance and ask them to deposit them in a box near the exit.
 
Leave space for additional suggestions and comments at the bottom of the sheet. Ask people for their names and addresses that can then be added to the mailing list. Some will prefer to remain anonymous, which is fine, too. Perhaps the arranger will even provide you with a group directory of names and addresses, and mark off those in attendance. This specific information will help you with your thank-you note process, another vital follow-up activity.

Arranging Future Speaking Engagements
At the time when you first meet the program chairman and fees are mentioned, your best reply is that you do not charge, but that you do request a testimonial letter if the group is happy with your presentation. This will help you secure future speaking opportunities.

As you conclude your presentation, offer to speak to the group at another meeting and ask them to recommend you to others. This will continue your chain of awareness building in the community. You can also extend your speaking offer in the thank-you note.

Conclusion
After you have given one or more talks, the power of this marketing strategy will become more obvious: Remember: If people, buy what you are saying, they will buy what you are selling!

I know of many funeral service practitioners giving two or three programs a week who report a dramatic increase in qualified leads and actual closings on pre-arrangements. They are convinced that the community presentation has a definite advantage over advertising or direct mail since it opens the door for lasting relationships.

Most importantly, the community presentation allows people to get to know you, up close and personal. When they se that you are a real live human being with your own fears and vulnerabilities, a lot of the mystique about death and dying begins to evaporate. A free-flowing exchange of information is an extremely healthy and meaningful experience for the public and profession as a whole.

Why do people choose cremation?
What is most important to families planning a service for a loved one?
What should the funeral director's role be during the service?
A celebrant who has worked with families for several years shares with fellow funeral service professionals what she has learned.

A few years ago, I became certified as a celebrant through the Doug Manning—In-Sight Books training. I dabbled in the field for the first couple of years by doing a service now and then.  Recently, however, I have made a true career change. Now I do celebrant work full time and find it to be the most rewarding endeavor I have ever embarked on.

My experiences with families are wonderful. It is an honor and privilege to help people create a meaningful tribute to their loved one and provide a service that meets their needs.

I have been to the ocean and performed scattering services. Many ceremonies are graveside services, some at the local national cemetery. A few have been in funeral home chapels and some have been in retirement homes.

I find it interesting that the majority of my referrals come from immediate disposition companies. Much of the time someone from the firm attends, passes out folders and arranges flowers, helps with the music and performs other tasks.

The majority (86 percent) of the families I have served chose cremation. There have been many different reasons why, but not one has told me it was because it was less expensive.

One reason I've heard is that a deceased parent wanted to be placed with a predeceased spouse but the surrounding space in the cemetery had been used and the only option the survivors could think of was cremation so that the cremated remains could be placed in the existing grave site.

In several cases, those making the arrangements told me they were following the wishes of the deceased. In those cases of "following orders," scattering always seemed to be the final disposition after cremation.

In some cases, placement in niches or walls where other family members were memorialized was chosen.

Only once have I been told that the person had wasted away with disease and the person handling arrangements thought the deceased would not look good for a viewing.

Cremation, Viewings and Value
About 50 percent of the cremation families I have served have seen the body and held a viewing for family and friends. Some said that the body didn't look like their loved one, but many commented that seeing the body helped them. If the body is available, I view the deceased, too. The majority of the time, the body is beautifully prepared and presented.

I try to meet with every family I serve to gather all the stories and memories I can to create a meaningful service. Only twice have I failed to bring the family together for this purpose. Once it was because the family was out of state. (I did manage to talk to them the evening before the service.) In the other case, because of a huge family rift some of the children simply refused to be in the same room with one another... but that's another story.

Sometimes we in the profession think that folks who choose cremation for their loved ones do it because they care less about the deceased than those who opt for traditional services. This simply is not true!

In talking to cremation families, I find that they care very deeply about their loved ones. Cremation is not the enemy. These families are willing to do things that matter—things they see value in doing.

Merchandise probably is not nearly as important to the consumer as it is to the funeral service provider. To providers, it is a revenue stream, right? Well, for many consumers, it is a necessary but unwanted evil. I have officiated over many cremation services with the plastic box containing the cremated remains right up front. If it doesn't bother the family, it doesn't bother me.

When I ask, as I always do, "Will the urn be present?" usually the family says yes, they would like to have the urn present. They see value in the cremated body being at the service.

I don't ask them questions about the urn itself unless the conversation happens to go in that direction and it turns out there is a special significance to the style or color chosen. A number of people have replied to my question about the urn by saying, "Yes, the urn they provided for us will be there."

For how many years have vendors been advising funeral service providers not to "provide" the family with an urn (or container, if you will)? How many times do suppliers have to say, "Ask the family to select the container they want to use" for the message to get through?

If you glean nothing else from this article, remember this: Stop providing a temporary container for cremated remains. Instead, always ask the family to select a container. They will be happier, and so will you.

The reason is simple. Out of all the families whose loved ones' remains were in a plastic box, only one told me they didn't like anything they were shown. All the rest told me no one offered them anything else and they would have liked to have something other than the plastic box.

If you're thinking, "that can't be true," remember that a person in grief does not always understand what is being said to them. It is possible that in some cases the funeral service provider did try to offer the family a selection of containers and the family members simply didn't hear.

When you are going over the General Price List and doing the paperwork and you tell the family that the cremated remains will be returned to them in a container, why would they want to see anything else? After all, you are providing them with a free container, right? They have hundreds of decisions to make and you're making it easy for them in this one instance by not giving them a choice. But who is the loser?

Take Charge of the Service
Many times the family has chosen to contact me directly. Sometimes they are determined to be in charge of everything. They also choose to pay me directly. (And 20 percent of the time, they give me more than I charge.)

Newsflash: Personalization is not about products, it is about the person who died. Many suppliers will think this is sacrilegious. Sorry—it's true. Personalization is not about the bells and whistles of the "stuff," it is about the service, the body and the celebration.

The consumer wants something other than what they have been getting. Families want a true celebration of the deceased's life, a reception with some food and a celebrant who will tell the story of their loved one. They do not want a minister who only provides a sermon and an altar call.

It is very gratifying to have people come up to me and say, "Wow! I have never been to a service like this. Why aren't all funerals like this?" Many participants have asked for my card or for a brochure. They are truly hungry for meaningful celebrations.

When you meet with a family, even one with a church home, when discussing plans for the service, ask them, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how religious would you like this service to be?" If their answer is five or less, call a celebrant. Suggest to them that they would be better served by someone who feels the same way they do.

Yes, there are some ministers who can provide a celebration versus a sermon, but perhaps the funeral home would be better served if the event was "awesome" and the family was thrilled by a service that knocked their socks off.

Don't be put off by the family who says, "We have a minister." Ask the question! I have handled services for families in which the deceased had been a member of the same church for as long as 35 years, but the children wanted a celebration, not a sermon, despite being regular churchgoers.

I agree with author and Baptist minister Doug Manning: Funeral directors gave the service away to the clergy, and that has hurt the profession. How many times have you, the funeral director, stood outside the door of the chapel and heard people say as they left, "Don't you do anything like that for me! I don't want a funeral!" How many times did you yourself feel the same way about what you had just heard?

It must be frustrating, especially when the problem wasn't something you did as the funeral director. You worked hard to do everything right for the family, made sure there would be no mistakes, no glitches. But then you handed over the service—and the limelight—to a minister who got up in front of everyone and, in less than two minutes, ruined the experience for the family.

The solution: Take back the service!

For me, it is wonderful to work with a funeral director who acts as master of ceremonies. Please, get up in front, introduce the celebrant or minister, tell folks who are singing and what the music will be and why those particular songs were chosen. Tell people how to get to the cemetery and invite them to the reception afterward.

YOU do it—don't turn that over to the officiant. That is your time to shine, to make sure everyone there knows who did the work. Don't stand in the back with your hands folded and your mouth shut. You have worked hard to provide a meaningful experience for the family—take credit for it. Be seen and be heard.

If you don't get up front and everything you do is behind the scenes, when the minister blows it, what do the attendees think? They think what they just saw is what a funeral is. If you get up front and are visible and then the minister blows his portion of the service, they know it was the minister, not the funeral director, who didn't do his or her job.

******

I love the families we serve. I love funeral directors for their hearts of gold and their tireless dedication to families, and I love feeling like my life matters. Helping a family create a meaningful tribute to someone they dearly loved is an honor and a privilege. I love being part of funeral service, and I hope I will be for many more years.

Addison's Disease is characterized by degeneration of the suprarenal capsules and a resultant bronze pigmentation of the skin. The change in the suprarenals is generally found to be tuberculous. In the latter stages of life we usually find anemia, general languor, feeble heart action, irritated stomach, diarrhea, rheumatic pains in loins and abdomen, and sub-normal temperature.

Above everything else we should thoroughly massage the skin with a quality massage cream to remove all the superficial discoloration possible and then thoroughly wash the circulatory system with pre-injection solutions of 4 to 6 ounce strength per half gallon of water.  It may be necessary to use a gallon or more of the pre-injection solution before starting arterial fluid injection.

Make fluid solution low in strength, but use an unusual volume. If these cases were to receive fluid injection over a period of several hours, even using a gravity system of injection or keeping the electric injector percolator as low as possible to send fluid into the body very, very slowly, the results will undoubtedly be far more satisfactory.  Thorough massaging with massage cream, thorough capillary wash, with co-injection and low-strength arterial fluid injected over a long period of time, is recommended for these cases. Cavities should be aspirated and treated with full-strength cavity fluid.

As far as I know this discoloration cannot be removed, but the above treatment will not exacerbate the problem, and after treatment, cosmetics may be satisfactorily applied.

Our Future Is Tied to Developing a Sense of Showmanship—
And the Future is Now!

THE FUTURE OF SERVICE
When a family asks to display photos, your staff pulls out some memory boards.
When a family wants to bring in some mementos, you set up a table.
In fact, whatever a family asks for, you pretty much do.
This puts you on the cutting edge of funeral service, right? Wrong, says this funeral director.

Everywhere we look in the death care profession, we see volumes of articles about personalization and how it is the key to our future. You know the story: The baby boomers are searching for ways to remember and say good-bye that show the uniqueness of the deceased. I applaud and embrace the consumer for pressing these desires on a profession that accepts change as quickly as a glacier runs a mile.

In today's world, "personalization" is the buzzword that has most death care professionals shaking their heads, saying, "Yeah, we are all about personalization. We have the picture boards and the memory tables, and we even let the families play Elvis CDs over our sound system during visitations. Our funeral home lets families do whatever they want!"

The problem is this sentiment contains the essence of what is wrong, both as operating businesspeople and as guardians of a noble and valuable profession. First, those of us who think picture boards and memory tables with dad's bowling trophies or mom's knit blankets are something special are living back in the early '80s.

This type of personalization is nothing more than a cookie-cutter, vanilla ice cream, white bread attempt in the eyes of our present-day consumer. Run-of-the-mill personalization can be found at the vast majority of funerals today. I contend that if you are not doing this type of basic personalization, you already have lost a client base that you will not realize for a decade belongs to your competitors. The most interesting attitudes are those of the people who still try to claim that they know "their families."

We Need to Have the Ideas
We can no longer hang our customer satisfaction hats on personalized back panels, fraternal emblems on crypt fronts and custom casket comers. The traditional funeral as we know it is waning and is being replaced by a service where the focus is on everything else but the casketed body.

We may run outstanding funerals now, but we must stop and look at what is coming over the hill. You can make the best horse-drawn buggies in the world, but if everyone is buying cars it is just a matter of time before professional evolution slowly sends your vocation the way of the blacksmith's.

Funeral service needs to focus on our consumers and what they are searching for. I say "searching" because they do not know what they want or like, but they certainly know what they do not like.

Families come to us for guidance, options, judgment and, most of all, ideas. Just as patients do not tell a doctor what treatment or medicine should be prescribed, our clients should not be the ones providing us with the ideas for performing a special funeral. As professionals, our long-term survival depends on our being the source of creative and memorable experiences.

This is where our profession needs to break out of its comfort zone and develop a sense of showmanship. The only thing that separates us from an event planner or wedding planner is the fact that we are licensed to care for the deceased. Yes, there are other subtle differences, and we also are trained to help people who are grieving, but that is about it. We need to constantly improve our performance and turn the funerals of today into meaningful experiences people will talk about for years. This is where our true value lies.

We are not in the funeral business anymore; we are in the hospitality business and show business. I am not saying we need to break out the dogs and ponies, but maybe having a stronger focus on more interaction during the visitation and service would be a good start.

Dove, balloon and butterfly releases create a wonderful memory. The remembrance videos we are seeing more and more will be part of most funerals within two years. Are you actively pursuing alternatives to organ music? How many baby boomers listen to organ music in their cars or at home?

Our mission is to help families remember the stories of a lifetime in a contemporary style, because this is where the present-day funeral consumer is finding value.

In my view, personalization is a symptom of the problem. What do I mean by that? I see today's funeral consumers experiencing weak attempts at personalization. It's like watching a drama club performance but expecting Broadway. Or maybe—an even more frightening thought—they DO expect only the drama club.

It all starts with how we as funeral professionals are taught, trained, mentored and developed to interact with our client families. Is there a mortuary school that requires a public speaking class or advanced arrangement training? What kind of communication and counseling skills are being developed to ensure that our next generation of "young lions" is more effective and professional than the current brand of undertaker?

The only places one can receive this type of advanced training is through postgraduate seminars or programs. This is not the fault of the schools alone. As a profession, we have not demanded more, we have not sought curriculum changes.

In many states, the funeral professional is required to be both a backroom technician and a person who can articulate the value and purpose of funerals. It seems to me these are very different skill sets. I realize some people are good at both embalming and planning a meaningful funeral with the family, but in general, are we creating funeral service providers who have basic skills in both areas but excel at neither? With the shrinking talent pool, we need arrangers who are articulate advocates, not jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none mediocrities.

Learn to Act as Well as React
Funeral directors are trained to react at a very high level to one of life's great tragedies. What makes funeral directors so good at helping people deal with tragedy often makes us inadequate at seeing and then planning for the future. It is our nature to comfort, guide and help families as they react to heartbreak. After walking a family through the funeral experience, we take a breath and turn to the next family that needs our counsel. We become so good at reacting that, as a profession, we find it difficult to be proactive.

Why should a funeral director who owns traditional funeral homes, a traditional business, want to upset the apple cart and take a "shot across the bow" at how our profession operates and heads toward the future?

One possible reason is selfishness: "I want my business to continue and thrive." Or altruism: "I believe in the value of a funeral service that helps people on the worst day of their lives." Or excitement: "All of us have the ability to create a bright and promising future."

Every person who walks in our front door gives us an opportunity to show that funerals are not a mundane, obligatory event. Our goal should be to have our funeral guests say, "Wow, now that was a funeral." When you hear that type of comment, the experience being described may be setting new standards of funeral performance.

Intellectually, all of us understand that change is inevitable. We understand that change is the way of the world. In our professional circles, we joke and shake our heads about those who have difficulty accepting change. Yet emotionally, most of us fight professional change as if someone just insulted our mother.

It is hard to sail the boat when the anchor is in the water. Professionally, we need to keep reaching for the future and stop clinging to the past. The search for answers starts with conducting market research, listening to our customers and breaking out of our comfort zones.

Creative and inspiring funerals are possible if we care enough to notice what attracts people. Hospitality and showmanship are the keys to outstanding funeral experiences. Families will gravitate toward a company that takes care of people very well and moves their hearts.

If funeral professionals can make this transition, we may have a chance to have a similar discussion in about 100 years.

Growing up in the business provides legions of second-, third- and nth-generation funeral directors and cemeterians with childhood anecdotes to tell that aren't exactly run of the mill.
It also provides important lessons about work and life.

Have you ever been on a date and been asked, "So, how was work today?" Most people have, and normally it's not a big deal. But what about when your answer is something along the lines of, "Well, the fire department showed up because they thought the crematory smoke was a house fire. We were already stressed out because someone forgot to order the vault for a service, plus my finger got smashed under a casket while we were making an entombment in the mausoleum. So, do you like French onion soup?"

If my date laughed, I'd know there was some potential for a relationship. If she looked at me like I had three heads, or if she got up to go to the bathroom and never came back, I'd understand.

Growing up in my household meant that many things that were routine for me were, at best, strange to others. But that's something I learned to accept and even came to appreciate as I grew older. After all, my experiences helped to shape who I am today.

A family tradition
Our family's involvement in cemetery work goes back six generations. My ancestors have managed various cemeteries in Ohio and Indiana since the mid-1800s. My father, Gene Buckingham, retired in October from a 42-year career in the cemetery business, the past 22 spent as executive director of Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum in Dayton, Ohio.

I'd always protested any predictions that I would continue the death care tradition. Yet here I am, working for Batesville Casket Co., and I couldn't be more content, working in the field that served as the backdrop for my youth, and the one I know best. This is a time-honored profession, full of good people and great experiences, which for me go back to my very earliest days.

Anyone who runs a cemetery or funeral home knows that work often follows you home, and sometimes even is home. My first two homes were in cemeteries.

I learned to ride a bike among gravestones a century old. My favorite preschool activity was riding in the dump truck doing section clean-up, or sitting in the backhoe to dig a grave. Well, OK, I had a little help working the levers. I remember watching the guys load the retorts in the crematory and waiting for the grounds crew to get the mowers out of the buildings each morning.

Not the typical childhood, but I wouldn't change a thing.

I began working at Woodland at the age of 14, and subsequently had the opportunity to work in every capacity within the organization, including administrative, sales and marketing, public relations, accounting and grounds operations. I'll admit there were days when I would rather have been doing anything else, but no matter what the task, I realized it was part of serving a higher purpose.

My dad always said the most rewarding aspect of this business is helping people make it through a difficult time, and I know no one who was better at it than he was.

I guess when your life's work is dedicated to being compassionate and accommodating, it becomes second nature. It takes not only dedication but also strong character to do the job and do it well, and I was fortunate to have such an excellent example to follow.

There is much to be said for someone who goes to work every day, selling something that no one wants to buy to those who are shocked, sad and angry that a loved one has been taken away.

I suppose it's that view of what we do that leads many people to believe our work must be sad and depressing. But in actuality, working at woodland was anything but.

After working 14-hour days every day for a month to get ready for Memorial Day, Dad always hosted a party for the staff.

