The American Way of Death Revisited (21 page)
Read The American Way of Death Revisited Online
Authors: Jessica Mitford
(Later that day, Chelini’s mother was brought back to his house.)
Q. Was there any conversation in the house?
A. Well, by the time I got there, she was up there, the wife and I decided to put her in the dining room, originally, and when I got up there, he had her in the living room.
Q. Did you have some conversation with him at that time?
A. So, he said, “Well, I think it will be better to have her here, because there is a window here, she’ll get lots of air.” He said he would have to put this body here in the front room on account of the window was here.
Q. Yes.
A. And he said it would be better to have a breeze, a flow of fresh air come in there.
Q. All right, did you have a conversation about the funeral with him to hurry over this?
A. Let’s see. I don’t think there was very much spoken about the funeral right then. I was feeling pretty bad. He spoke of this new embalming. He picked up her cheeks and skin on her and showed me how nice it was, pliable, it was—
Q. Did he tell you that that was a new method of embalming?
A. Yes, and her cheek was very pliable, her skin was especially.
Q. Is that what he said?
A. Well, that is the way he said that is the way it felt, and he told me that is a new type of embalming that they have, pliable.…
Q. All right, then you had a discussion with him at that time about paying him the money?
A. I asked him how much it was. He says, “it was $875.” So I says, “Well, I want mother’s ring put back on her finger,” I says, “when she is removed from the crypt to her final resting place. I want that ring put back on her finger,” and I says, “I want some little slippers put on her that I can’t get at this time,” I says, “I want her all straightened up, and cleaned off nice,” and I says, “I will add another $25 for that service, for doing that,” so he says, “All right,” he says, “if that is the way you want it, we will do it, I would have done it for nothing,” so I gave him that extra check for $25.… Oh, I also reminded him to be sure that when
they put her finally into the cemetery, to see that she was properly secured, and he says, “Don’t worry about it,” he says, “I will see that everything is done properly.” So, he took the check, and I asked him if he would go out and have a little drink with me, which he consented to, and which we did, in the kitchen.
(Probably, a little drink was seldom needed more than at that moment and by these principals. The scene now shifts to Cypress Lawn Cemetery.)
Q. Did you go out there when your mother was taken out there?
A. Yes, I went out to the funeral, and she had the services there. Why, she left here on one of those little roller affairs, and we all walked out. Mr. Nieri—I came out to the car and asked him if he would go in there and see that she was properly adjusted from any shifting, or anything, and make sure that she was well sealed in, so he went in there, and he come out, and I asked him, I says, “Did you get her all sealed in nice? Did you straighten her all up nice?” He says, “Don’t be worrying about that, Gus,” he says, “I will take care of everything.”
Mr. Chelini was, it appears, the exceptional—nay, perfect—funeral customer. Not only did he gladly and freely choose the most expensive funeral available in the Nieri establishment; he also contracted for a $1,100 crypt in the Cypress Lawn mausoleum. He appreciated and endorsed every aspect of the funeral industry’s concept of the sort of care that should be accorded the dead. An ardent admirer of the embalmer’s art, he insisted on the finest receptacle in which to display it; indeed, he thought $875 a very reasonable price and repeatedly intimated his willingness to go higher.
At first glance, it seems like a frightful stroke of bad luck that Mr. Chelini, of all people, should be in court charging negligence and fraud against his erstwhile friend the undertaker, asserting that “the remains of the said Caroline Chelini were permitted to and did develop into a rotted, decomposed and insect and worm infested
mess.” Yet the inner logic of the situation is perhaps such that
only
a person of Mr. Chelini’s persuasion in these matters would ever find himself in a position to make such a charge; for who else would be interested in ascertaining the condition of a human body after its interment?
It was not until two months after the funeral that Mr. Chelini was first assailed by doubts as to whether all was well within the bronze casket.
