The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [71]
* And more recently still, an executive officer of Service Corporation International (see chapter 16).
* See footnote, this page.
11
What the Public Wants
The funeral service profession exists only because it has received the approval of the public…. Present methods, facilities and merchandise exist because the public has found in them values it has been willing to pay for in spite of the necessary sacrifice of other things.…
Are these values real? Do they spring from higher and finer motives? Do they lift and inspire? Are they worth what they cost? The answer is found in the reactions of the public. If the public accepts these things, prefers these things, the answer is in the affirmative.
—EDWARD A. MARTIN, B.A., MORTICIAN,
Psychology of Funeral Service
The theme that the American public, rather than the funeral industry, is responsible for our funeral practices—because it demands “the best” in embalming and merchandise for the dead—is one often expounded by funeral men. “We are merely giving the public what it wants,” they say.
This is an interesting idea. It is a little hard to conceive of how this public demand is expressed and made known in practice to the seller of funeral service. Does the surviving spouse, for example, go into the funeral establishment and say, “I want to be sure my wife is thoroughly disinfected and preserved. Her casket must be both comfortable and eternally durable. And—oh yes, do be sure her burial footwear is really practical”?
Perhaps it does not often happen just like that. Yet it has been known to happen, and in fairness to the undertaking trade, an example should be given of a case in which the funeral buyer, of sound mind and deeply aware of his own desires, wanted and demanded the best.
The case involves Mr. August Chelini, a fifty-seven-year-old mechanic, sometime scrap dealer and garage owner. His monthly earnings averaged $300 to $400. Mr. Chelini, an only child, lived with his aged mother, who died in 1943 at the age of ninety-nine years and seven months. It then became incumbent upon Mr. Chelini to arrange for the funeral, which he did by calling in Mr. Silvio Nieri, an undertaker and family friend.
What developed is best recounted by quoting from the transcript of the case of August Chelini, plaintiff, versus Silvio Nieri, defendant, in the Superior Court of San Mateo County, California.
Mr. August Chelini comes to life for us in the pages of a court reporter’s typescript. We learn his hopes and fears, something of his history, something of his philosophy, his way of life, his motives and methods. He was in some respects an undertaker’s dream person, a materialization of that man of sentiment and true feeling for the dead so often encountered in funeral trade magazines. Only the fact that he was suing an undertaker for $50,000 casts a slight shadow.
The case opens with the arrival of Mr. Nieri at the Chelini home. Mr. Melvin Belli, counsel for the plaintiff, is examining:
Q. [Mr. Belli] When he came to the house, did you have a conversation with him?
A. [Mr. Chelini] Well, he come in and he asked me if he should move the body, and I told him I wanted to talk things over with him first.
Q. Did you have a conversation there?
A. So I talked to him out in the kitchen, and explained to him what I wanted, and the conversation was that I told him what my mother requested.
Q. What did you tell him in this regard?
A. Well, I told him that my mother wanted to be buried where there was no ants or any bugs could get at her.
Q. Had your mother made that request?
A. She made that request.
Q. By the way, was your mother of sound mentality at the time?
A. Oh, yes, very sound. Pretty bright.
Q. Did you tell him anything else?
A. Well, I told him that she had $1,500 of her own money, and that I intended to put all that into her funeral, and she had other moneys coming, and I wanted a hermetically sealed casket, because—
Q. You told him that, that you wanted—
A. I told him I wanted the best