It was a blast.

We worked until lunchtime, then set up a tent, enjoyed catered food and competed in a horseshoe tournament. It was a way to let the staff know he appreciated all their hard work and dedication in getting the grounds ready for the cemetery's most important weekend of the year.

Fun and an education
It was a lot of fun working out on the grounds with the other guys. I got a broader education through talking to them than I would have received otherwise, plus I learned the true meaning and value of a good work ethic, something Dad took very seriously.

I guess most people would consider string-trimming 100,000 monuments and markers, mowing 200 acres, cleaning seven miles of roadways, selling memorials and calming upset families a nightmare. But for me, it was an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a special line of work.

My friends were always amused to listen to our family talk about our day, especially around the dinner table. We had our share of characters on the crew, and we always had plenty of funny stories about who did this or who said that.

One night, we saw on the news a story about a man who had been killed during a fall while working on power lines. He had lived close by, and I said, "Oh, I heard about that. I wonder what happened to that guy?"

I didn't know the funeral home had delivered his body to our crematory the day before, and that we were returning the cremated remains that night. My brother did, and he answered my question. "He's right over there on the counter," followed almost immediately by, "Aren't we weird?"

But when you become accustomed to something, it doesn't seem weird at all. I, for one, felt more proud than weird. Certainly I'm proud of what my father accomplished during his tenure at Woodland, including the magnificent restoration of the Wright brothers' gravesite and the memorial service that followed; the burial and memorial dedication of Erma Bombeck; and the expansion, renovation and modernization of one of America's oldest and most beautiful cemeteries into the historical and horticultural treasure it is today.

My father achieved great things, and I'm proud to follow in his footsteps and contribute in any way I can to the profession that has taught me to appreciate today, remember yesterday, live for tomorrow and preplan my funeral.

I would take a moment to congratulate my father on his retirement, but he's planning to do cemetery and landscape consulting part-time, so he's not really retired.

And though things are different in our family now, some things never change. We still talk business. We still point out granite types and memorial designs to each other. We still pass cemeteries and comment on their maintenance and what we would've done differently.

And yes, we're still weird. At least some of my dates seem to think so.

Comparing the past, present and future

Historically, women have been the caretakers of the sick, but they also played a large part in the care of the dead. For example, women were responsible for preparing the remains of the ancient Greeks, included washing, dressing and anointing the body Christian families saw it as their duty to take care of their own dead, and it was usually the women who handled this.

In Hebrew tradition, women did the washing and dressing because it was considered unclean and distasteful work for the priestly class. Likewise, colonial American women prepared their dead, unless the family was well-to-do, in which case a nurse could be hired to wash and lay out the body. Either way, it was still most likely a woman doing the job. All of these customs heavily influenced modern American funeral practices.

During the 19th century, when carpenters and cabinet-makers began practicing undertaking, nurses and midwives were acting as layers-out of the dead. This carried on through the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, when most deaths still occurred at home.

It was during this period that undertaking was first emerging as a distinct occupational specialty. Newspapers advertisements refer to both male and female tradesmen. Although they were ''tradesmen" and belonged to ''brotherhoods'' such as Steward of the Guild, the funeral service industry was one of the few trades that welcomed women in the days when the business world was dominated by educated, land-owning, white men.

Of course the 19th-century Victorian notions of decency were strict, and by this time women were only allowed to handle the remains of other women or children. (It was considered inappropriate for a man to embalm an unclothed woman he did not know.) Still, women were not prohibited from entering the trade, even though they were not commonly seen in the ranks of undertakers in the early years.

This brings us to the 20th century and one of the pioneer women of embalming, Lina D. Odou. Odou was born in Spain, but ended up in London at the age of 15. She acquired her passion for nursing when she met Florence Nightingale, who took Odou as her protégé and sponsored her training as a nurse.

Odou worked as a Red Cross nurse in the French Army and then became a private nurse to several royal families. Around this time she began advocating the use of female embalmers to handle the remains of women and children. She was once quoted as saying, "Over and over again have I heard mothers ask undertakers if they could not furnish women embalmers for their dead daughters, and many others to whom the dead are sacred have asked the same question, and I have invariably heard such men say there are no women to be had for such a purpose."

This is what motivated her to become an expert in the practice herself. She studied in Switzerland and then in 1899 moved to the United States, where she opened a school for women at the undertaking establishment of the Rev. Stephen Merritt. Her first class graduated 10 students. After two years, she went on to establish the Lina D. Odou Embalming Institute in early 1901 at Frank E. Campbell's establishment.

Due to Odou's work, writings and example, training of women embalmers gained increased support. She submitted editorials to trade journals advocating the use of female embalmers in undertaking firms and even the giants in the field supported the concept. Still, many establishments would not allow women to handle the remains of men.

As the "Superintendent of the Women's Department" at her own mortuary, Odou also organized the Women's Licensed Embalmer Association to furnish female embalmers to families and undertakers. She blazed a trail for other women to follow and they did, opening other institutions
that trained a pioneer corps of female embalmers that would practice at firms throughout the country.

Not everyone was receptive to the idea of women joining the trade. I'm sure the trend in the '50s of women typically holding "womanly" jobs such as nurse, teacher and stay-at-home mom put a wrench in the works. Women were second-class citizens and were thought to have no place in the business field.

The further the funeral industry headed toward becoming a profession, the further women were left behind. If you weren't family in a family-owned business, it was most likely unheard of for a woman to be in the prep room unless she was on the table. This mentality is still held by some of the older generation of embalmers today.

Whatever setbacks women might have seen, women's liberation sure changed all that, in this industry as well as many others. Now women are allowed to work on men as well as women and children. As the inclusion of women has increased, so has women's interest. In my class alone, the women outnumber the men at least two-to-one.

I think it is part of that innate desire in women to help others, carrying on the tradition of women being the primary caretakers in our society. Stereotypes don't come about without a reason, and whether it is true or not, people believe women are better at consolation.

I believe women have a very solid future in the funeral industry because of these notions. Some families will open up more and generally feel better with their loved one in the caring hands of a woman. I believe people today, as in Odou's time, want women to handle their sacred dead.

Women are also generally considered to be honest and innocent, even though we know that is not always the case. Families feel like they can trust a woman and won't be taken advantage of, as could easily happen during the arrangement process.

Bottom line, women have the talent and the care to be at the top in this field. Though only an estimated 10 percent of our class will stay in the field, I for one can attest that we women will make our mark on the future, following the legacy of pioneering female embalmers.

The public wants a funeral director who is competent in meeting their physical, psychological and sociological needs, and we will not let them down. There will be a whole new face to the funeral industry, and it is going to have a lot less facial hair.
By: Ellen Broaddus

Historically, women have been the caretakers of the sick, but they also played a large part in the care of the dead. For example, women were responsible for preparing the remains of the ancient Greeks, included washing, dressing and anointing the body Christian families saw it as their duty to take care of their own dead, and it was usually the women who handled this.

In Hebrew tradition, women did the washing and dressing because it was considered unclean and distasteful work for the priestly class. Likewise, colonial American women prepared their dead, unless the family was well-to-do, in which case a nurse could be hired to wash and lay out the body. Either way, it was still most likely a woman doing the job. All of these customs heavily influenced modern American funeral practices.

During the 19th century, when carpenters and cabinet-makers began practicing undertaking, nurses and midwives were acting as layers-out of the dead. This carried on through the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, when most deaths still occurred at home.

It was during this period that undertaking was first emerging as a distinct occupational specialty. Newspapers advertisements refer to both male and female tradesmen. Although they were ''tradesmen" and belonged to ''brotherhoods'' such as Steward of the Guild, the funeral service industry was one of the few trades that welcomed women in the days when the business world was dominated by educated, land-owning, white men.

Of course the 19th-century Victorian notions of decency were strict, and by this time women were only allowed to handle the remains of other women or children. (It was considered inappropriate for a man to embalm an unclothed woman he did not know.) Still, women were not prohibited from entering the trade, even though they were not commonly seen in the ranks of undertakers in the early years.

This brings us to the 20th century and one of the pioneer women of embalming, Lina D. Odou. Odou was born in Spain, but ended up in London at the age of 15. She acquired her passion for nursing when she met Florence Nightingale, who took Odou as her protégé and sponsored her training as a nurse.

Odou worked as a Red Cross nurse in the French Army and then became a private nurse to several royal families. Around this time she began advocating the use of female embalmers to handle the remains of women and children. She was once quoted as saying, "Over and over again have I heard mothers ask undertakers if they could not furnish women embalmers for their dead daughters, and many others to whom the dead are sacred have asked the same question, and I have invariably heard such men say there are no women to be had for such a purpose."

This is what motivated her to become an expert in the practice herself. She studied in Switzerland and then in 1899 moved to the United States, where she opened a school for women at the undertaking establishment of the Rev. Stephen Merritt. Her first class graduated 10 students. After two years, she went on to establish the Lina D. Odou Embalming Institute in early 1901 at Frank E. Campbell's establishment.

Due to Odou's work, writings and example, training of women embalmers gained increased support. She submitted editorials to trade journals advocating the use of female embalmers in undertaking firms and even the giants in the field supported the concept. Still, many establishments would not allow women to handle the remains of men.

As the "Superintendent of the Women's Department" at her own mortuary, Odou also organized the Women's Licensed Embalmer Association to furnish female embalmers to families and undertakers. She blazed a trail for other women to follow and they did, opening other institutions
that trained a pioneer corps of female embalmers that would practice at firms throughout the country.

Not everyone was receptive to the idea of women joining the trade. I'm sure the trend in the '50s of women typically holding "womanly" jobs such as nurse, teacher and stay-at-home mom put a wrench in the works. Women were second-class citizens and were thought to have no place in the business field.

The further the funeral industry headed toward becoming a profession, the further women were left behind. If you weren't family in a family-owned business, it was most likely unheard of for a woman to be in the prep room unless she was on the table. This mentality is still held by some of the older generation of embalmers today.

Whatever setbacks women might have seen, women's liberation sure changed all that, in this industry as well as many others. Now women are allowed to work on men as well as women and children. As the inclusion of women has increased, so has women's interest. In my class alone, the women outnumber the men at least two-to-one.

I think it is part of that innate desire in women to help others, carrying on the tradition of women being the primary caretakers in our society. Stereotypes don't come about without a reason, and whether it is true or not, people believe women are better at consolation.

I believe women have a very solid future in the funeral industry because of these notions. Some families will open up more and generally feel better with their loved one in the caring hands of a woman. I believe people today, as in Odou's time, want women to handle their sacred dead.

Women are also generally considered to be honest and innocent, even though we know that is not always the case. Families feel like they can trust a woman and won't be taken advantage of, as could easily happen during the arrangement process.

Bottom line, women have the talent and the care to be at the top in this field. Though only an estimated 10 percent of our class will stay in the field, I for one can attest that we women will make our mark on the future, following the legacy of pioneering female embalmers.

The public wants a funeral director who is competent in meeting their physical, psychological and sociological needs, and we will not let them down. There will be a whole new face to the funeral industry, and it is going to have a lot less facial hair.

Over the years there has been debate over preparing a body for viewing at the funeral in cases where the remains would then be sent to a medical college for dissection in the gross anatomy classes. Some medical schools flat out will not accept a body that has been embalmed by a funeral home. Certainly most medical schools will not accept a body that has been aspirated.

The medical schools' position is understandable, to be sure, but most embalmers get mighty nervous and uptight when a viewing is planned for a body without arterial embalming. And most embalmers come close to a mental breakdown at the thought of a viewing for a body that has not been aspirated. I always thought a body not aspirated was truly a ticking time bomb.

It seems like, lifetime ago, but I used to teach clinical embalming at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. The old adage is true: A teacher who is not also a student isn't much of a teacher. I learned a lot while ''teaching'' embalming, and one of the subjects we tackled back then was preparing remains for viewing in cases where the body was to be donated to a medical school.

We developed a procedure for dealing with a "normal" case, i.e., one where the remains are in an ideal condition. In such a case:
•    The remains still retain body warmth.
•    Death occurred no more than 12 hours before.
•    The body has a normal protein content. When these criteria are met, the procedure as described below can be used.

Initial steps
The remains can be disinfected in the normal manner. The features may be set in whatever manner the embalmer normally uses.

Many medical schools require that the initial approach to injection be made via the right common carotid artery, and that drainage be taken via the right internal jugular vein.

In instances where additional drainage is desirable, some medical schools will accept one additional injection/drainage site, but most medical schools will protest the use of more than two sites.

Fluids and embalming procedures
The basic key to the procedure is to make liberal use of a pre-injection solution. It's not unusual for it to require more than four gallons of a pre-injection solution to adequately "flush out" the vascular system, as well as expand and lubricate the body's vessels. Liberal use of the pre-injection solution is essential.

Inject the pre-injection solution under closed drainage via the right common carotid artery until you observe any distention of the superficial veins in the hands, feet or temples. At this point, drainage should be taken from the right internal jugular vein, or the other selected site, or both. It's up to the individual embalmer to decide whether to use a drain tube or forceps, or any drainage device.

The embalming machine should be set at a conservative pressure and rate of flow. Because of the wide variety of machines available (including one that sets its own pressure!), it is difficult to suggest a definite selling for the injector. I have found, however, that an actual pressure of four-six pounds, with a rate of flow one quarter open, should not cause adverse effects.

Following the pre-injection, I suggest you mix a low index arterial chemical at a solution of 8 ounces to one gallon of water, making a two-gallon solution. There is no "rule" or even opinion concerning the use of dyes, lanolin or any other accessory chemicals with the arterial solution.

If after you've injected the two gallons of solution the desired preservation has not been achieved because of the size and-or weight of the body, mix a third gallon according to the same 8 ounces to one gallon formula.

Do not inject more than three gallon, of arterial solution. Why? Because too much arterial solution actually causes rapid hydration of the vessels, making it difficult—if not impossible—to then inject the high potency anatomical solution.

By following the procedure as outlined above, I have generally noted good results. The hands and face generally are preserved and discolorations in these areas have usually been removed successfully.

Following the injection procedure, ligate the vessels in the usual manner and suture the incision(s). You may use cotton or powder sealant when closing the approach incision(s) unless the specific medical school with which you are dealing prohibits it.

Cavity treatment
All the embalmers reading this are going to have questions about cavity treatment. We all know that aspiration is basically taboo in cases of anatomical donation. But if the remains are in the ideal condition as previously described and the arterial injection has been successful, you can do a form of aspiration without puncturing the organs and anatomical structures.

I must reiterate that this only applies if those conditions hold. Certainly if death occurred more than 12 hours earlier, or if the remains are distended, dropsical or show signs of decomposition, the process I'm about to describe will not work and should not be attempted.

In my research for this article, I consulted an ancient embalming textbook that I have in my library, 'The Art and Science of Embalming," by Dr. Carl Lewis Barnes, published in 1877. Dr. Barnes was a pioneer in embalming education. In 1910, he sold his embalming school in Chicago, Illinois, to professor Albert Worsham. Worsham College of Mortuary Science is still educating funeral directors and embalmers today.

But I digress. In his textbook, Dr. Barnes addresses the problem of embalming in a home when the family has forbidden aspiration. He mentions having family members standing guard in the room as the work is being done, either giving permission for or vetoing each embalming procedure—certainly an awkward position in which to work!

It's hard for us to imagine doing an embalming in someone's house, never mind having the family supervise, but that scenario is not as far removed from today's challenges as we might believe. After all, don't families today have a legal right to permit or forbid embalming? And don't some medical schools prohibit aspiration?

So when I read Dr. Barnes' procedure for performing an aspiration without puncturing the organs, I wanted to try it out. Here is how the Barnes method works:

• First insert a flexible rubber drain tube into the trachea and, by gravity, inject as much cavity fluid as the lungs will absorb.

• Then take the same flexible rubber drain tube and insert it into the nostril. By raising the chin to enlarge the aperture of the epiglottis, work the flexible rubber tube down the esophagus to the stomach. Manually aspirate the gases and contents of the stomach, then reconnect the rubber tube to the gravity injector and inject as much cavity fluid into the stomach as possible. (Can you imagine the strength of this fluid in 1877?)

• Massage the stomach area, pressing as much cavity fluid as possible into the large intestines, then massage the abdomen to try to distribute the cavity fluid into the small intestines.

• Repeat using the external anal sphincter and rectum as the point of entry.

Dr. Barnes would repeat this process over and over again until the firmness of the cavities was satisfactory.

At the CCMC's clinical lab, the students and I tried Dr. Barnes' method many times (only on cases fitting the profile) with very positive results. In fact, in cases that fit the profile, the University of Cincinnati Medical College Anatomy Department allowed families to have funerals with viewing of remains that were going to be sent to the Gross Anatomy Lab.

Again, this is a special technique not suitable for all cases. But by using this old procedure developed by an embalming pioneer, I was able to witness firsthand the appreciation of families who wanted to honor their loved one's wish and donate the body to the medical school but also wanted a formal funeral with the body present.

The desire to help educate future physicians causes some people to leave their body to a medical school. In normal cases, embalmers can enable this to happen while still affording the bereaved family the comfort of a final viewing and presence at the funeral.

Seminars provide families valuable information about the benefits of preplanning and prefunding in a non-threatening, non-intrusive manner. In the process, they also deliver pre-qualified leads while building your firm's brand.

From advertising and publicity to direct mail and e-marketing, funeral and cemetery firms have numerous strategic options for increasing preneed—as well as future at-need—leads. There is one strategy that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of its total value to your organization, yet it is often overlooked by even the most marketing-savvy firms.

Seminars—when implemented correctly—will help your firm build brand awareness, build personal relationships in the community, educate customers and prospects and deliver valuable, pre-qualified leads. In short, seminars can help your firm meet both short- and long-term marketing and sales objectives.

However, establishing a successful seminar program requires that you carefully plan every aspect, from setting the foundation through program implementation and post-implementation. Doing so will ensure that program objectives are met-and often exceeded.

Seminars offer a full spectrum of benefits
The main objective for most funeral and cemetery firms when hosting a seminar is to gain quality leads in the short-term and increase sales over the long-term. This is a very reasonable and achievable goal.

For example, a funeral home conducting two seminars per month, each attracting an average of 15 participants, and achieving a modest 20 percent conversion rate, creates the potential to attract more than 70 new policies per year. At an average policy value of $5,000, such a seminar program would generate more than $350,000 in new policies per year.

