The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [140]
News stories popped up occasionally when a cemetery or funeral establishment went out of business, the proprietor having absconded with the funds. Lisa Carlson’s Caring for Your Own Dead—a state-by-state manual for those living in one of the forty-two states where it is legal to bypass the funeral industry entirely—was published by a small press and garnered good reviews, but it was not readily available in bookstores. The funeral industry continued to thrive with relatively little attention.
When the Funeral Rule was reopened for amendments in 1988, the media ignored the hearings. No one was there to hear the stories of continued consumer abuse at the hands of an industry that ignored the rule. No one was there to hear the pleas for bringing cemeteries under the rule. All seemed well for the industry.
But in the eighties—with AIDS deaths a near epidemic—a much younger generation was becoming involved with the final arrangements, and many didn’t like what they found.
One of those was Karen Leonard. Her first foray into the realm of death care was as co-owner of a casket-and-urn “gallery” in San Francisco—Ghia—where one could purchase a work of art for the final resting place. Carlson thought that if people were going to purchase their own caskets, they might want a do-it-yourself guide for the rest of the funeral, and rushed off a carton of Caring for Ghia to display.
The gallery struggled and only a few books sold, but Leonard found herself surrounded by people with “new” ideas for the dying. Without exception, each had “horror stories” of unpleasant funeral experiences and were looking for more meaningful ways of “celebrating” a life once lived. It wasn’t long before Leonard was introduced to the memorial society folks and began her funeral education in earnest.
Carlson began passing along the occasional media inquiry to Leonard. One was from a producer for “20/20.” Undercover and with hidden camera, she was able to provide television audiences with a clear look at some of the less-than-ethical practices of the funeral trade.
The industry cried foul, saying that the portrayals were isolated incidents, but it was clearly stung.
The press began to take notice. In 1996 the magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Modern Maturity—which had avoided anything “downbeat” for years—finally ran a story on funeral planning. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Money Magazine followed suit the next year.
The mood in the Dismal Trade grew nervous. The NFDA opened a Washington, D.C., office where its liaison spends time trotting around Capitol Hill—to win friends and influence people, in preparation for a possible reopening of the Funeral Rule.
A June 1997 editorial in The Director might have been written thirty-five years ago but for its let’s-all-buck-up tone; President Maurice Newnam offers this fatherly counsel: “The importance of the memory picture created by the properly embalmed and restored loved one is something we must never lose sight of and never be ashamed to ask permission to do.… Hold your head high, take care in the work you do and be proud to be an embalmer.”
Ron Hast (Mortuary Management, February 1997) is more candid: “Think about how the public must perceive funeral service as we caress our solid copper caskets, and extol the virtues of embalming and extended preservation. Our critics are gaining attention, and more and more client families come to us with skepticism. In fact, some clients seeking death care service don’t come to us at all.”
19
Pay Now—Die Poorer
“In the Depression years, every community had a form of preneed,” mused North Dakota funeral director Tom Fisher in a poolside chat with the author in 1995. “In my own community we had the Farmers Union Burial Cooperative Society.”
The early funeral and memorial societies—most of them urban—expressed divergent views on the subject of paying for a funeral in advance. Many societies actively promoted “peace of mind by planning ahead,” negotiating for fixed prices with cooperating mortuaries. Not all were willing to