The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [55]
The bronze deal, whether pre-, post- or at-need, can be greatly facilitated by the use of sales letters, which are followed up by telephone calls and personal visits from the Bronze-Memorial Counselors. The Matthews Memorial Bronze Company has prepared dozens of suggested sales letters with which the cemetery can pepper lot holders at appropriate intervals:
Dear Friend,
The other day, we and our Maintenance crews were out working the section of the cemetery where your family estate is located. Naturally, we couldn’t help but notice that the graves were unmemorialized.
One of the workmen commented that an unmarked grave is a sad thing.
Some of the letters are geared to seasonal use: “Dear Friend, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” … “Dear Friend, In a few weeks the forsythia and daffodils will raise their golden horns to the sky and trumpet in the warm winds of spring.” … “Dear Friend, Soon the year will repeat its old story.” … “Dear Friend, Soon Easter will be upon us once again.” … “Dear Friend, The second Sunday in May is Mother’s Day.” … “Dear Friend, Does Memorial Day make you think about a drive in the country?” … “Dear Friend, Decoration Day is just a few short weeks away.” … “Dear Friend, Once again Christmas is almost here.” After four or five paragraphs of trumpeting forsythia or happy Mom’s Day visits, the point is made: “But if you want bronze memorialization by the holiday, you’ve got to act swiftly. You see, it takes many weeks to individually handcraft and deliver the memorial of your selection.”
Another tactic being used by cemeteries is to contact lot owners, asking them to come in so the cemetery can update its new computer. Once there, the future resident is reminded of the ever-looming threat of inflation and persuaded to purchase vault and memorials “now.” Opening and closing can be paid for in advance, too, and one Virginia gentleman was induced to plunk down $900—to cover the weekend or holiday rates, just in case.
Just what happens to the money that is collected on the “pre-need bronze deal” is not quite clear. The pre-need space buyer receives for his money a salable ownership interest in an existing bit of real estate, whereas the pre-need “bronze” buyer receives only a certificate telling him that when he dies a piece of metal will be manufactured and set in his grave. The seller meantime—and it may be a very long time—has the use not only of the money paid for the memorial-to-be, but an additional sum which the purchaser has been obliged to pay for its perpetual care! Regulatory laws that might give the buyer some measure of protection have not yet, in many states, been enacted.
Another idea used by most cemeteries is the “perpetual care fund.” The uninitiated might expect that, having paid a pretty penny for a crypt or a grave, the costs of upkeep might be borne by the cemetery. Not at all. There is added to the cost of cemetery and mausoleum space a surcharge of 10 to 20 percent for future care; some mausoleums charge as much as 25 percent of the price of the crypt. Graves need tending, it is true, but the care that needs to be lavished on a cement crypt is somewhat hard to envisage.
The monies so collected are kept by the cemetery owner, supposedly as an endowment fund to guarantee such care forever in the future, a promise palpably incapable of fulfillment. Nevertheless, the magic of pre-need selling has swelled these funds in many cases to huge proportions. The money held in such funds in the United States totaled over $1 billion in 1961 and has swelled to over $20 billion in the ensuing thirty-five years.
The cemetery operators to whom these funds have been entrusted have not always been as scrupulously honest in their stewardship as one might hope. The itinerant promoter who moves his sales crew into a community to saturate it with pre-need sales is hardly the type one would expect to sit around and wait for his sold-out cemetery to fill up, much less wait forever to lavish perpetual care upon it. And when he moves on to the next community, he has not always been