Note that while a 20 percent conversion rate might seem exceptionally high compared to the rate produced by other preneed lead-generation strategies such as direct mail and advertising, seminar audiences are pre-qualified, because they have taken the initiative to attend the program.

But beyond leads and sales, an effective seminar program will deliver benefits that support your firm's long-term at-need program.

"I have been hosting seminars for five years and have learned firsthand that seminars not only generate qualified leads, but also help generate awareness for funeral firms," said Cindy Miller, an independent preneed consultant who uses Assurant Preneed's Wiser Way/Full Circle seminar program. "It allows firms to demonstrate their interest in the communities' welfare, and provides educational resources for families."

When hosting a seminar, you provide valuable information to your community at no charge and with no strings attached. This enables you to build relationships in the community while also building your firm's brand.

Even though a majority of attendees won't immediately buy a preneed policy, seminars give you the opportunity to meet prospective families you otherwise might not have met. This opens the door for future communication, and possible preneed and at-need referrals and at-need calls. It also helps you build your prospect database.

Another benefit of hosting a seminar is that it gives you the opportunity to obtain the attendees' permission to call families. Ask attendees to fill out and sign a contact card that complies with FTC Do Not Call regulations and gives your company the OK to call them at a later date.

Finally, seminars help set your firm apart from your competition. Even if competitive firms are hosting seminars of their own, you can enhance your program to differentiate yourself and establish a unique brand.

A seven-step action plan
A seminar program is a lead-generation technique that should be approached strategically. In order to reap the full potential benefits of a seminar program, consider the following proven steps when developing your action plan.
 
1. Develop a six-month to one-year seminar plan. It is imperative to approach the program with a strategy that will become part of your firm's preneed marketing plan. Your plan should outline the target audience, goals, strategies and tactics, and should include a detailed timeline and budget.

Based on your firm's marketing plan, determine who your target audience is for the seminars. This could include men and women 55 and older, local media, churches, civic groups, senior centers, etc. Consider adding people such as lawyers and accountants who have direct contact with the families you are trying to reach.

When developing goals, make sure they are measurable. For example, do not just plan to "increase sales." Your goal might be to increase preneed leads by a specific percentage and policy sales by a specific dollar amount. This will help you focus strategies and measure success at various times during the implementation process.

2. Select a seminar location. "The most effective location to host a seminar depends on your target audience and community," said Miller. "For example, if a funeral home's director is actively involved in the community, families will not hesitate to attend a seminar at a funeral home. This is a great way to show the community the facilities. On the other hand, if the funeral director is not well known in the community, then an active senior center might generate more leads and better attendance."
You can also consider a community college, coffee shop, recreation center or library. On the other hand, certain locations, such as nursing homes and assisted living centers, are not highly recommended. Although these seniors are often independent, a family member or close friend typically is handling their financial decisions.

It is also beneficial to research existing speaking opportunities in your community. For example, many communities host an annual senior fair. Contact the organizations and inquire about hosting a seminar as part of their program. Make sure to communicate the educational value of your seminar and explain that you are not trying to sell anything.

3. Select the seminar topic. Consider allowing your location to influence your seminar topic. For example, if you are hosting the seminar at an active senior center and its members are primarily men, consider a seminar on veteran's benefits. If you are inviting the general public to attend, consider a caregiver's resource seminar. Additional topic ideas include preplanning or asset protection.

Be creative when selecting topics. For example, host a seminar that focuses on building legacy through photos and memorabilia. This is a very timely topic, especially with the increasing popularity of video tributes.

4. Determine the format. The seminar format can be educational or workshop oriented. The educational format is designed to provide an overview of preplanning and prefunding to the audience and requires little or no active audience participation. The workshop format introduces the audience to preplanning and preneed by having attendees begin the preplanning process during the course of the seminar.

You can design your seminar as a workshop format by developing a worksheet that provides participants with the most common funeral and cremation products/services (casket, vault, burial costs, cemetery property, cremation, etc.) they are likely to purchase and the costs associated with each product. Make sure to offer low, medium and high-end options for each product. For example, offer a steel, wood and bronze casket pricing.

You can incorporate the worksheet into the seminar by giving the attendees time to begin selecting the funeral goods and services they would like and then calculate the costs. This process serves two purposes. It educates attendees about the price of funerals and provides a cost estimate for their desired funeral service.

"Prior to using Assurant's seminar program, I was strictly presenting the information on preplanning and preneed to the audience," said Miller.

"The seminar I am currently using is designed as a workshop, and actually puts the participants to work planning their funeral and generating costs associated with the type of funeral they would like to have. Not only does this help generate discussions among the participants, but the workshop format makes me more comfortable because 100 percent of the attention is not focused on me."

5. Develop marketing materials. Marketing materials are essential for your seminar program. Remember, every brochure or handout you develop communicates something about your firm.

If your presentation is stellar, people will talk about it and it will help generate referrals. On the other hand, a poor quality presentation will reflect poorly on you.

6. Provide refreshments. Evaluate your target audiences and plan refreshments accordingly, from cookies and coffee for morning events to wine and cheese for early evening seminars.

Be creative by choosing fun finger foods and selecting refreshments that coordinate with the seminar topic, such as American flag cookies for a veteran's benefit seminar.

"Attendees mayor may not expect refreshments at a seminar," said Miller. "Those who do not are pleasantly surprised, and those who do are not disappointed."

7. Develop methods for maintaining the audience's interest. Place all the completed contact cards in a bowl or box and hold a prize drawing at the seminar's conclusion. This technique not only influences people to fill out the cards, it also encourages everyone to stay until the end of the seminar.

Gift certificates to local grocery stores, gas stations, or local retailers (Target, Blockbuster, Kohls, Home Depot, etc.) make good prizes.

Another way to maintain audience interest is to remain conversational throughout your presentation. Encourage participants to share personal stories and ask and answer questions.

Follow-up is imperative
A successful seminar requires a successful lead management program. After the seminar, place follow-up calls to each attendee who completed a lead card. This is the most important step, because the potential success of the seminar decreases with each day you do not call the attendees.

"I wait one day after the seminar and then I make all of my follow-up calls," said Miller. ''Timely and persistent follow-up is the key to converting leads to sales."

Evaluate and modify your seminar program
Take time to assess each seminar and your results. If attendance was low, re-evaluate your marketing strategies and tactics and possibly the location. If you distributed a survey, evaluate the responses. This allows your firm to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the seminar and revise it accordingly.

Every step of hosting a seminar is important and can help increase brand identity, leads and sales for your firm. Once you have developed a program that works for your market, the time it takes to implement a seminar will decrease, and it will become an ongoing lead-generation strategy in your firm's marketing plan.

Can there be true personalization at a funeral if the person whose life is being remembered isn't even present?

Personalization. The last time I recall such mantra-like repetition of a single hot topic in the funeral profession had to be in the heyday of preneed.

At the onset, anyone could easily surmise the impact of preneed upon every facet of funeral service. Just a glance through any industry journal and the yield of articles and editorials, advertisements and how-to seminars served as testimonial.

The bottom line was that preneed had to be addressed by us personally, as business owners, and collectively, as a profession.

Fast forward to today. Personalization is the fresh buzzword. Of course, the concept is nothing new—astute and compassionate funeral directors have always encouraged individuality in the personal design of meaningful tributes.

We help client families express their beloved's lifestyle, career, hobbies, memberships, community or military service, etc. Together we endeavor to capture the essence of a life lived well. We thematically set the stage for the complementary rituals and ceremonies that follow.

In and around the casket are displayed artifacts that once belonged to that person. A golf putter, bingo card, remote control, hand-knit throws and cross stitched pillows, lapel pins—all serve to help tell the story of the decedent's life. Heirlooms of all sorts, photographs and letters and achievement awards all share an intimate connection with the person in the casket.

What is new is personalization for sale, which if we're not careful can make the funeral experience we offer families less rather than more personal.

Generic curios in mass production lack an historical connection to the deceased. The items are symbolic, but impersonal. They never belonged to the deceased. This trend toward personalization for purchase may also be upstaging the deceased and stealing the final bow.

Picture this: Funerals with no bodies
The video tribute does have real value and is significant and appropriate at the memorial service. But consider this: Today we can minimize or circumvent many of life's difficult experiences through avoidance or drug therapy. We can choose to not experience hard-to-handle emotions. A pill exists for every ill. We can choose to circumvent the funeral and/or viewing of the body, too!

A powerful video tribute may be less difficult for mourners to confront than the actual dead body. Could the video tribute eliminate the need for the body to be present at all?

Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D., director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, Fort Collins, Colorado, speaks to this dominant model in North America: ''We as a culture appear to be forgetting the importance of the funeral ritual. While funerals have been with us since the beginning of human history, we seem to be rapidly moving toward minimizing, avoiding and denying the need for rituals surrounding death."

Can society choose to avoid the therapeutically painful rites of passage that define and validate death altogether? Will items of personalization serve as substitutes for the real physical form?

As Philippe Aries writes, "The change (in death's role in our society) consists precisely in banishing from the sight of the public not only death, but with it, its icon" (the dead body).

In the United States, from 1900 to 1960, over 90 percent of bodies were embalmed. Today, that percentage is significantly lower.

Can the funeral profession be truly effective providing funerals without bodies? Any garden-variety service/hospitality company can provide personalization and ceremony when the dead body is absent. Can we risk that?

The primary role of the licensed funeral director embalmer, according to the board of health, is to dispose of the dead human body and, concurrently, to protect public health. Ceremony is a separate, non-licensed function.

The successful survival of the funeral profession depends on ensuring that the public perceives the value we provide in handling both legal requirements and ceremonial rituals.

Death begins the process. The ceremony would not exist if death had not occurred. It is only logical that the decedent participate in his or her own final proceedings.

Back to the basics
I suggest we return to the basics and qualify ourselves to emphasize the most powerful resource we have for personalization. The subject we are to personalize is, after all, inherently the hallmark of our profession: the dead human body, which funeral directors-embalmers are granted exclusive license to handle.

The deceased person is the guest of honor and commands center stage. Despite a growing trend wherein the deceased is absent from his or her own final event, I maintain the dead human body in the casket for funeral visitation is still the public's expectation. Seeing is believing.

The increasing number of telephone inquiries asking if the "body will be available to view" suggests the public still needs and desires a viewing.
It is our professional duty to respond to the needs of our communities. The manner in which we help our client families fully understand the relevance of our services directly impacts how they ultimately value their own choices.

A good supporting foundation is necessary to the success of any endeavor. Embalming is the foundation of body presentation, and intensive and skillful embalming is critical, followed by impeccable grooming, cosmetic application and hairstyling.

A tailored fit for the clothing reflects meticulous care put forth in dressing and grooming. The decedent should rest comfortably in position and in facial expression.

In life, someone embarking on an important event—a first date, a job interview or any function where a poor appearance will have consequences—must look his or her best. So too in death, when the decedent is presented for approval to family and friends.

During the arrangements conference, emphasize the value of the decedent's farewell engagement here upon the Earth. Emphasize the family's "last look" at their loved one. Promise to dedicate your professional best efforts to that final appearance and invite the family to share in the commitment.

Encourage family members to discover items personally significant to their loved one, perhaps tucked away for safekeeping in a jewelry box or dresser drawer. Suggest a selection of photos and letters.

The simple act of reviewing these treasures, once held and dearly loved, offers the bereaved a starting point in the process of grieving and healing. These personal acts of the family reinvest the decedent in his/her own funeral, which in turn, reaffirms the bond between the dead and the living.

Personalization may exist in the tangibles, but it is much more. Personalization is the culmination of truly unique services that funeral directors can provide upon the person who has died and those who still live.

Consideration is given to a lifeless individual for the welfare of those who survive. The benefits are universal.

This quotation (often attributed to William Evart Gladstone, though Gladstone scholars say erroneously so), captures the benefits of what we do to society as a whole:

"Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the law of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals."

At life's curtain call, the "star" appears one final time to give family and friends one last look, for laughter's release at a remembered anecdote, or one last tearful memory. One last moment is suspended before the audience can let go of the main character. No one is absent; no one is overlooked. And then, as in life, there is a definitive end.

Absent the person from the funeral, personalization becomes the understudy that takes center stage.

Even when effective and powerfully symbolic, it's not quite the same.

Funeral homes that want to offer families an exceptional place for a post-service reception don't have to build or remodel their facility to do it.
Brown-Wynne Funeral Home in Cary, North Carolina, found a way to offer families a choice of facilities near the funeral home.

It's a time for family, tears, love, and laughter. A time for in-laws, grandchildren, siblings and neighbors. A time for lots of decorations, hugs, good food and drink. A time for music and singing. The holidays? No, a funeral reception.

For Jeremy Smith, it was the sight of the lovely grand piano at the Matthews House that made up his mind. "My wife majored in music," he said. "Music was always important in our family."

Smith lost his wife to a sudden, unexpected death. When he walked into the Matthews House, an events facility in Cary, North Carolina, he knew it would be the perfect place for his wife's funeral reception as soon as he saw the piano.

The lazy piano and vocal strains of George Gershwin's "Summertime" entertained Smith's guests and the livin' did seem easy that afternoon inside the stately, columned southern mansion nestled among giant oaks, walnut trees and flower gardens.

Earlier that day, the funeral service was held at Brown-Wynne Funeral Homes & Cremation Services, where a clergyman spoke, but no one else. The fact that no one else addressed the gathering bothered Smith in a subtle way, but as soon as people arrived at the Matthews House reception, the mood changed.

"In the more relaxed setting at the Matthews House, people opened up and shared their experiences and memories about my wife," Smith said. Of the 200 people who came to the funeral service, about 50 attended the reception.

The pianist, the best friend of the Smiths' 19 year old daughter, played the whole time. Smith's daughter and her voice teacher both sang a variety of pieces. "It was my daughter's special way of honoring her mother," Smith said.

Reacting to a trend
Brown-Wynne Funeral Home partnered with the Matthews House as part of its plan to offer the more personalized and meaningful services demanded by baby boomers. Brown-Wynne was among the first funeral homes in the area to extend its services to include arranging for a reception in a homelike environment, tailored to fit the requirements and wishes of its customers.

After attending the funeral service at the Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, family members can attend a reception pre-arranged for them by the Matthews House, complete with music and catering if they choose.

"When a death occurs, remaining family members need a place that allows them to honor a loved one without worrying about the details of a reception," said Nina Davis, vice president and general manager of the Matthews House.

Jim Baron, market manager for the Dignity Memorial Network, of which Brown-Wynne is a member, said that the new arrangements are a logical extension of service. "I see this as moving forward in the profession," Baron said. "Some funeral directors are set in their ways, but you have to be able to adapt to the changing times. You need to continue to make sure there is value in what you offer.

Baron said that while many people may have thought about holding a funeral reception at an events facility, Brown-Wynne acted on the idea and made it commercially available, whether it's called a memorial service, a life celebration or simply a private family gathering.

The Brown-Wynne Funeral Home is known for offering a complete range of quality services while honoring many faiths and customs. It expanded to Cary in 1969, and in 1991, became part of the Dignity Memorial Network.

Brown-Wynne's partnership with the Matthews House is less than a year old, but is already successful. The funeral home has a similar partnership with the Long View Center, a classic, nondenominational tabernacle originally built in 1856, which accommodates as many as 450 guests or as few as 25.

The three facilities are about two miles apart in Cary, the seventh largest city in North Carolina, named the "hottest town" in the East by Money Magazine. One of the fastest growing cities in the United States, Cary is a bedroom community of the Research Triangle Park, which includes more than 100 research and development facilities employing over 38,500 Triangle area residents.

In the past 15 years, Cary's population has climbed from less than 10,000 to more than 90,000. Brown-Wynne advertises to this growing population by handing out brochures and running advertisements in the local newspapers that describe the new arrangements with both the Matthews House and Long View Center.

According to Brown-Wynne General Manager Ron Maness, the Triangle area has been attracting retirees and baby boomers who eventually bring in their parents as well. The preferences of this population group are distinctive, he said. The cremation rate, for example, is higher in Cary than in the rest of the state.

One of the key trends affecting cremation is the weakening of ties to tradition. Funeral homes must be creative and flexible to meet the demands of baby boomers as they begin to bury their parents, their spouses and their friends in the coming decades.

How is the rising cremation rate changing the way you deal with your funeral home's customers and the community?

Funeral service professionals may not be able to change the rising cremation rate, but ignoring it won't make it go away. From California to New York and everywhere in between, funeral homes are experiencing increases in their cremation numbers and changing how they do business accordingly.

"We're definitely seeing a lot more cremations," said Rick Williams, president of Williams Funeral Home in Milledgeville, Georgia. "I can remember back in the '60s when my dad first opened the funeral home, we would have one or two cremations a year. Very, very few. And now it's certainly grown quite a bit.

"We're trying to be responsive to the public's requests by providing the services they want and finding unique ways to help them memorialize their loved ones."

Williams is not alone; more and more funeral directors are changing their approach to cremation, perceiving it less as the enemy and more as an opportunity to provide new levels of service to their families.

They are learning that cremation does not have to mean a minimal service—or no service at all. There are a number of ways funeral directors can ensure that more cremations do not lead to disappearing profits.

Providing even more cremation options can help bring in more business and help your firm gain a competitive edge over others in the area. The important thing is to keep families informed of their options. People can only purchase a product or service if they know it is available.

To better assist their families, many funeral homes are creating entire selection rooms devoted to cremation, expanding their selection of cremation products and building their own crematories.

ICFM talked to eight funeral service professionals across the country about how they are responding to cremation.

SUSAN BRING, president of Bring Funeral Home Inc., Tucson, Arizona, and STANLEY STOBIERSKI, owner and president of Heritage Memory Mortuary, Prescott, Arizona, are no strangers to cremation. With a statewide cremation rate close to 65 percent, neither feels threatened by the high numbers.

''I think that one of the big mistakes people make with cremation is just talking about it like it is negative," Bring said. ''Too many people approach it from the standpoint that it is in lieu of burial, but it doesn't have to be. The important thing is to keep families informed of their options."

Bring does that by getting involved in her community with a program she calls "Necessary Conversations." She and her staff visit local organizations such as hospices, churches, schools, mobile home parks and businesses. They explain the options available and encourage people to make their wishes known to their families.