Mr. Chelini was in the habit of making frequent trips to his mother’s crypt—he was out at the cemetery as many as three, four, or even five times a week. Sometimes he went to pay what he referred to as his vaultage; more often, merely to visit his mother. On one of these visits, he noticed a lot of ants “kind of walking around the crypt.” He complained to the cemetery attendants, who promised to use some insect spray; he complained to Mr. Nieri, who assured him there was nothing to worry about.
Over the next year and a half, the ant situation worsened considerably, in spite of the spraying: “I could see more ants than ever, and there is a lot of little hideous black bugs jumping around there. Well, I had seen these hideous black bugs before, like little gnats, instead of flying they seemed to jump like that.”
This time, he had a long, heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Nieri. The latter insisted that the body would still be just as perfect as the day it was buried, except for perhaps a little mold on the hands. Ants would never “tackle” an embalmed body, Mr. Nieri said. To prove his point, he produced a bottle of formaldehyde; he averred that he could take a piece of fresh horsemeat of the best kind, or steak, or anything, saturate it with formaldehyde, and “nothing will tackle it.”
The idea had evidently been growing in Mr. Chelini’s mind that he must investigate the situation at first hand. With his wife, his family doctor, and an embalmer from Nieri’s establishment, he went out to Cypress Lawn Cemetery and there caused the casket to be opened; upon which the doctor exclaimed, “Well, this is a hell of a mess, and a hell of a poor job of embalming, in my opinion.”
In court, the undertaking fraternity rushed to the defense of their embattled colleague. Defense expert witnesses included several practicing funeral directors and Mr. Donald Ashworth, then dean of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. They were in an undeniably
difficult position, for in order to build a case for Mr. Nieri they were forced to reveal some truths ordinarily concealed from the public. The defense theory—perhaps the only possible one under the circumstances—was that there is no such thing as “eternal preservation”; that the results of embalming are always unpredictable; that, therefore, Mr. Nieri could not have entered into the alleged agreement with Mr. Chelini. Before the case was over, the theory of “everlasting security for your loved one,” an advertising slogan gleefully flung at them by Mr. Belli, was thoroughly exploded by the reluctant experts. They also conceded that the expensive metal “sealer type” caskets, if anything, hasten the process of decomposition. The jury awarded damages to Mr. Chelini in the sum of $10,900.
For another view of what the public wants, let us turn to a man-in-the-street survey conducted by the
San Francisco Chronicle
in 1961. The method of interviewing could hardly claim to be scientific, for it consisted merely of stopping the first eight people to come along the street and posing the question “What kind of funeral for you?” The answers are, however, interesting. All eight spoke up for the minimum: “A very cheap one …” “Just a plain Catholic service …” “I would like a quiet funeral …” “I don’t care for pomp and circumstance …” were typical responses. One man said, “They can heave me in the Bay and feed the fishes for all I care,” and another, “As long as they make sure I’m dead I don’t care what they do next. A corpse is like a pair of old shoes. It’s ridiculous to put your family in hock over it.”
Oddly enough, the funeral men, long aware that these attitudes are more commonly held than that of Mr. Chelini, are not particularly worried. After all, these people will not be around to arrange their own funerals. When the bell tolls for them, the practical essentials—selection of a casket and all the rest—will be in the hands of close relatives who will, it is statistically certain, express their sense of loss in an appropriately costly funeral.
This point was made rather forcefully by a funeral director in the course of a radio interview. The interviewer remarked that it is the law in some states that the express wishes of the deceased as to the mode of his funeral must be observed. What happens then, he then asked, if the deceased has left instructions for a very simple
funeral, but the survivors insist on something more elaborate? The funeral director answered with rare candor, “Well, at a time like that, who are you going to listen to?”
Odds are that the undertaker will be the arbiter of what is a “suitable” funeral, that a decedent’s own wishes in this regard may not be the final word. Even if he is the President of the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt left extremely detailed and explicit instructions for his funeral “in the event of my death in office as President of the United States.” The instructions were contained in a four-page penciled document dated December 26, 1937, early in his second term, and were addressed to his eldest son, James.
The instructions included these directions:
• That a service of the utmost simplicity be held in the East Room of the White House.