Stobierski owns several funeral homes in Arizona and is in the process of building a crematory which should be completed early in 2006. He agrees with the philosophy that cremation should not limit choices.

"Our feeling is that cremation has to be taken just as earth burial or entombment would be, and it's a matter of us creating different types of funerals with cremation." 

To better assist cremation families and make them aware of all their options, Stobierski and his staff have created a cremation room with cremation caskets and other products, including a larger selection of urns and keepsakes.

NATHAN BITNER, president of Hetrick Funeral Home Inc., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is another strong believer in the importance of keeping families informed and making quality service the first priority.

"There have been times when the family didn't want a memorial service, but still wanted a two hour time when people could come and express their sympathies and condolences to the families," Bitner said. ''We try to accommodate all requests."

Making more services available to cremation families and being receptive to their specific needs has helped Hetrick Funeral Home maintain a very low direct cremation rate. In recent years, Hetrick has expanded its selection room to include a wider selection of cremation caskets and urns and keepsake items such as necklaces, bracelets and fingerprint jewelry.

Families who come to Moloney's Lake Funeral Home in Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, are attracted to the beautiful setting of the funeral home as well as the many options that are available to them.

F. DANIEL MOLONEY JR., owner and funeral director, works hard to bring in more cremation families, in spite of some unique challenges created by New York state law, which prohibits funeral directors from owning their own crematories. Because Moloney owned a crematory before the law went into effect, Moloney's Lake Funeral Home is one of only a handful of firms in New York that have one, yet he is not permitted to advertise this fact.

Instead, his ads emphasize other qualities that would appeal to cremation families, such as the Mother Teresa Tribute Center, a stand-alone building on the grounds of one of their funeral homes that can hold up to 100 people. This tribute center, where food and drink can be served, can be used for committal services, group meetings and more, but its primary function is to offer families a more comfortable setting to say goodbye to their loved ones.

All five of the Moloney funeral homes have memorialization centers with a variety of products, including urns, jewelry, candles, religious items and cremation casket units, set up in such a way as to make families feel less intimidated.

These efforts seem to be paying off. "Our direct cremation rate has actually gone down over the past five years, though the cremation rate has gone up," Moloney said. "So we think that the things we're doing are putting us in the right direction and attracting those families that are looking for innovative ways to memorialize."

Williams Funeral Home in Milledgeville, Georgia, is the first and only funeral home in its county to have a crematory. RICK WILLIAMS, president, saw the need for one just over three years ago. In addition to handling their own cremations, they perform cremations for other local funeral homes.

Williams also stresses the need to educate families about all of their options. By spending time talking to families about cremation, he has found that more people are opting for embalming, viewing in a rental casket and funeral services in the chapel followed by cremation the next day.
"As things keep evolving and society keeps changing, people want to know their options," Williams said. 'The more options that are out there for them, the more they can take advantage of them."

In the past, Williams said, it was rare to see older people choosing cremation, but that is not so much the case today. Cremation is growing among people of all generations. ''I guess people are looking for the simplicity and the ecology," he said. ''People get warm and fuzzy feelings for different reasons. We're definitely seeing a lot more cremations."

When MARC BURR, a fifth-generation funeral director and president of Burr Funeral Home and Cremation in Chardon, Ohio, started offering LifeGem more than two years ago, the concept of turning cremated remains into diamonds was a new, exotic option. His own mother left the room in disgust in the middle of Burt's local television interview about the new service.

Since then, the concept has caught on and Burr has sold four LifeGems in the past two years, each costing as much as $10,000.  One family in particular stands out in his memory because he can still recall the smiles on their faces the day they picked up the diamond. To them it was a perfect and permanent remembrance of their loved one.

“There are many other folks who probably wouldn't think it is appropriate, but isn't that what we're here for?" Burr said. "To help every family do what has meaning to them, not to their neighbors."
The first cremation at Burr Funeral Home was in 1912, and they have continued ever since. Geauga County, where Burr Funeral Home is located, has always been one of the highest per capita income counties in Ohio, and they are used to dealing with cremation-oriented consumers.

Burr's philosophy is to embrace change and be open to new ideas. "If a family wants to do something, and it's legal, we're going to make it happen."

In one of the more unusual services Burr remembers, the deceased's cremated remains were divided into four separate urns, each of which was given to one of the man's four siblings. They brought the urns up to the altar at a Catholic Mass, where the priest accepted them.

''You want to talk about a change," Burr said, "talk about the changes going on in the church. Specifically the Catholic Church where, in the past, the body had to be present and cremation was considered a negative, and now the priest is allowing four individual containers to be brought up front during the Mass."

Under the leadership of operations manager BRADLEY BISHOP, Allnut Funeral Homes in Fort Collins, Colorado, differentiates itself from surrounding funeral homes by incorporating innovative technology and personalization in all of its services and merchandise.

One of the products offered at Allnut Funeral Homes is software which allows families to scan photographs to their computer and personalize a scrapbook of the person's life. They also offer people the option of purchasing a package that includes video presentations, flowers, personalized folders and use of reception facilities.

Cremation families can choose from a variety of products, including jewelry, urns, sandstone benches and pillar stones, which can be personalized and placed in gardens. ''With regards to personalization, we've even transformed one of our casket selection rooms into what we call a 'celebrate life room.' We decided to take the 22 caskets out and make the space more suitable for every family, not just burial families, so that they can see all the options available," Bishop explained.

''Personalization makes the service so much better." Bishop said he always tries to honor the families' requests no matter how odd they may seem to others. He recalls one family with an apparent sense of humor who asked for tin cans to be placed at the back of a funeral coach with a sign saying "Just Buried," instead of "Just Married." He obliged, of course.

To RAY VISOTSKI, CFSP, owner and manager of George Funeral Homes in Charleston, South Carolina, quality service means doing things right the first time and focusing more on what you can do for people rather than what you can sell them.

Visotski said he does not believe in investing in a huge inventory of merchandise. Instead, he instills in his staff the importance of paying attention to details and being perceptive to the needs of families.

"We started a long time ago readjusting our prices to reflect the value of our licenses, our background and our experiences, as opposed to just trying to sell lots of stuff to make up for our profit. We don't have a big emphasis on merchandise here. Never had, and probably never will. There are so many things you can be doing for people. They need to perceive value in what you charge."

Visotski believes it is this philosophy that has helped his company increase its market share from 35 to 52 percent in the past six years.

One combination of service and merchandise they have added to increase value to families is memorial videos and DVDs. Because they are included in the basic services package, they are produced at no extra charge and have proven to be a great success.

In addition to owning two funeral homes, Visotski also owns the South Carolina Cremation & Memorial Society, a direct disposition service which rents space, staff and use of the crematory from George Funeral Home. Because of the society's low fixed expenses, it is able to offer simple cremation at discounted prices.

Since much of the society's business is done via phone, fax and e-mail, it is not uncommon for Visotski and his staff never to meet the families with whom they deal Visotski advertises the society's services by placing ads in newspapers around the state, excluding his own market, and also informs people of this option through his work with hospice programs.

The contemporary reader will say WHAT? Vibration and embalming—what is he talking about? Let me begin at the beginning. One of the greatest aspects of my life and career has been my good fortune in observing, working, learning and being friends with highly skilled embalmers.

One of those embalmers was a man named C.  Wayne Livingston. He was connected for years with the old Woodring Funeral Home in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Wayne's son, Vaughn, and I were close friends, and I used to hang around the Woodring facility regularly.

Wayne Livingston was a great embalmer. He had great skill and technique in all aspects of embalming, but the one which stands out in my memory is that he had a vibrating embalming table. It's true! Some of the veteran embalmers who read this will well remember this piece of preparation room equipment.

I had the honor of watching Mr. Livingston embalm many cases on this particular table, and I would like to reflect for a moment on the superior results that I witnessed at the hands of this skilled professional.

Let's review some basics in embalming circulation. We know that during life, the application of vibration to any part of the body will produce hyperemia, which is an excess of blood in a part of the body. In addition, any type of vibration is also a form of massage.

However, with a vibrating embalming table, the massage affects the posterior of the body, the entire body—and is continuous.

All embalmers are familiar with the favorable effects produced by the judicious use of gentle massage with the hands on certain parts of the dead human body before and during the arterial injection.

It is a definite aid in clearing discolorations and at the same time emptying the tissues so as to obtain better fluid distribution.

Then too, embalmers are familiar with the possible adverse effects—over dehydration and swelling—that can occur when the hand massage is too aggressively used during arterial injection.

With this background, let us now examine the "how" of table vibration. First of all, how do you make an embalming table vibrate?

Mr. Livingston rigged up his own vibration system by attaching two barber vibrators (the type which barbers use to massage head and shoulders) to the head and foot underneath the table.

This type of vibrator has a regulator on it so you can control the degree of intensity of the vibration. Sometimes Mr. Livingston would use one device, either at the head or feet. In other cases, he would use both simultaneously.

As I watched this master embalmer at work, it was clear that the same degree of vibration would not be satisfactory on every embalming operation. It was also evident that far more blood and other body fluids were drained than in cases where vibration was not used.

When the potential existed for over dehydration, Mr. Livingston would add 8 ounces of a quality humectant chemical to the last half-gallon and inject this under closed drainage to seal in the humectant effect.

Today I do not know of any manufacturer of embalming tables making one that vibrates. However, I suspect that a few embalmers reading this article just might become another Wayne Livingston and rig one up in order to further ensure quality embalming. In the end, is this not the vision for which we strive?

Treating customers with care, honesty and dignity helps us build ethical business practices and also helps us learn what standards to expect from ourselves.

As individuals with free will, we must determine for ourselves what ethical standards to follow. Therefore, it is possible that others' standards will differ from our own.

This can add to the struggle of deciding what is right and wrong in business, especially when something falls in a gray area. Many issues have two sides and will never have a black or white answer.

The basic question you should ask yourself when a problem situation occurs in your business is, "How will my decision affect my conscience?"

If your company discovers a wrongful burial and you correct the problem at midnight, without notice to the family, you might find yourself very troubled, even haunted by that decision. However, if you fess up to the family, apologize and then correct the problem, after it is all over, you are likely to feel good about your decision—and not likely to have nightmares.
 
In other words, honesty is the best policy. When you enter into a contract with a customer, you must follow through. If you find, after the customer has left, that you made a mistake in an agreement, such as putting down an incorrect burial location, you must not change the agreement. You must have the customer return and execute a corrected agreement.

If you make a verbal promise to the customer, you must follow through. A good example of this might be when you promise a grave will be sodded. Get it done! You must also follow through by checking to see that your promise has been fulfilled (since you are probably not going to sod that grave yourself). Always remember the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.

Most of us know what unethical practices are in business. Stealing is unethical. If you remove someone's flowers off their loved one's grave and put them on someone else's grave, it's stealing. If you accept payment for services and don't render those services, you are stealing.

Lying is unethical. If you show a picture of a certain type of vault when you make a sale and then deliver a different type of vault at the time of need, you have lied to the customer.

Abusing a customer is unethical. In our sensitive business, ethical violations can include psychological abuse. Take the example of a headstone damage, which can occur during mowing. If a customer comes to you to report such damage and you dance around the issue instead of acknowledging and taking care of it that could constitute psychological abuse. You must train your employees to be truthful so that you can honestly deal with customers.
It is always a good idea to have a mission statement framed and posted in your office so customers can see it. For example, your mission statement can promise customers that your company will:
•    honor their wishes,
•    take care of their loved ones with compassion, and
•    deal honestly with all customers.

The 5 areas to cover
There are five important areas you need to cover in business ethics: conduct, administration, confidentiality, competence and identification.

Conduct: Everyone who comes in contact with a customer must always engage in ethical behavior. It is wise to have everyone trained in your state's laws and to stress the importance of being truthful. If all employees are truthful to each consumer about what they are buying and are honest about any mistakes made, they will be practicing good, ethical behavior.

Administration: The people in authority must always practice ethical behavior. If you set an example of unethical behavior to your employees, you can expect them to learn from it and practice what they have learned.

Confidentiality: This is of utmost importance when dealing with customers. Giving out your mailing list is unethical. Letting someone know the cause of death of a decedent is unethical. Some of these practices are also illegal.

Competency: Being good at what you do leads to good ethical practices. If someone who works for you out on the grounds is constantly damaging headstones while mowing, that person is incompetent, and so is the manager charged with training and supervising that employee.

Keeping your equipment in good working order is also part of being competent. Using a lowering device with frayed straps is incompetent and unethical—not to mention the fact that it opens you up for an incident that could lead to litigation.

Identification: In the cemetery and funeral profession, a good identification system is a required business practice. This is so vital that if you do not have a good identification system, both for bodies and grave sites, you might be considered unethical.

Remember:
•    Treat each decedent as if he or she were related to you.
•    Honor your contracts and do a good job.
•    Maintain your cemetery in a fashion that makes you proud.
•    Implement checks and balances to make sure you properly identify bodies and cremated remains and inter remains in the proper place.
•    Admit your mistakes; contact your customer as soon as you become aware of an error.
•    Know and follow the laws and regulations at the local, state and federal levels.

We must do all we can to protect our families, who have suffered the ultimate pain of the death of a loved one, from any further grief.

No longer is the frozen body a problem unique only to states and countries that suffer from harsh winters.  Today, freezing can be a challenge for the embalmer simply because of the escalation of refrigeration in almost every hospital and coroner's office in the country.

Freezing creates problems for the embalmer. One important fact is that the embalmer needs to know whether the death occurred immediately and while the body was in a frozen state or whether only one part or several parts of the body were frozen and death occurred later as a result of the freezing or complications.

If death did not occur until some time after the freezing, there will probably be severe gangrene at the point of the freezing. If death occurred because of the freezing and the body was turned over to the embalmer in a frozen condition, the first step will be to thaw the body.

The remains need to be completely thawed before injection is begun. I have been exposed to the theory that you can inject frozen remains, and if my memory serves correctly one of the chemical companies even formulated an embalming preservative which was promoted as extremely effective on frozen cases. However, I never tried this approach. If you have, please call or e-mail me with your experience and outcome.

My thawing method
I have used the following method for thawing a body: place a sheet over the body and allow cold water to continuously saturate the sheet for several hours. Tepid water can be used, but I am cautious about using anything but cold water. Certainly one should never use hot water, because as most embalmers already know, if hot water is used, skin slip will invariable result.

I knew an old embalmer in Omaha who swore by another method of thawing. He would use a tank filled with ice water and submerge the body in this water. Within a short time the tank would appear to be filled with slush. He would remove the body, empty and refill the tank with cold water and replace the body, repeating the procedure until the tissues were thawed. I never used this method, and frankly it sounded like a lot of work back then and it still sounds like a lot of work today.

If cold water is used for thawing, it will be possible to remove the blood and to properly disinfect and preserve the body. Blood remains liquid under the influence of low temperature, but begins to decompose and clot immediately under high temperatures.

While the tissues are frozen, the skin will usually be a creamy color, but this light yellow shade will disappear as the tissues thaw and the skin bleaches.

Two important points need to be made. First, in my experience (others surely have had better outcomes), once frozen and then thawed, tissues will not become rigid under the action of many embalming chemicals.

Second, the action of many embalming chemicals on tissue that has been frozen usually results in a pink coloration that resembles the coloring we find in cases where death was caused by suffocation from carbon-monoxide poisoning.

I recommend that a pre-injection fluid not be used, but a coinjection fluid can be used. Though we can expect some drainage, I have not seen very much drainage in the cases I have embalmed. Discolorations are common and often there will be a postmortem stain that cannot be removed.
After thawing the body, you should massage the face and hands with a quality massage cream. A film of cream should be left on during embalming.

Because of tissue damage, the arterial solution should be strong, 2.5 percent to 3.0 percent HCHO to make half a gallon. I am old fashioned and still use the Slocum method of one-quarter to one-half gallon solution. I have found it takes more time, but I can control the fluid activity much better, so I don't over-or under-embalm the remains and I also don't waste chemicals.

Also, I have discovered that while I can hope for a one- or two-point injection, I usually end up doing an eight-point injection. (I use the radials.)

Pressure is in such flux today that I dare not make any suggestions, but I have heard nothing but praise for the new Dodge machine which sets the pressure automatically. What will they think of next?

The application of proper restorative art materials will serve to mellow the pink/red coloring of the skin and give splendid results.

When dealing with the scene of a death means more than a simple removal, what help can a funeral director offer the family? What should you look for in a trauma scene contractor before recommending one to families?

For families dealing with a death that occurred in the home, the loss may be compounded by the need to remove the visible signs of the tragedy.

In these cases, the role of the funeral director in providing grieving family members with complete and compassionate care should include helping them arrange for their home
to be returned to good order.

This means the funeral director should know what professional trauma scene services are available in the area and know enough about them to feel comfortable recommending them to the family.

What trauma scene contractors do
A good trauma scene contractor will properly complete the cleanup of all blood and bodily fluids to ensure a sanitary home environment and allow family members to move forward.

In one crucial aspect, a good trauma scene contractor should resemble a good funeral home:
The relatives of the deceased and/or the owner of the home or other property being cleaned must feel confident that the company will be discrete and respectful about its work.

The contractor's job is to remove any visible signs of the remains and disinfect the affected areas. All blood and bodily fluid material must be removed to ensure a sanitary condition, meaning no odor can be detected and nothing is left that would provide a food source for insects or rodents.

Trauma scene cleanup differs from environmental scene cleanup in that there are no enforceable standards for removal of blood or bodily fluids.

Complete disinfection is difficult to measure onsite at the time of the cleanup. The standard is therefore very much a self-imposed "best effort," consisting of sight and smell criteria.

In some cases, a contractor may decide that a stain cannot be cleaned up and the contaminated surface—carpet and pad, wallboard (sheetrock), subfloor, fixtures or personal effects—must be removed.

The following examples illustrate what can be involved in handling a trauma scene:
1. The deceased was an elderly man who had died in bed; it was at least a week before his son found him. The decomposition of the body had saturated the bed mattress, box spring and the carpet under the bed.

The trauma scene contractor (recommended to the son by the local funeral home) dispatched three technicians. The mattress, box spring and affected carpeting were removed and placed in containers for disposal. All waste materials were delivered to a contracted autoclave (sterilization) facility able to handle wastes containing biological hazards.

The technicians also vacuumed the entire bedroom, offered to remove the spoiled food from the refrigerator and boxed-up personal effects that were of immediate importance. Before leaving, the technicians deodorized the home.

2. After a man committed suicide at home, in the garage, his son-in-law asked for a trauma scene contractor to handle the cleanup.

The contractor met the next of kin at the property to gain access to the garage and learn what items were of monetary or sentimental value and would need to be cleaned and returned, if possible, rather than discarded.

During the course of the cleanup, the contractor discovered several sizable bone fragments and notified the medical examiner. The unpainted sheetrock walls and ceiling could not be effectively cleaned, so the technicians removed them after discussing the situation with the son-in-law and getting his approval.

Throughout the cleanup, the contractor took photos for use in preparing a report and invoice to send to the insurance company.

These cases show why trauma scene cleanup requires more than the typical janitorial service can offer. At a minimum, all field personnel must prove compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration blood borne pathogen standard 1910.1030.

Evaluating contractors
To ensure the best possible service for your families, you should recommend only qualified trauma scene response contractors.

At this time there are no national certification requirements, and only a few states require companies offering these services to register with the state health department to demonstrate their qualifications.

What criteria should a funeral director use in screening a trauma scene contractor? A competent, compliant and professional contractor should be able to answer the following questions to your satisfaction:

• Does the company have a blood borne pathogen control program, and does it conform to all of the requirements of the OSHA 1910.1030 standard?
• If required, is the contractor registered or licensed by the state or county?

• Does the company have a contract with a licensed disposal facility to incinerate or autoclave waste?

• Does the company have equipment and personnel dedicated to trauma scene response? Does it offer services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year? (In other words, will it be timely in its response?)

• Does the company have a quality control program or can it show you its standard operating procedures (SOPs) and a generic health and safety plan (HASP), which offer an indication that it can do the job?

• Does the company have commercial Insurance, including general and professional liability and errors and omissions?

• Does the company, or its personnel, hold any accreditations? Does it belong to any professional associations?

• What experience do the company and its staff have? How many cleanups have they performed?

When a family's loss is compounded by having to deal with a trauma scene, the funeral director can offer complete care by being prepared to help the family find a company to handle the cleanup quickly, completely and with discretion.

Adapted from a presentation at the 2005 ICFA Annual Convention

You go to the emergency room, and what do they want to know? Do you have insurance? If you don't have insurance, do you have a credit card?

There's no reason why we shouldn't be paid just like any other institution.

There are 11 methods of payment—make it easy for your customer.

My all-time favorite method of payment is prearrangement; it truly is the best payment method.

In addition to cash, check and debit card, we accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Diner's Club and American Express. If you don't offer to accept all these cards, you can look to the ICFA, which has a great credit card program that will cover you for all of them.

In the state of Pennsylvania there is no such thing as an insurance assignment being a legal proposition. It is a courtesy insurance companies extend to customers. However, if they pay to somebody by mistake—the original beneficiary for instance, or if the beneficiary walks out of our door after signing an assignment and then unassigns it without us knowing, by the time the company processes our document, the money's already been paid out.

Therefore, we do everything with Advance Funeral Funding. They charge 5 percent for an insurance assignment, which we add to the bill.

We have the check the next day before they even have the insurance policy. Fill in the form, fax it to them, they will give you a verification in an hour, they overnight the check, you have your money before the service is rendered.

Adapted from a presentation at the 2005 ICFA Annual Convention

We all know the importance of media relations in our profession, but we don't all know how to handle it. No matter what the size of your business, some simple tools and techniques can allow you to effectively tell your story and deal proactively with the media.

Those of us in the deathcare profession can no longer afford to have the marketplace tell our story for us. It is our responsibility to become evangelists for funeral homes and cemeteries by working on a program of press releases and greater media contact.

Media relations, a subset of public relations, is what is involved in your efforts to build and maintain a relationship with the media in your community. Building the relationship is the first step, but maintaining it is just as important if you want your efforts to have a lasting effect.

"Media" is usually associated with television and newspapers but also extends to other areas, including the Internet, magazines and radio. There are 30 million Web sites out there today, 17,000 specialized magazines, 10,000 radio stations and 35,000 interviews being conducted daily in America.

What does this mean for the funeral and cemetery profession? It gives us endless opportunities to connect with the public and get our stories known.

Over half of Americans get their news from television, which has increased its news time slots to give viewers more options. Hard news (usually negative) is the story: who, what, when and where. Feature news (usually positive) is the how or why.

Feature news is now growing rapidly as reporters are faced with more time to fill. Both newspapers and television stations often try to localize stories, focusing on a person or business in their readership or viewing area. Make yourself known to your local reporters by suggesting ideas for feature stories and alerting them to hard news stories of which they may not be aware.

Developing a press kit and press release
The first step in dealing proactively with the media is to create an effective media relations program. The basic media materials that should go in your press kit are a company background sheet, fax sheet, business cards, a company brochure and a letter of introduction.

When preparing a press release:
• Keep it brief (no more than a page long) and factual. If the media think there is a story, they will give you a call and come out with their photographer and reporter.

• Be objective. Your press release should be about something important to the media and the public.

• Avoid speaking in lingo. When talking about opening and closing fees, explain what those fees cover. Instead of saying GPL, talk about the general price list. Keep your release in consumer language.

• Create a compelling headline. Think of a catchy and unique headline that will grab the reporter's attention right from the start.

• Use an inverted pyramid. Cram as much as you can at the top of your press release, especially the important information. Often as a reporter or editor is putting a story or segment together, time is short and the last paragraphs are cut. Have a point, and get to it quickly.

• Keep information local. Cater the release and cover letter to your particular community and the publication or station to which you're sending it.

• Send in the press release early. If you wait until the last minute, they may not have enough time to put a segment together or to meet deadlines.

Topics for a press release
Be creative; this list is just a beginning:
•    New programs or services at your business
•    Expansions or additions that have been added to your facility
•    People you have hired or promoted recently
•    Open houses
•    Grief counseling or pre-planning

If you are trying to pitch a story beyond a simple press release, you may be pitching a feature story. Be sure to present the content of the story in the cover letter, explaining why it is important and should be given consideration. Also list materials that you have available such as charts, graphs and photos. Try to make it as easy for the news staff as possible by offering an interview or a tour.

Our profession deals with human and personal lives, so make it a human interest story. Do not give a PR line; rather, let the story do that for you by talking in the media's terms.

Dealing with negative stories
When faced with a negative situation, think creatively to find the positive. One example of this is a funeral director who called up a local radio station after the story about caskets being sold at Costco first surfaced. He took what could have been a negative story about people buying caskets at Costco and put a more positive slant on it by talking about personalization, which is still a buzz word for consumers.

In a radio interview he said that people are generally happy with the current casket selection process. "Directly marketing caskets does not seem to be successful," he said. ''Those places go out of business quickly. People don't go to Costco to buy caskets. How much personalization is available in a catalogue for Costco? A salesperson cannot offer the time or the resources needed to personalize the experience."

As you move forward in building your relationship with the media, remember to be accessible so that reporters know they can reach you. Once you establish a relationship, it can develop into an ongoing stream of publicity opportunities.

When making the first call, offer to stop by to say hello, and drop off the media kit at that time. Once you make a promise to give a reporter access to someone or something, deliver on that promise. If you tell them you will give them an interview or a tour of your grounds, do it.

Preparing for an interview
Finally, here are some tools and techniques for effective news interviews:
•    Be prepared. Do your homework.  Know what kinds of questions this reporter typically asks and prepare responses ahead of time.
•    Be honest. In the age of the Internet, reporters quickly find out if you are lying.
•    Be helpful. Go out of your way to provide information that will help reporters do a story. They are always looking for other sources and other angles, so always have another funeral director in your area ready to be interviewed. You may also suggest they contact a trade association such as the ICFA.
•    Avoid saying "no comment," because it is perceived as an admission of guilt.
•    Avoid yes or no answers to awkward questions. If you are asked a tough question, especially one that is phrased awkwardly, rephrase the question back to the reporter instead of saying just "yes" or "no."
•    Remember the videographer. The person with the camera in his or her hand is just as important as the person holding the microphone or pen. The person who really is going to make you look good is the one behind the camera, so if you offer the reporter a soft drink or coffee, do the same for the videographer.

Dealing proactively with the media is beneficial to you, your business and the profession as a whole. The more we strive to get our message out there, the better the public perception will be of our profession.

Never forget, it's a small world, getting smaller every day, so take nothing for granted. Take every opportunity to tell your own story, so that the marketplace doesn't tell it for you.

Adapted from a presentation at the 2005 ICFA Annual Convention

A conflict has arisen between the deathcare profession and the consumer.
It is a battle between tradition and change, with one side tied to "the way we've always done it" and the other consistently rejecting it.
You need to understand the dramatic changes that have taken place and what they mean for funeral and cemetery services. Your livelihood is at stake.

Society has gone through drastic changes over recent years, affecting the way businesses run and consumers buy. The type of change of which I speak is not a gradual change; it is the dramatic change that occurs in a business and stretches that business like a rubber band to the point where it can never go back to the way it was. At that point, that business, society or institution has been changed forever.

Stretching the rubber band creates a new way of thinking, or what we call a generic strategic breakthrough. Two conditions must exit simultaneously for this type of change to occur.

First, there has to be a change in the way something is done or in the product that is used to do it. Secondly, there must be a change in the environment. For an innovation to be accepted into the marketplace, the market has to be ready for it.

An example that illustrates this phenomenon is the creation of food supermarkets in the 1920s and '30s. During the Great Depression two men noticed an old warehouse in New Jersey selling wholesale products. They took this idea back to Columbus, Ohio, where they started the first supermarket in the United States, called "The Big Bear."

This store still exists today as an affiliate of IGA. The store got its name after a bear that was trained to walk down the aisles of the store taking cans off shelves and placing them in a shopping basket. The idea was that if a bear can do it, anyone can.

For the time period, the creation of Big Bear was a generic strategic breakthrough because once the idea of a supermarket was born; businesses were never the same again. For the supermarket innovation to be successful, there were two external conditions that had to exist: refrigeration and automobiles. Before the 1920s, the idea of a supermarket might have existed in someone’s head, but the environment did not allow it to flourish.

Before refrigeration, people did not have the means to store perishable food, nor effective transportation to bring it home from the store. After the 1920s the icebox allowed every family to have refrigeration, and private vehicles eliminated the need for delivery trucks. Without refrigeration and private vehicles, the idea would never have succeeded.

Today, the traditional supermarket is under siege. People are now rejecting the old supermarket in favor of stores such as Wal-Mart where everything is under one roof.
Innovation and changing consumer expectations are the elements that drive change. The purpose of a business is to create a satisfied customer, so it is the company's responsibility to adapt to the trends and ideas of the marketplace. If a business ignores these trends, it cannot survive.

How consumers buy today
The first step to adapting your business to the evolving market is to understand who your consumers are and how they buy. Wal-Mart has become the largest corporation that ever existed in the world, each year bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars in sales.

The principal motivating factor that brings people to Wal-Mart is not its service (or lack of) or even its price, it is convenience. The people who choose to shop at Wal-Mart do not expect front door service, nor do they want it. They come because they can find everything they need in one store.

More and more, the consumer preference is leaning toward self-serve businesses. Consumers no longer want to be bothered while they shop. They like to know that someone is there if they have questions, but they do not need someone following them around the store asking if they can help. In fact, women's universal response to the question, "Can I help you?" is "No thanks, I'm just looking."

People have adapted to the "I'm just looking" mentality, because stores are now set up to make it easy for consumers to find what they are looking for on their own.

What do food chains such as McDonalds, Subway, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have in common? They offer consistent and predictable service. People like walking into stores and making their own decisions.

Fast food restaurants have evolved from single brands into multi-brands, which I refer to as "KenTaco Hut." This is where you have Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Exxon gas under one roof. These complexes have spread all across the country, strategically placed right off of freeway exits. KenTaco Huts are good for the gas stations because they get some of the people who normally pay at the pump back into their stores.

Fast food restaurants are constantly adapting their menus to meet the changing demands of consumers and the latest diet trends. Subway, which used to talk about fat, has evolved its entire menu to focus on carbohydrates. Hardee's offers a burger without a bun.

McDonald's has created a happy meal for adults including a salad, a bottle of water, and a pedometer so that after you eat your salad and drink your water you can walk and measure how far you have gone.

Has the price list for your cemetery or funeral home evolved in the same way that these food businesses have?

Funeral service stuck in the past
Our offers just have not changed much. What would your offer be today if you knew that everyone walking through your door was going to spend $20,000? Although they are not spending that much now, maybe they would if we let them.

This has nothing to do with money. If you are ready to sell your products, people will be ready to buy, but you need to have these products and services available. We have to be better prepared to allow our consumer to say yes to something bigger and better.

Our profession is stuck back in 1962. It is the only profession that has not evolved
to meet the changing needs of the consumer. The same consumers who have been brought up on Wal-Mart, Home Depot and McDonald's are the consumers who walk into our funeral homes or cemetery offices.

We take those people and immediately assume it is a good idea to teach them a new way to shop. We make them sit silently across the table from us and listen as we tell them how and what they should buy.

People do not buy like this anywhere else in the world except possibly a timeshare sale. Do you like being compared to that? Research has consistently shown that people are not happy with the funeral selection process. The response to you is positive, but the response to our process is embarrassing.

The most difficult paradox for us to understand as a profession is that people like not being waited on. We grew up with the notion that personal service meant personal attention and lots of it.

Now the definition of personal service is changing to a point where, ironically, one-on-one service across a table is actually considered impersonal. People prefer to be let loose and look on their own.

So how can we help our businesses to evolve and better meet the needs of consumers? First of all, we need industrial strength training of employees.

We are the only profession I have ever seen that will allow people to work for us who we know are screwing up. They may be nice people, but they do not belong face-to-face with your customers.

Too often we have the attitude, "Well, he's never wrecked a hearse, and he's worked here 27 years, so he's got to be a nice guy." You have to remember that he is the one in the selection room with your families.
No other business does that. Other businesses go to great lengths to make sure their employees understand the company strategy. Their employees also know that if they mess up, they can lose their job.

What about cemeteries?
Some of us cemeterians still have books of rules as if we are in such high demand that we can make all our future neighbors accede to our requirements. If they don't, we will not even let them through the gates. I am not sure that any of our cemeteries are in a strong enough position to be so demanding.

Even if your cemetery is the only one in town, if your demands get too far out of line, families can just turn away. What are they turning away to? Cremation. Our entire profession can literally go up in smoke.

People thinking about cremation generally do not think about cemeteries. A cemetery's value proposition is the one most challenged by cremation because it is the least recognized.

Our mobile society itself is putting your cemetery offer under siege. An example is a woman who wishes she had kept her parents' urn with her because she lives in Florida and they are in a niche in Pennsylvania.
 
Our challenge as a profession is to find out who we are and what we are about. Are people venerating the memory or are they venerating the remains?

The only way to find out what people really want is to set up interviews conducted by an independent source (someone other than you) and ask them for their thoughts. Afterward, you need to follow up on their responses and make the necessary changes.

To change our image, we must change what we do
There are not a lot of positive things being said about our profession, and it is not going away until we change our system. We can no longer afford to be just "not bad" to offset the negativity about us in the marketplace.

In 1963, Jessica Mitford wrote a book called "The American Way of Death" which impacted us all and led to the implementation of the 1984 FTC rule. Between 50,000 and 100,000 copies of her book were sold.

Today, over 15 million people each week watch the television show "Six Feet Under," and like it or not, these viewers are comparing the selling process in the show with your process.

We also are compared to others in our profession. We are judged and convicted by the sins of others, by the least among us. The responsibility for change is not on the people screwing it up, it is on you. It is on those of us who know better and are passionate enough about the business to want to make a difference.
We need to start innovating and leading by example. Bring people with you to meetings or show them relevant articles. Take any opportunity to be a leader and go to those people in your neighborhood to share what you have learned. Without you, they may never hear it.

Think of the most memorable funeral you directed or were a part of and identify the elements that made it so memorable. Figure out a way to make your funerals memorable on a daily basis, because ultimately that is what will drive people to you.

If we don't do it, someone outside of our profession is going to do it for us.

This is your consumer and your business to win or lose, and I believe that we all have the power necessary to make this business last far into the future.

When I started embalming I was often frustrated with my inability to get the correct mouth closure. I would fiddle and fuss for literally hours at time, with the constant pressure of being told time after time that "if the mouth is not correct, nothing will be correct on the funeral." Pressure!

As usual, I studied all the pertinent literature on the subject, became familiar with terms like weather line, needle injector, tack, lip cream, adhesive, lip wax, mandibular suture, phenulum suture, etc, Still I had cases which seemed to defy the theories and procedures, and every embalmer I spoke to assured me that their method was the best and that they had never once had a complaint from a family. This information did not help my confidence at all.  Of course today I realize that those embalmers who claimed absolutely 100 percent family satisfaction were either exaggerating terribly or had not done much embalming in their careers.

One day while I was working to get the right mouth closure I realized that while working with the lips and mouth, I could literally feel a type of tissue resistance when I was attempting to position the lips to the natural weather line. Finally I had a hunch (which I learned to trust in embalming, more than theory) that the tissues, muscles and structures which made up the mouth area needed to be stretched. So I took a dry paper towel and rolled the towel under the bottom lip of the mouth and very gently stretched it upward over the top lip as far as it would go.

Then I rolled the paper towel under the top lip and very gently stretched the top lip down as far as it would go covering the bottom lip. Be prepared for the fact that if you decide to implement this procedure the lips will look terribly misshapen for a while.

Next, take a reasonable amount of regular massage cream and cover the lips, top and bottom, with the cream. Then simply purse the lips together and the tissues will fall naturally into the weather line closure.

I was amazed and often relieved at the amount of elasticity I created by using the paper towel technique. Be careful not to press and push on the lip tissue too much, for it can damage the tissue, and upon injection the damaged tissue will swell.

This technique also offers additional centimeters of lip extension when attempting to correct prognathism.

Give it a try on your next case and let me know how it works. Call or e-mail me—I am always interested in learning new and improved embalming techniques.

Aside from DNA, there is only one other aspect of the human body unique to each and every individual who has ever walked the earth: the fingerprint.