• That there be no lying in state anywhere.
• That a gun-carriage and not a hearse be used throughout.
• That the casket be of absolute simplicity, dark wood, that the body be not embalmed or hermetically sealed, and
• That the grave be not lined with brick, cement, or stones.
Regarding the latter instruction, James Roosevelt writes, “So far as we can learn, he never had discussed this with anyone. Knowing Father, we can only speculate that he regarded the embalming procedure as a distasteful invasion of privacy, and that perhaps he had an inner yearning to follow the traditional funeral liturgy, ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.’ ”
Nobody in the Roosevelt household knew of the existence of this document. It was found in his private safe a few days after his burial. It is a common occurrence that when death comes unexpectedly to the ordinary home, burial instructions are found too late tucked away in a safe-deposit box or contained in a will which is not read until after the funeral; it seems ironic that the same mischance could occur in the White House itself. Furthermore, White House aides charged with arranging details of the funeral seem to have been as much at a loss, and as tractable in the hands of the undertaker, as any average citizen faced with the same situation.
News of Roosevelt’s death, flashed around the world on April 12, 1945, meant many things to many people. To millions of Americans it signified the sudden and disastrous loss of the most commanding figure of the century and with him the disappearance of an era. To Mr. Fred W. Patterson, Atlanta undertaker, at home enjoying an after-dinner pipe that evening when his phone rang, it was (in the words of the
Southern Funeral Director
) “
THE CALL
—probably the biggest and most important ever experienced by a contemporary funeral director.”
The Call was placed by Mr. William D. Hassett, a White House aide who was with Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, at the time of his death. He was charged by Mrs. Roosevelt with the task of buying a coffin; being entirely without experience in such matters, he consulted Miss Grace Tully, FDR’s secretary, and Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, who had attended the President in his last moments. Both were sure that Mr. Roosevelt would have wanted something simple and dignified, possibly a solid mahogany casket with copper lining similar to the one used for the President’s mother.
From accounts of the placing of the order for the solid mahogany casket, it appears there was more than one telephone conversation between Patterson, the undertaker, and the harassed presidential assistants. The following account of Hassett’s conversation is given by Bernard Asbell: “Hassett said he wanted a solid mahogany casket with a copper lining. Patterson told him that copper linings had disappeared early in the war. He did have, however, a plain mahogany one, but—Hassett broke in to ask if it were at least six feet four inches long. Patterson said it was—but it was already sold. It was to be shipped the next day to New Jersey to accommodate another undertaker. He added that he had a fine bronze-colored copper model that would—Hassett, in his gentle but most firm Vermont manner, said he wanted the mahogany brought at once to Warm Springs. Patterson asked if he could bring both. Perhaps, on reconsideration, they would choose the bronze-colored copper one. Hassett said he could.”
Patterson, writing in the
Southern Funeral Director
, describes a further conversation about the coffin, this time with Dr. Bruenn: “After he [Dr. Bruenn] consulted with William D. Hassett,… he requested that only the mahogany be brought; but on my request, in
the event a change was desired, we were allowed to bring, in addition, the copper deposit.”
Mr. Patterson’s very understandable desire to acquit himself creditably and with honor in this situation comes through strongly between the lines. There he was, caught in the spotlight, before his colleagues and before the nation. He must have suffered a nasty moment before permission was granted to bring both caskets to the Little White House.
Patterson and his assistants drove to Warm Springs with two hearses, one containing the plain mahogany casket, the other the “fine bronze-colored copper model,” a National Seamless Copper Deposit No. 21200. Patterson relates how the question of which casket to use was finally resolved: “After Mrs. Roosevelt arrived at 11:25 and had seen the President’s remains, a conference was held as to funeral arrangements. Dr. Bruenn was asked what they wished to do about the casket. He consulted Admiral McIntire who came with Mrs. Roosevelt. In the conversation, the Admiral was heard to use the word ‘bronze’ and as the copper deposit had a bronze finish, of course that was the casket to be used.”