As we move toward greater individualization and personalization as a business, working to create tributes that tell a story unique to the person being memorialized, I believe the source of helping families to think more about their loved one than about cost and details lies in the fingerprint.

First, though, the history.

Time well spent
Recently I stood at the rear of our chapel with a pastor from one of our local churches. This pastor's approach to "officiating" at a funeral is somewhat unusual. When he receives a request for services, he schedules a time where he can sit with the whole family and get a feel for who the person was and what the family envisions happening at the funeral service.

He usually spends about two hours with them while they tell the stories that were important to their family. He then writes a personalized eulogy and a message of hope tailored to each family and situation.

The time he spends at the service and in the follow-up is handled with the same care and concern for the bereaved.

In all, he spends about five to six hours with each family, compared with some ministers who spend about 20 minutes on the phone with the family and for every service deliver the same message, with only the name changed.

Anyway, this pastor made a passing comment to me about what was happening following the funeral at which he had officiated.

He said, "Isn't it interesting that these people can come here and share this raw emotion, get it out of their system, and go on with life?"

Until that point, I hadn't spent much time reflecting on the value of what we do. I had spent two years in the "alternative" funeral delivery system, where anything that reeked of service or ceremony meant more cost and, therefore, was not appropriate for the families who chose to do business in the "alternative" environment.

Now I had left that environment and returned to a funeral home, I was having to relearn the emotional, spiritual, sociological and psychological value of a group-centered, time-limited tribute wherein a deceased individual's story is told, often for the first time.

The times, they have changed
When did a funeral stop being a rite of passage and become a transaction? Why does a client family look for the least expensive route of disposition without taking into account the effect that choice will have on their families' emotional health?

How can those of us in the funeral profession and not planning to retire anytime soon show families the value of what we do?

The first step involves learning to interview and listening to families as they tell the life story of their loved ones. In essence, taking their "lifeprint."

Where do we go from there? Several years ago, at a Cremation Association of North America marketing conference, I was looking for a place to sit down and enjoy my buffet breakfast.

Just as I was about to sit down alone, someone said, "Why don't you come sit over here?" I didn't know the fellow who had issued the invitation, but I recognized him as a fellow conference attendee.

As soon as I sat down, he started talking. "I've been working on this idea for identifying the deceased person while still at the place where they died," he said.

He showed me drawings and some notes he had scribbled. The drawing was of a metal disc with two hearts, an inner one and an outer one, each marked with the identical number.

His idea was to attach the inner heart to the deceased when the pick-up took place and detach the outer heart and give it to the family at that time.

This disc would accompany the deceased throughout the entire disposition process, whether burial or cremation, and end up affixed to the casket or urn, thereby giving the family extra assurance that the body they were receiving back into their care was, in fact, the same one they had placed in his.

I was impressed both with the idea and at the man who had envisioned it. He extended his hand and said, "I don't believe we've met Dave Daly."

I'm sure most of you reading this knew him for many years, but I was a young man just starting out, and the name Dave Daly held an aura of celebrity for me. "Are you the Dave Daly?" I thought. This was one of the guys I'd listened to on tapes and watched on videos for so many years, along with others such as Gary O' Sullivan, Asher Neel, Bud Kendrick and Bill Rowe. And now I had had the opportunity to share a meal with one of those giants of our profession.

I love this job.
Back at Eternal Hills, we drew on Dave Daly's idea to take our "lifeprint" concept further. When someone is received into our care, we take a fingerprint of the deceased's right thumb and place it on a bracelet that will accompany the deceased through the entire disposition process.

In a burial case, the bracelet will remain in place and end up in the casket with them. In a cremation case, the bracelet is removed and kept with the paperwork while the cremation takes place, then placed in the urn.

At the same time we place the thumbprint on the bracelet, we also attach a copy of the print to the first call sheet. The thumbprint is then scanned onto our internal computer network and a copy is placed in the paper file for the deceased.

Aside from providing an additional means of identification if a question of identity ever arises, the thumbprint helps us transition to service planning. As I mentioned before, the service becomes the telling of the deceased's story—his or her "lifeprint."

To help families think about how their loved one was unique, we bring the scanned image of the thumbprint onto the television or computer screen in the arrangement room.

We then say, "We've spent the last few minutes talking about your dad and the impact he had on your life. The purpose of the funeral is to tell his story and show his unique “lifeprint” on you, your family, his friends, his colleagues and society.

"Whether you plan on having a public time of tribute or simply a private gathering, we believe you will find great sex cam comfort and live sex cam healing in the free sex web cams gathering together of live cam girl friends and family to share memories. I think some of the things we need to incorporate into that time are…….”

At this point, the funeral director begins to share some of the ways Eternal Hills can work with them to turn the memories they've shared about the deceased into a meaningful tribute that will be remembered by everyone who attends the service.

Learn to direct the service
As providers of goods and services surrounding the death of a family member, we must stop standing at the back of the church or chapel and move to the front. When I look up "director" in the dictionary, I find it defined as: "one who supervises the production of a show."

How many funeral directors would meet that definition of the position? How many understand what Ernie Heffner calls "the panache and profit correlation?"

Based on my own observations, I would say not many. Funeral "directors" who realize that bereaved families need help and advice will not worry about the rising rate of cremation or the rising costs of doing business. They will instead seek new and profound ways to take the business we know today as "death care" to a new level.

I'll end by dropping one more celebrity name. Todd Van Beck's concept of seeking, with or without the family's knowledge or permission, the one thing that is going to be their "WOW factor" should be a funeral arranger's ultimate goal.

This is what elevates the funeral from something endured for the sake of the grieving family to a tribute that accurately reflects the deceased's life so that everyone in attendance leaves with the feeling their time was well spent.

Can you say goodbye forever in 60 minutes?

I can wash a car, mow the lawn, wash the house windows, change the sheets on every bed in the house, make a meal, give a lecture, write a letter, visit a shut-in, read an entire magazine and take a nap. I think and plan ahead to maximize my efforts.
 
These are tasks I know I can do in one hour.

There are also things I know I can't do in one hour: paint the house, drive 400 miles, read "War and Peace," understand my computer and solve the Middle East crisis.

And, I know I can't accept condolences from 100 or more people prior to the funeral service for my loved one.

Saying goodbye shouldn't be rushed
I may be able to receive support, tell how my loved one died, hold another human being, reminisce and share my grief with perhaps a maximum of 10 individuals. The rest will have to stay lined up in the center aisle of the church, synagogue or funeral home.

They will not get to see the deceased, to whom they have come to bid their farewell or pray for. And they will not get to fully accept the reality of their friend's or co-worker's death.

They, and I, will be forever void of the meaningful interchange when people stand at the casket and share their stories, memories and grief. They will be without the opportunity to touch, kiss or pray near the body of a person they knew and loved.

The stories will be lost forever. The pain will be kept forever. The support will be missing forever.

A life is remembered by poignant moments, forever.

Visitations matter
The visitation is a major aspect of the funeral process. It brings humans together to fulfill human needs. These basic human needs cannot be met when the obituary reads, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

Picture memory boards are helpful at a visitation. Video collages are helpful at a visitation. Prayer services are helpful at a visitation. A well prepared body is helpful at a visitation.

But most of all, time is the greatest asset at a visitation. Without time, all of the other important functions can't happen.
One hour holds a mere 60 sweeps of the clock. How insignificant when compared to a lifetime of 85 years, or 44,676,000 sweeps of the minute hand.

Those in funeral service before us remember visitations that lasted two days and nights. They remember that at the end of those visitations the family was much more ready to give up their loved one.

By making things "easier" for mourners and funeral directors, we have made it harder to obtain the value of the leave-taking process.

In this era of options, which funeral service proclaims as the new wave, let us offer the option
of more hours of visitation/viewing and explain the value of the visitation in the funeral process. Counsel those you serve on the value of time and keep meeting those basic needs in your funeral home.

It all started with these words
If you're seeing numerous people lined up in the aisle prior to the start of the service and are wondering what to do, remember, it all started with the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

When a large number of family comforters will not leave the cemetery and continue to stand near the closed casket, and you can't get the immediate family members back to their cars, remember the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

When family members come to pick up more thank-you cards and say, "Everything seemed to happen so quickly and we never got to talk to everyone who came," remember the words, "Visitation one hour prior to the service."

One of our major roles is helping families see the pros and cons of their decisions. When you counsel families, please remember what can and can't be done in one hour.

It's easy to talk about the importance of offering families personalized, meaningful services, but following through is harder.
It takes good interviewing and listening skills, combined with a flair for translating what is learned into a ceremony the family will value.

Families today are increasingly looking for ways to personalize funeral and memorial ceremonies so they better reflect the person's life, no matter how simple or complicated it may have been.

There are many ways that officiants can and should personalize ceremonies, including speaking with family and friends before writing the ceremony and encouraging family participation in the ceremony itself.

At the heart of the ceremony, we should look to incorporate the hobbies, pastimes and passions of the individual we are remembering. This can be done in a tasteful way that reflects the person's true nature, and in turn, the things that he or she loved.

Gathering the information
As a funeral celebrant, you should collect information essential to creating ceremonies by conducting an unhurried interview with the family to ensure accuracy, warmth and meaning. During this interview, the family will share many details about the life of their departed loved one, from the school days and neighborhood friendships to career information and adult life.

By asking pointed yet caring questions, the funeral officiant can and should be able to paint a vivid picture. Once informed, you must then go about the creative process of writing the eulogy, carefully choosing appropriate readings and arranging for the music selected by the family.

Even when you have spent a lot of time preparing the eulogy, you should carefully review it with family members ahead of time to check for accuracy.

You are then ready to officiate at the ceremony, a duty to be performed with compassion, sincerity and care, whether it takes place at the funeral home, crematorium, cemetery or other location.

The three examples that follow are from my work with families. They show how stories and objects or symbols can be woven together to create personalized and authentic end-of-life ceremonies.

Remembering the lost babies and celebrating family
The couple struggled to have a family through the in vitro fertilization process; over several years they suffered the death of three babies, all stillborn. Five years later, they had a family, daughters 3 and 5 years old, but they had not forgotten the babies who would have been their daughters' older siblings.

They chose to honor the memory of those three brief but precious lives in a springtime ceremony. Family and friends gathered at their home and garden. The parents expressed the importance of family, their love of life and the joy their two young daughters have given them.

Throughout the ceremony, they used symbolism and homegrown rituals to honor the children who had not survived. One beautiful example: The family planted three evergreen trees in their garden, one in memory of each of their stillborn babies.

In a meaningful and deeply touching way, this family discovered that through ceremony they could pay homage to their family, present and past. They were able to honor the life experience of having children and of losing children, and were able to share the ceremony with the people in their lives they love the most.

Giving a father and best friend a fishing pole salute
When their father died, the two brothers in their 30s also lost their best friend. Throughout their lives, the three had been inseparable. Together they shared the best of times, deep-sea fishing, clearing brush by their oceanfront property, simply hanging out, playing guitar and, most of all, watching the glorious sunrises on the beach.

Every summer, the whole family, including grandchildren, enjoyed time together at their golden oasis by the sea. Early one morning, the eldest son was helping his father untangle the shore brush when his father suddenly fell ill. No one else was in sight. He held his father in his arms and shared the last few moments of his life. As the sun rose, his father passed away.

For their father's funeral ceremony, the two men wrote a song to honor his memory. Neither of them was much for talking; they were more comfortable sharing their loss with family and friends through their guitar music.

Prior to the viewing, the celebrant asked guests to bring their fishing poles and line them up in the funeral home near the casket. It resembled a military procession, with a fishing pole rather than a gun salute.

The ceremony was true and heartfelt. The two sons were able to communicate their feelings and the close relationship they had shared with their father in a sincere and meaningful way, and everyone who attended was able to participate in showing their love and respect for this beloved father and friend.

Remembering all the colors of a long life
A Dutch landscape artist, father, grandfather, husband and musician took his life at the age of 81. A little known fact is that worldwide, it is not uncommon for elderly people to take it upon themselves to end their lives at a time and place of their own choosing. Family members then have to come to grips with their death and find a way to grieve and honor their lives as well as respect their personal decisions about dying.

Although suicide is a difficult subject to talk about, and some clergy would rather not deal with these deaths, it is so very important for people whose loved ones have taken their lives to find a dignified way to pay proper tribute and respect to that life.

Denying a ceremony for someone who took their own life is damaging to their family and friends, both emotionally and psychologically. Bringing the family and loved ones together to share the grief and to understand the history and spirit of the person is vital for mental health and well being.

Through a carefully crafted ceremony that tells the story of the deceased—heritage, history, loves, hates, talents, relationships, accomplishments, foibles, failures and joys—we paint the picture of a real person.

We tell the story, heart and soul, and we share it with family and friends. An in-depth personal eulogy, or life tribute, becomes in itself "life affirming," a meaningful record for families and a legacy passed down to future generations.

For this artist's funeral ceremony, all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren painted something to be placed in his grave—a gift from younger generations to a previous one. The ceremony elaborated on the great Dutch heritage that thrives in the family of artistic expression through fine art painting. Every one of those 13 could draw or paint.

The ceremony acknowledged that this man who was a very talented artist also suffered during his life from various illnesses, went blind and, upon losing his dear wife of 50 years, who had died the year before, lost his will to live.

One of the artist's grandsons, who had been very much influenced by his grandfather, had become a fine artist himself.  He also arranged, not long after the funeral, a meeting with a curator to view his grandfather’s work, now displayed in the National Museum of Art.

As these vignettes about lives remembered and honored illustrate, showing an appreciation for life helps us appreciate our own lives. There is no better way to honor our departed loved ones than to create a ceremony that truly reflects the person we loved.

Funeral celebrants are trained laypeople available to work with a deceased person's family to plan and conduct a funeral service that celebrates the person's life. They are used most often when the deceased was not religious or had no relationship with a local minister or house of faith.
Celebrants are more widely used in Australia and New Zealand, where church attendance rates are low and cremation rates high, but they are becoming more common in North America. This is the story of how one celebrant provides a caring service to a Calgary funeral home and its families.

Bonnie Roddis operated veterinary clinics for 30 years and regularly takes animals to visit schools and nursing homes, but it is her role as a funeral celebrant that this resident of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, considers her life's calling.

Since attending celebrant training two years ago, Roddis has led approximately 200 services through Foster's Garden Chapel of Calgary. She considers a personalized service that enables even family members to learn more about the deceased to be "The last gift we can give. I just help the family find the right wrapping paper."

Several of the earliest services Roddis conducted were for indigents who had no money for funerals.

"I feel very strongly that everyone should have appropriate words said over them," Roddis said. While she received no money for these services, she described "the greatest payment I've ever received" as eight photographs of scenery around Banff in the Canadian Rockies taken by a man who died a pauper.

Learning about the person
Roddis' work begins when a funeral home contacts her to let her know it is serving a family that may be interested in her services.

She calls a family member, expresses condolence for their loss and arranges a time to meet at their home or at the funeral home. She then outlines what her role would be and what would be involved in preparing for the service.

If the family decides to engage her as celebrant, Roddis begins with a list of questions designed to obtain the family history and biographical facts about the deceased.

She then moves to a more open-ended approach and may say something like, "Give me five words that describe your dad," or "What was your mom like on holidays?"
During the interview, Roddis draws out information about pets, athletic pursuits, hobbies and anything else a family member thinks is important.

A young child once asked Roddis if she was going to speak about her grandmother and Roddis immediately asked the child if she had something she wanted to share.

"She could take her teeth out," the child replied. Roddis carefully crafted a way to use the story and drew smiles from family members in the process.

In another instance, Roddis worked with the family of a 37-yearold woman who had died of cancer. During the family meeting, Roddis learned the woman was an alcoholic who had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and stopped drinking three years earlier.

At her service, "we focused on what a fabulous thing she did when she joined AA and helped others at the same time," Roddis said.

"I speak for the immediate family about what they want people to know about their loved one," she said. "They want someone to talk about their love for the person. They want it put right."

Writing a good eulogy takes time
To get it right, Roddis spends two to six hours in the family meeting and then three to six hours putting the service together. As she writes a eulogy, she imagines one person in the service who never met the deceased. By the end of the service she wants that person to feel as though he or she did know the deceased.

For the family, Roddis wants "to give them a mental picture that's not as sad as the one they saw in the casket or at the hospital. You have to give them something good."

Roddis also works with the family to decide where the service should be held. She has officiated at services in funeral homes, private homes, yards, parks and a historic building.

"Not everyone's cathedral is made of brick or wood. It may be on a river bank or on a mountainside," she said.

Roddis, who is 56 and has multiple health problems, believes being a celebrant may be her last vocation. She also doesn't believe she could have done it at a younger age. "There is a wisdom that comes to a woman in her 50s," she said.

She is sometimes asked why she has chosen to be involved in such a "sad" line of work.

"I don't hear about sadness," she said. "I hear about courage, selflessness, love and many other human traits. I'm not making a fortune, but I'm making a difference."

An informal open house provides an excellent opportunity to reach out
to the community. By implementing a thoughtful program, you build credibility for your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium; educate the public; and, at the same time, help allay people's concerns about death and dying.

An open house can be held in conjunction with an opening, renovation or milestone celebration of your business or one of its principals. As a community relations tool, this special event "welcomes everyone" and raises public awareness of your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium.

Since this may be many of your guests' first experience with death education, it's important that the open house be handled in a sensitive way. Ideally, the clergy in your community should be invited to participate. They can be reassuring to guests as well as informative. All staff members should fully participate.

An open house can follow many formats. It might combine speaker(s) with an audiovisual presentation and/or a tour with information packets available for general distribution.

Whatever the specific details, planning should begin 10 weeks in advance. Use the planning timeline below as a guideline.

Week #1
Decide on the best weekend. Choose a convenient weekend that will ensure maximum participation. Avoid holiday weekends and focus on a two-day open house, held on both Saturday and Sunday, to generate the most impact. Keep the hours the same on both days, for example 1-5 p.m. or noon-6 p.m. Also pick an alternate weekend date, in case a need related to your business arises.

Consider scheduling special activities each day, such as a program and tour, and advertise these. Perhaps one of the days could be for the general public, and the other day for a specific audience.

Week #2
Determine the guest list. The sky's the limit in preparing the potential guest list, drawn from families and friends, clergy, healthcare professionals, local media, community leaders and members of services affiliated with your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium. (See the checklist below for more ideas.) In addition, your ads and flyers will attract the public, if designed carefully.

If your open house is being held to show off a new or renovated addition, consider inviting the contractors and architects.

As for prominent members of the community, handwrite their invitations personally on your business stationery. These may include political, civic and business professionals.

Remember to keep a comprehensive list with the names and addresses of all invited guests. This is particularly important for follow-up after the event.

Developing a guest list
Think about these groups of people to invite:
•    Veterans of Foreign Wars; the American Legion; the Royal Canadian Legion and auxiliaries of each of these groups
•    Ancillary military organizations
•    Friends/family you've served
•    Clergy, church staffs
•    Mayor and city council
•    Health care professionals including physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, hospital and retirement/long-term care administrators and staffs, medical examiner/coroner
•    Local principals of schools and their faculties, especially history teachers
•    Newspaper editors, reporters, obituary staff
•    Florists, printers, funeral home suppliers, cemetery boards, cemetery sextons, cemeterians
•    Other funeral directors, death educators
•    Bankers and accountants

Plan a tour of your facility or cemetery. How you plan the flow of traffic can make or break the success of your tour.

First, analyze your facility from the inside out. Indoors, you may have to temporarily rearrange or even remove furniture to create a streamlined path through your building.

Examine the outdoor parking situation. Do you need to rent additional parking spaces? Make sure your company cars are washed. waxed and polished.

Give your funeral home, cemetery office or crematorium that extra shine. As you would do to prepare for a party in your own home, take the extra time to make your place of business shine. You should always be meticulous about keeping it clean, but now is the time to undertake a thorough inspection.

Arrange for any special cleaning required of carpeting, draperies or upholstered furniture. Replace bad light bulbs, dust, make obvious repairs—touch up the paint if need be. You want your facilities to look their best, and it's the attention to small details that will payoff in the end.

Also make sure the exterior of your building is in tiptop condition. Pay attention to landscaping, lighting and condition of the building. If your open house involves dedicating a new building or area that has been recently completed. make sure the contractor has cleaned up. Also, remember to ensure accessibility for the handicapped.

Week #3
Assess expectations. Learn more about your guests and what they expect. Will this be the first time most of them are exposed to death education? Do your best to tailor the elements of the open house to the group's needs and interests.

Order invitations and thank-you notes. Your stationery reflects your professional image. Your printed invitations should be just right, so it's important to work with a printer you can trust. Select your invitations, such as panel cards. with thoughtful attention to paper quality and color. If you have a logo. consider using it. The wording on the invitation should be brief. Make sure you include:
•    the name and address of your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium,
•    the event,
•    date,
•    time and
•    any RSVP information.
(See the sample invitation below.)

Address the envelopes by hand with an attractive script. Simple, dignified thank you notes can match the invitation as to format and typeface, paper and color. Send one to each open house guest. (See the sample thank-you letter below.)

Develop visual aids and handouts. A professional slide or videotape presentation during your open house is a creative way to convey information. This visual medium is a diversion for the audience and can lend an interesting perspective, but it takes careful advance preparation. The presenter must thoroughly familiarize him/herself with the script, slides or video. It is also important to set aside ample time for questions immediately following the presentation.

People love to take handouts and reprints home for later reference, so prepare information packets to give out. Professional folders can hold a funeral home, cemetery or crematorium brochure (which often includes the history and services), a calendar of any future seminars or support groups, plus additional pamphlets on topics such as retirement, preplanning, the value of a funeral and memorialization, embalming and other topics.

SAMPLE THANK-YOU NOTE

On behalf of the staff of the Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium thank you for attending our recent Open House. Your participation helped make the event a success.

Please call on us at any time if we can help answer questions you may have.

Sincerely,
(Signature)
Rick Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium

SAMPLE OPEN HOUSE INVITATION

The staff of the Vanderbilt Funeral Home,
Cemetery & Crematorium
requests the pleasure of your company

at its Open House

commemorating the home's Tenth Anniversary
April 23-24, 2005, noon - 6 p.m.
Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium
146 Oak Street, Feathersville

Guest Speaker; Janet Storm
"The Value of the Funeral & Memorialization" 2 p.m. each day
RSVP (513) 721-9879

Week #4
Schedule the first staff meeting. Take this opportunity to discuss the details of the open house openly with your staff. Talk to them about the reasons for the event and what you hope to achieve. Make them aware of their individual value as part of the team. (See the proposed staff assignment chart below.)

 
Emphasize these points with your staff:
• Dress, conduct and language used during the open house should be the same as for a funeral or any visit by the public.
• Introductions are important, so meet as many guests as possible. (Staff should wear nametags.)
• Discuss the possible questions guests may ask. Practice clear, short answers.
• Talk about the role of funeral service representatives. Decide which casket, vault and embalming fluid sales reps to include on the guest list they can provide support and answer specialized questions.

Week #5
Invite the clergy. The clergy will add a lot to your open house, so invite them as far in advance as possible. You may want some members of the clergy to participate as speakers or activity leaders. Let those who agree know that they will be asked to attend one organizational meeting about a month before the event.

Arrange security. It is important to provide for adequate security. Hiring off-duty police or security guards will relieve you of extra worry. They are skilled in directing traffic, giving directions and offering assistance to elderly or handicapped guests as they arrive.

Instruct them to come an hour before the open house starts and continue on duty until one hour after it ends.
Spread the word through well planned ads. Working closely with the media to promote your event is vital to getting the word out about your open house. Consider the media the link that joins your message with your targeted audience.

First, you must clarify your targeted audience and then clarify your message by writing it down. Keeping your budget in mind, choose the appropriate medium; in this case, print advertising in your local newspaper.

Newspaper advertising: Newspapers are a good choice because they can quickly influence large markets on a daily or weekly basis. In addition. they offer special-interest sections that help focus your message, and a variety of ad sizes and formats to accommodate budgets.

Request the media kit from your local newspaper. It will describe ad sizes, rates, deadlines and other information. Select the local newspaper(s) with the greatest readership of men and women aged 55 or older. Your newspaper advertising representative will know the latest demographic figures. Establish and maintain a good relationship with this representative.

When writing the ad, make sure it includes the time, date, funeral home, cemetery or crematorium address and phone number. Emphasize the words "open house" to catch the readers' attention. List licensed personnel, if applicable. Mention and briefly describe your speaker, if you are having one, along with his/her topic. As with your invitations, try to keep the message simple and direct.

If you are celebrating a new or renovated facility, include "before" and "after" photos to highlight your progress. Some papers will take the new photo for you. and may also take photos the day of the event.

I recommend a "camera ready" ad, which means that artwork and written copy can be printed as submitted. If you can't find a freelance writer/designer to undertake this project, your newspaper will handle it for an additional charge. Run the ad within the metro/local news section or on the obituary page.

If the budget permits, run the ad for three consecutive weeks before the open house and on the day of the event. If this is too expensive, place the ad one week before and on the day of the open house.

Announcements, fliers and news releases:
• Make copies of your ad in the form of fliers, and ask community service groups to distribute them at meetings or insert them in their newsletters.
• Ask the participating clergy and others to announce the event to their congregations and at meetings. Also ask them to post the flier, if possible, and place an ad in local church bulletins.
• Send the flier to local retirement communities for posting.
• Prepare a professional news release for the local media. (See sample press release below.)  Limit the information to the key facts, answering the six basic journalistic questions: who, what, when, where, why and how. Be sure to list a contact person with day and evening phone numbers. If the open house is celebrating a new or renovated building, enclose a black-and-white photo.

Mail your release to editors at least two weeks in advance. Cover all daily and suburban papers and special interest papers for older adults.

SAMPLE PRESS RELEASE
Double-space your news release for greater legibility.

Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium
46 Oak Street
Feathersville, OH 45205

NEWS RELEASE

April 4, 2005

Contact: Ralph Bonham 829-0695
After 5 p.m., 829-1078

For Immediate Release

VANDERBILT FUNERAL HOME, CEMETERY & CREMATORIUM SPONSORS FREE OPEN HOUSE TO COMMEMORATE TENTH ANNIVERSARY

Feathersville, OH — In honor of its upcoming 10th Anniversary at the end of this month, the Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium will present a free open house and program, noon-6 p.m., April 23-24, at its location at 146 Oak Street.

"With this open house, we want to acknowledge and thank the members of the community for their support and loyalty over the last decade," says Rick Vanderbilt, President of Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium. "As we begin the next ten years, we continue to explore new ways to provide service, education and support."

During the open house weekend, Vanderbilt Funeral Home staff members will conduct escorted tours of the funeral home, cemetery and crematorium and answer questions about the funeral and cemetery profession. A speaker will talk on "The Value of the Funeral"/"The Value of Memorialization" at 2 p.m. each day.

Vanderbilt Funeral Home, Cemetery & Crematorium originally opened its doors at 256 Locust Street in Newtonsville, OH, moving to its present location on Oak Street ten years ago. President Rick Vanderbilt is a licensed funeral director and experienced grief counselor.

#####

Week #6
Hold an organizational meeting. Meeting with the participating clergy one month in advance of the open house is an excellent idea. They will want to learn the details of the event firsthand and have a chance to ask questions. Review the guest list and agenda, the roles they are expected to take and the roles of the funeral home, cemetery or crematorium staff. Distribute information packets with promotional fliers for them to take back to their houses of worship.

Mail invitations and track responses. Now is the time to actually mail invitations. As responses come in, keep a running guest count. Familiarize every staff member with the invitation list, particularly the prominent figures, as they respond.

Order premiums. To add to your guests' satisfaction, offer small favors as tokens of goodwill. Imprint them with the name, address, phone number and logo of your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium. Make sure you order enough to cover the number of expected guests.

Premium ideas include: calendars, magnets for refrigerators, pens or pencils, pencil cups, drink holders, mugs, key chains, appointment books or golf balls and tees.

Week #7
Schedule a second staff meeting. At this follow-up meeting, remind your staff of the importance of guest relations. Emphasize that they should welcome each guest warmly, shaking hands and directing them to activities and refreshments. Tell them to be on the lookout for anyone with serious questions. Again, role-play the kinds of questions that may arise. Advise them of the guest questionnaire (see sample questions below), and designate a staff member to be in charge of distribution and collection.

Possible questions for your evaluation form
Some simple yes/no questions:
•    Was the open house informative?
•    Were all your questions answered?
•    Did you feel comfortable throughout the tour?
•    Did the video add to the presentation?
•    Do you feel more likely to call the funeral home, cemetery or crematorium staff in the future if you have questions?

Prepare a guest questionnaire. Written evaluations from the guests can provide invaluable information to improve special events in the future. The forms must be short and to-the-point. Print enough for everyone on your professional stationery.

Include ample space for comments and suggestions. Some people won't mind providing their names and addresses, which can later be added to your mailing list. Others will prefer to remain anonymous. This information can also help you mail thank-you notes promptly.

Also this week:
• Remember to touch base with the clergy by phone at this time. to see if they have any questions.
• Run your ad for the first time.

Week #8
Select a door prize. A drawing for a door prize can increase your guests' interest and enjoyment. A color TV, purchased from a local merchant, is recommended. This will really get people talking.

Make sure you print up entry forms to include the guest's name, address and phone number. This information can be added to your mailing list later.

Plan refreshments. If your state allows food to be served in a funeral home, cemetery or crematorium, you might consider light refreshments such as soft drinks, coffee, tea, cookies or small pastries.

Mail news releases. Mail the releases at this time to specific editors at the selected newspapers, to church and civic groups' newsletters and to people you know will post them. Make sure all the media receive them, including public service and assignment editors at radio and television stations.

Also this week:
Make sure the premiums have arrived. If they have not, immediately check with your supplier.
• Run your ad for the second time.

Week # 9
Meet with your staff a final time. Discuss any last minute changes and review the guest list. Let them know you will be asking them to critique the open house.

Also, remind them to tell guests that they can leave the tour portion of the event, should they feel apprehensive, and rejoin it later if they wish.

Order flowers. Fresh flowers always add beauty and elegance to the atmosphere. Consider arrangements for the registration table, arrangement office, chapel/visitation area or refreshment table.

Set up a registration table. The day before the open house, set up a small registration table at the entrance, with a book for guests' names, addresses and phone numbers. Assign a staff person to oversee the "sign-in" process.

Also this week: Your ad should run again.

Week #10: The day of the open house
Run a large ad in the daily newspaper. This will catch the eye of people looking for something to do at the spur of the moment, and remind others that "today's the day."

Cultivate a positive attitude. The day you've worked so hard for has finally arrived. Make a duplicate guest list so you and others in charge can refer to it during the event, and keep the agenda of the day's activities handy. It's your job to supervise everything and see that all is on track. Most of all, attend to your guests' needs.

Week # 10: Follow-up
Assess evaluations. It is important to take the time to review these carefully. Meet with your staff to invite their candid remarks about the open house; how they viewed the planning process and the actual day. Don't overlook this valuable opportunity.

Send thank-you notes. Take the time to write a thank-you note to each guest and helpful friend attending and working at the event. This is a thoughtful action that will add to the positive image you've already generated.

Also remember to thank your own staff members in writing.

Initiate a direct mail campaign. To piggyback off the success of your open house, consider developing and sending out a direct mail piece.

You may already have a comprehensive brochure about your funeral home, cemetery or crematorium that's ready to go. You might also consider sending a two-page newsletter that promotes a future seminar or provides other useful information.

Promote future speaking engagements. At an appropriate interval, or in the thank-you note, let it be known that you're available to speak to community groups.

Ask your guests to recommend you to others if they like. This is one way to continue your awareness-building program.

As every funeral professional knows very well, hanging can be and often is one of the most disturbing death scenes to be called to. I have seen many such cases, and it amazes me the ways in which the trauma to the head and neck can vary. Of course I am not talking about capital punishment cases here, only about accidental hangings and intentional ones (suicide).

Both accidental and intentional hanging can result in significant problems for the embalmer. But often the hanging victim can be embalmed by using a restricted cervical, injecting both left and right carotids and taking drainage from the left and right jugular veins.

The principal problem frequently found with hanged victims is blood congestion in the face and the neck. In older individuals with sclerotic arteries, complete severance of the arteries has been known to occur.

As mentioned above, the carotid approach is best in these cases. I have used a small amount (6 ounces) of a quality pre-injections fluid to assist in removing the discoloration due to the congestion of blood in the head. Following this I inject a waterless embalming solution made up of 16 ounces of a coinjection chemical, 8 ounces of a 25 index arterial fluid and 4 ounces of a humectant for rehydration of the tissues.

I sometimes will hypodermically inject a small amount of a bleaching agent, but usually the action of the preinjections chemical will suffice to handle the discoloration. After dealing with that, tie off the left common carotid artery and left internal jugular vein and start injecting the rest of the body.

In treating the cavities, be very careful to thoroughly aspirate the thorax. If the noose of the rope ruptured the circulation, there may be accumulations in the upper thorax of blood that flowed out under pressure at the moment the noose injured the arteries and veins.

When the cavities are thoroughly relieved and then treated with a quality cavity chemical, one bottle up and one bottle down, there should be no more trouble. However, as all embalmers are aware, there are no guarantees in the art of embalming, so regular monitoring of these cases is a necessity.

After several hours, a quality tissue-building injection may be introduced beneath the traumatized area where the noose did damage to properly reestablish the normal appearance of the neck, which may have been compressed by trauma. Cosmetics can generally conceal any discoloration or marks that may remain at the end of the procedure.

Dealing with clients who are upset with your funeral home or cemetery is not pleasant, but it is necessary You want upset clients complaining to you, not to everyone else in the community you serve. There are practical ways to head off problems, to diffuse situations when problems do occur and even to learn things from upset clients that will help you improve your company's service to families.
 
Calming upset clients is rarely pleasant, but it must be done. The No.1 reason: Bad information travels faster than good information. If you please someone, that person will tell three people. If you displease someone or if that person is upset, he or she will tell 15 people! What's worse, the one person that upset client probably won't talk to is you.

A recent study showed that 96 percent of business clients don't complain to the business when they have a problem. This means that for every complaint you receive there are 24 unhappy clients.

As you can see from the information box, "Why you lose business," you should be less worried about price competition and more about making sure that families are pleased with the services and products you provide and that they feel they have been treated with courtesy and respect by you and your staff.

The second major reason you must deal with upset clients is that you can learn from them and improve the quality of service you provide to all families. They may clue you in on things that are annoying other clients, who don't speak up, as well, or may alert you to behavior by staff members that you are unaware of and that is irritating clients.

In any case, dealing with a client who is upset will teach you patience, at the least, and doing so successfully will build your confidence.

Why do clients get upset?
Clients can become upset for many potential reasons. Among the most common:
•    Their expectations have not been met.
•    They are already upset with the company and something has happened to set them off.
•    They are tired, stressed, frustrated and in grief.
•    They feel like victims and are suffering from loss of control over their lives.
•    No one will listen to them.
•    They want to feel "right."
•    They have a chip on their shoulder.
•    Someone at your company made them a promise and did not keep it.
•    Someone at your company was rude, indifferent or discourteous.
•    They have received inconsistent messages from your staff members.
•    They acted on information your staff gave them and it turned out to be wrong.
•    They feel that someone in your organization doesn't like them.
•    They were not listened to.
•    They have some sort of prejudice against the way you or your staff members are groomed or dressed.
•    They feel they can manipulate you by making noise.
•    They are suspicious of your organization.
•    They had made incorrect assumptions about your company.
•    They were told by your staff not to be angry.
•    A staff member gave them a smart or flip answer.
•    The person they were talking to at your funeral home or cemetery transferred their call to someone else without first asking their consent.
•    Their phone call was screened.
•    They were embarrassed at doing something wrong.
•    Their honesty or integrity was questioned.
•    Someone at the funeral home or cemetery argued with them.
•    Your staff was unable to handle a situation or question quickly and accurately.

Remember, annoyances that a client usually tolerates become intolerable when that individual is upset. You can't control another person's behavior, but you can change your behavior to avoid causing more annoyances.

Avoidable upsets
First, go back and look at the list of reasons clients get upset. Which ones do you have control over? List those you feel you can at least partially control and note what actions you could take to keep those things from happening.

The annoyances you have some responsibility for causing are:
•    You or someone in your funeral home or cemetery promised something that was not delivered.
•    You or someone in your funeral home or cemetery was indifferent, rude or discourteous.
•    You or someone in your funeral home or cemetery had an unpleasant attitude.
•    No one on your staff listened to the client.
•    Someone told the client they had no right or reason to be angry.
•    Someone gave the client a smart or flip remark.
•    Someone at the funeral home or cemetery embarrassed the client for doing something wrong.
•    Someone at the funeral home or cemetery questioned the client's honesty or integrity.
•    Someone at the funeral home or cemetery argued with the client.

There are many things you can do to avoid turning a dissatisfied client into an angry one through careful attention to your personal presentation and to both your verbal and non-verbal communication.
Personal Presentation. This may seem basic, but you should make sure that you and your employees present a pleasing appearance at all times by running down this simple checklist: good general hygiene, hair clean and well kept, make-up neatly applied, face shaved, breath fresh and clothing pressed.

Non-verbal Communication. The importance of body language has long been recognized. You must give the upset client your full attention in a respectful manner. You and your staff members should assess yourselves (or each other) in the following areas to see where you might improve:

•    Facial expression: Maintain a calm, concerned, sincere and interested expression.
•    Body posture: Remain attentive by standing or sitting up straight.
•    Movement: Clients who are upset want to see appropriate action taking place to solve their problems.
•    Gestures: Do not cross your arms. As awkward as it may feel, hold your arms at your side.
•    Smoking: Even if you are in an area where smoking is allowed, never smoke while you are dealing with an upset client.
•    Chewing gum or eating: Again, never do this when dealing with a person who is upset. The situation could easily escalate so that you are dealing with an extremely irate client.
•    Touching: Avoid touching-it could set off violence.

Verbal Communication. See the table "Words that make a difference" for a list of common mistakes to avoid and suggestions for getting the same point across in a non-confrontational way more likely to move the situation toward a resolution. In addition, remember:

•    Watch your tone of voice. People often respond as much to how something is said as to what is said.
•    Watch out for sighing. This may be your automatic reaction when you are confronted with a difficult situation, but do not do it in front of clients, since it suggests annoyance or impatience.
•    Never curse. Even if the client curses, there is never an excuse for a professional to curse.

Calming upset clients
What do clients who are upset really want? Of course it varies from person to person, from situation to situation. In general, one or several of the following applies. They want:

•    To be taken seriously.
•    To be treated with respect—no condescension or arrogance.
•    To get immediate action—no "next day, next week, next month" stuff.
•    To gain compensation or restitution—they want someone to pay.
•    To have the party who wronged them reprimanded and/or punished—they want corrective action.
•    To clear up whatever caused the problem so it will never happen again.
•    To be listened to. This is the most important thing to remember when you are trying to calm an upset client.

Improving your listening habits
There are a number of behaviors that make people feel their complaint is not being heard. Dr. Lyman K. Steil of St. Paul, Minnesota, compiled a list of trouble spots listed below. Go through this list of troublesome listening habits and the suggested corrections to help you improve your response to people who are complaining or upset:

•    Criticizing the speaker and delivery.  Focus on the client's thoughts and feelings rather than how well he or she is expressing them.
•    Listening only for facts and not feelings. Most people say they are "not" upset, even when they are.
•    Not taking notes or trying to write down everything. Taking brief notes shows interest and covers you later. However, make sure you are not constantly writing and looking at the paper instead of at the person talking.
•    Faking attention. Do not "tune out" the person and think of something else while he or she goes on at length. People don't just want to talk, they want to be heard. Pay close attention so that you will be able to respond properly.
•    Tolerating or creating distractions.  Don't be distracted and don't tolerate distractions. Hold your calls and tell your staff you are not to be disturbed.
•    Tuning out difficult or confusing information. Ask the client to slow down and ask for more details if necessary.
•    Letting emotional words block the message. Ignore name-calling by an irate client.
•    Interrupting or finishing the other person's sentences. This is always an irritant to a person who is upset. Let him tell his story his way.
•    Biases and prejudices. Work on eliminating this.
•    Not facing the person who is upset.  Look the person in the eye.
•    Not checking to make sure you have understood the problem correctly. Repeat back to the person what you have understood the problem to be.

Use verbal cushions
Showing that you empathize with the person who is upset can help the situation. Try saying something like:

•    "I can appreciate what you're saying."
•    "I can understand how you'd feel that way."
•    "I can understand how that would be annoying."
•    "I can see how you would be upset."
•    "I would be upset, too."
•    "It sounds as if we've caused you inconvenience. I'm sorry."

Use the three Fs: feel, felt and found
"I understand how you could feel that way. Others have felt that way too, and then they found that we were able to correct the situation without any difficulty."

Additional ideas to help you stay in control
Remember: Don't take things personally. Keep your focus on gathering information, assessing the situation and coming up with solutions.

•    If you are losing it, excuse yourself for a short time. You could say, "I need to verify some information on this file."
•    Don't cry! Cry later; never cry in front of an upset client.
•    Get the client's attention. If the client is ranting, use his or her name. Most people stop and listen when they hear their name.
•    If the client is obstinate and resisting your suggestions for a solution, ask the client for a solution. "What would you like me to do now?"
•    Using polite repetition, tell them what you can do for them. Repetition helps understanding.

One caveat: We are talking here about people who are upset or angry, perhaps even teary or shouting. But if a client actually threatens violence, seek assistance immediately. You do not have to put up with threats, nor should you.

Debriefing after the client has left
After dealing with an upset client, perform an incident review. This should not be a gossiping session with fellow employees—"You won't believe what I just went through." This isn't about you, it's about improving service to your families.

It's a good idea for staff meetings to include time for sharing staff experiences in dealing with upset clients and what worked and what didn't work. Talk about what else could be tried if a similar situation arises.  In some cases, you may want to discuss whether the cemetery or funeral home should change a policy or procedure to prevent similar problems or misunderstandings in the future.

To prepare for the staff meeting, review the incident and jot down some notes about what happened and how you handled it. Some of the questions you may want to consider:

•    What did I do well in calming this client down?
•    What could I have done sooner or better to calm him down?
•    What did I say that I don't want to say again?
•    How was my body language?
•    What did I learn?

Guidelines for managers
Your goal as manager of the funeral home or cemetery is to create an environment conducive to client satisfaction.

•    Be a role model. Don't expect your staff to use good listening skills and deal empathetically with people if you don't do so yourself.
•    Ask for your staff's suggestions. Talk about how to better serve families at staff meetings.
•    Solicit client feedback. You can send postage-paid return cards or surveys to families after serving them, or solicit the information through telephone calls.
•    Reward good client service behavior.
•    Encourage your staff to use their initiative to solve problems. You have to set limits, of course, but you don't want staff members further angering already upset clients by responding to every problem with an "I can't authorize that" or "I'll have to ask my boss."
•    Don't talk negatively about clients.  This fosters a negative atmosphere; you want to promote a positive approach to dealing with families.
•    Know when to fire a client! If a client continually upsets your staff for trivial reasons, you may need to invite that client to consider another firm. As extreme as this may sound, it is a potential solution. Some families do call a funeral home or cemetery that is not a good match for their needs and desires, and their disappointment ends up being expressed in continual nastiness.

How do you serve the ethnic markets in your community?
Perhaps with culture-specific merchandise in your selection room, bilingual staff members and special events tied to their cultural heritages.
Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey has gone a step further—a big step.
The company opened a new funeral home, under a different name, aimed at the growing Hispanic community in Waco, Texas.

The typical funeral home doesn't hold a grand opening fiesta. But then Funeraria Brazos isn't your typical funeral home, at least not in North America.

In November 2003, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey, a family-owned funeral home in Waco since 1925, transformed one of its two locations into Funeraria Brazos, which advertises servicio con un abrazo de familia a familia (service with an embrace from family to family).

Vidal De Leon, who came to work at Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey in 2001 as a preneed counselor and has since graduated from the Dallas Institute of Funeral Service, manages Funeraria Brazos. He had previously worked at Wolfe Florist Inc. for 31 years.

The idea for a separate funeral home specializing in serving Hispanic families came through De Leon's talks with Darrell Simpson, WHB vice president. There are Hispanic funeral homes in other cities, including Dallas and Austin, but not in Waco, where the 2000 census recorded a population of 114,000, of which 24 percent is Hispanic—a much smaller market than Dallas (1.2 million, 36 percent Hispanic) or Austin (657,000, 31 percent Hispanic).

With WHB President Hatch Bailey's approval, the planning for Waco's first Hispanic funeral home began in 2003. According to De Leon, the process of transforming the existing funeral home into Funeraria Brazos was relatively easy. Though the downtown location was the company's first, opened in 1925, in recent years only 20 percent of WHB's families had chosen to use that facility.

The building's Spanish architecture was perfectly suited for use as a Hispanic funeral home. However, a new interior design was needed.
"We now have more of a Hispanic, Southwest flavor to our decor," De Leon said. "We make use of bold colors. One of the most talked-about accessories is a pottery-type figurine of people carrying a cross."

"We incorporate candles for certain services," De Leon said as he discussed the interior design. "This is a constant process with us, because we want this funeral home to have energy while still being a place of comfort. We are very proud to show people our funeral home while giving them information about our services."

After six months of work, Funeraria Brazos, Waco's first and only Hispanic funeral home, was ready to open its doors to the Hispanic community. Staffing needs were met through both a transfer of existing staff and new hiring.

The grand opening fiesta took place on November 2, 2003, El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, a traditional Hispanic holiday honoring loved ones who have passed on from this life to the next. More than 400 people attended the opening, and every media outlet in Waco covered the event.

Service families expect
Funeraria Brazos is dedicated to accommodating Hispanic funeral customs in order to help the family through the grieving process. Hispanic families typically expect more time for viewing and visitation. Children are frequently brought to the funeral home. Hispanic families also stay much later into the night during the viewing than is typical in Anglo culture.

"We have extended hours," De Leon said. "We have organized all-night wakes, and we have been here Saturdays and Sundays." Funeraria Brazos is more than willing to meet each family's needs as it works to achieve success "one funeral at a time," he said.

The staff has not assumed that people automatically will flock to the funeral home. Funeraria Brazos has implemented an aggressive marketing strategy, including television spots, direct mail, brochures, sponsorships, radio spots and speaking engagements.

The marketing campaign began in April 2004 with a postcard mailing to nearly 2,500 Waco households. The postcard featured De Leon and graphically illustrated the funeral home's competitive prices.

The marketing has continued ever since:
• The funeral home hosted a successful breakfast for area Hospice employees and staff to tour the facility. The question and answer portion of the event lasted nearly two hours.

• De Leon has spoken about funeral service and the importance of preplanning to numerous organizations, including the Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and local church groups.

• Television and radio spots have been produced in English and Spanish and aired on both English and Spanish-language stations.

• Funeraria Brazos has sponsored events in the Waco area such as the Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. At Waco's Cinco de Mayo event last year, De Leon passed out information and discussed Funeraria Brazos.

• In honor of its first anniversary, the funeral home distributed a full-size, Spanish themed 2005 calendar featuring reminders of dozens of local Hispanic events.

Community ties
A Waco native and a well-respected member of the Hispanic community, De Leon
was a perfect person to lead Funeraria Brazos. During his 31 years at the florist shop, he served part of the time as personnel director. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus, a former Big Brothers and Big Sisters board member and a former member of the McLennan Community College Board of Trustees.

In addition, Funeraria Brazos has a five-member advisory team to help tap into the community the funeral home serves. According to De Leon, the five member advisory team, which meets regularly "to assist Funeraria Brazos in assuring that the needs of the Hispanic community are met," has helped shape the funeral home's vision. It was the advisory team's idea to create and distribute the calendar.

Team members are:
• Rose Flores, a Waco native with the local chapter of the American Heart Association and a volunteer for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

• George Gobea, a retired community leader who worked with the model city program and was a member of the Equal Opportunity Advancement Corp. and now runs an antique shop.

• Carlos Pesina Jr., City Council member and owner of Hair Designs.

• Ruben M. Santos, former Waco mayor and former Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president. A former Baylor University employee, he is now at the Brazos Higher Education Service Corp.

• JoAnn Benavidez Wright, a Waco native who serves on the board of Avancé Waco, a program that teaches young mothers parenting skills, and a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The press release announcing Funeraria Brazos' marketing campaign last spring included comments from Pesina on the benefits of preneed funeral planning. "The prearrangements that I have made for my father have taken away most of the concerns I will face at the time of his death," Pesina said. "I have just finished paying on the five year finance plan, and now the price of my father's funeral is locked into 1998 prices. Prearrangement of funerals is a good thing that more Hispanics need to be aware of. I applaud Funeraria Brazos and Vidal De Leon for bringing this service to our Spanish speaking community."

Clearly, that sort of endorsement from a community leader helps. "I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful team of folks who understand and want to play such an important role," De Leon said.

After a year of operation, "The excitement and passion are still very much with us," De Leon said. "We're providing the best funeral service to every family that walks through our door."

According to De Leon, Funeraria Brazos will continue to grow and meet the needs of Waco's growing Hispanic community. Hispanics are the largest minority group and fastest growing ethnicity in Texas.

"The market is going to grow, not get smaller," De Leon said. "Those businesses that will be playing catch-up in five years will not be able to."

I always thought that funeral home clocks were simply a matter of public relations, advertising, good will and a convenience to the community. Boy was I wrong!

I discovered that it was no mere advertising agency’s thinking that it would be a good idea to put a clock on funeral home buildings. No, there was and still is a profound symbolic message to the combination of the ticking clock and the work going on inside the mortuary, a message that was no fortunate accident of public relations.

The great psychologist Rollo May writes on page 49 of his book. “Existence”: “The confrontation of death gives the most positive reality to life itself. It makes the individual existence real, absolute and concrete. Death is the one fact of my life which is not relative, but absolute, and my awareness of this gives my existence and what I do each hour an absolute quality.”

Dr. May is right and we all know it, but we also live in a terribly death-denying time and culture, and it is not getting better. Being carefree, thin, beautiful, blissful, wealthy, etc. are much more attractive to people these days than heeding Dr. May’s message, the message those clocks on funeral home buildings also convey.

Years ago, when people would pass the undertaking parlor, mortuary, funeral home or embalming company and look at the clock, the meaning was clear: The minutes of my life are ticking away with every tick of that funeral home’s (death) clock, and someday, someplace, sometime my clock, my time, is going to stop.

This unspoken message connecting time with death was so powerful that in 1876 Henry Clay Work composed the grand old song, “My Grandfather’s Clock.” The lyrics are devoted precisely to the theme of time and death. Remember the words:

My grandfather’s clock Was too large for the shelf, So it stood ninety years on the floor; It was taller by half, Than the old man himself, Though it weighted not a pennyweight more. It was bought on the morn Of the day that he was born, And was always his treasure and pride; But it stopped short Never to go again, When the old man died. Ninety years without slumbering Tick, tock, tick, tock, His life seconds numbering, Tick, tock, tick, Never to go again When the old man died.

I remember singing at the top of my lungs in the 1950s when I was a schoolboy and our class would sing this great old song. At the time, I had no idea what the words meant, but I do now.

The symbolic meaning of combining time with death which is so elegantly and gently and silently done by putting a clock on a funeral home building sends a message, a terribly valuable message to every generation: There is an urgency to live your life now and to the fullest because your time is not limitless; your time will end. Life is fragile and each second that ticks by is gone forever and all the money that Warren Buffet might have cannot purchase one second of it—time is the most valuable thing in life. Time if fleeting, and so is life. It is here now and then gone in a flash. We ourselves are here now and then gone in a flash.

It is well to remind ourselves in funeral service sociology that in Orthodox Judaism when someone dies the family will do two things immediately. They will cover all the mirrors in the home, and they will intentionally stop all the clocks. Time symbolically stands still, for a while at least, and then time moves on. This is a powerful message about life and death.

So my good friends in funeral service, the next time you look to see what time it is and the clock you are looking at is on the funeral home building, take a moment to reflect what a precious gift our time on earth really is. What a novel way to teach personal death awareness –simply putting a clock on a funeral home building. Whoever thought that one up was wise.

I also want to thank my colleague who called me with that question. Mighty interesting stuff! Well, anyway, that’s one old undertaker’s opinion.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

When I was a young lad growing up in Iowa I would walk right past the local funeral home on my way to and from school. The funeral home in our town was founded the same years as the town, and the building was really a most impressive “mansion,” if such a thing is possible in a small Iowa village, population 1,500.

On the front of the funeral home was a big black clock. For years the clock hung from the front porch of the funeral home until the new owner remodeled the building and enclosed the porch. In enclosing the porch, he made an alcove where the big black clock would sit for another 100 years. Everybody in town looked at that clock when they would pass the funeral home. People would set their watches by that big black clock. People would use it as a barometer as to whether they were running late or early. The clock was a landmark fixture in our town. That big black funeral home clock had a large face, large numerals and hands, and below in solid black letters it said BLUST BROS. (They were our trusted undertakers.)

The other day I received a phone call from a funeral director who asked me a terribly interesting question: “Todd, why do so many funeral homes have a clock on the front of their building or standing in their front lawn?” I was absolutely baffled, and because I do not like being baffled about anything concerning my beloved profession, I was now on the hunt. I had a mission, and I found out some interesting facts which I will share with you later, in part two.

As I pondered my own experiences, I realized just how many funeral homes I have seen over the years have had clocks on their properties. When I was working for Heafey & Heafey in Omaha, the Brewer-Korisko Mortuary in South Omaha had a clock over its portico which was a landmark for people who lived in South Omaha.

Even I had clocks on the two funeral homes I owned a lifetime ago in Iowa. I remember very well when I moved one of the clocks to what I thought was a more prominent location on the building, I received so many phone calls complaining and scolding me about moving that landmark that I ended up moving the clock back to where it had originally been—behind an evergreen bush. Logical or not, people do not like rapid change in a funeral home, and I learned that lesson the hard way.

I remember being in Seattle for a seminar and going by the old ER Butterworth & Sons building, now The Chapel bar and a law office. Sure enough, over the front corner of the building still stood that magnificent clock which had been Butterworth’s trademark for decades.

One of the most impressive funeral home clocks I have ever seen is on the building of the Fox Funeral Home in Forest Hills, New York, which is owned by my longtime friend Wayne Baxter. That clock is also a Forest Hills landmark and has graced the building since it was built.