The American Way of Death Revisited (37 page)

Prices range from $1,040 for an oak-veneered coffin with engraved nameplate, removal of the deceased within a twenty-mile radius, hire of a hearse, pallbearers and funeral director’s arrangement fee to the “Dorset Burial Funeral,” which comes with an oakdene-paneled coffin, for $1,952.

There is no extra charge for embalming, which would come under
funeral director’s costs and is carried out according to the wishes of the family. “Many families in Dorset still like to view the deceased in their own homes,” Mr. Wakely said, “and this is the only time we recommend embalming; but some families do not want embalming even when the body will be in their home for as long as a week. Others prefer to use Wakely’s Chapel of Rest for the purpose; again embalming is optional.” The Wakelys estimate that fewer than 25 percent of their clients opt for embalming.

So far, SCI’s entry into the British funeral industry, as in the case of Mettam’s, poses little threat to the Wakelys. Philip Wakely said that although the new American presence is “kind of scary,” it “has only affected us from a distress point of view,” as people read about SCI in the papers and assume that all funeral directors operate like them.

T
o hear the funeral men complain about the bad press they get, one might think they are the target of a huge newspaper and magazine conspiracy to defame and slander them, to tease them and laugh at them, and eventually to ruin them.

Actually, they have not fared too badly. There have been—from time to time—documented exposés of the funeral trade in national magazines of large circulation; occasional short items in
Time, Newsweek, Business Week
, and the like; and a few feature stories in metropolitan newspapers.

Industry leaders spend an enormous amount of time worrying over these articles. Criticism, and how to deal with it; projected magazine articles, and how to get them suppressed; threatened legislation, and how to forestall it—these are their major preoccupations. If all else fails, they snarl at the world from the pages of the funeral trade press, like angry dogs behind a fence unable to get to grips with the enemy.

Two articles, published a decade apart, caused particular consternation and alarm within the industry: “The High Cost of Dying” by Bill Davidson, which appeared in
Collier’s
magazine in May 1951, and “Can You Afford to Die?” by Roul Tunley, in the
Saturday Evening Post
of June 17, 1961.

The Davidson piece very nearly triggered a major upset for the funeral industry, at least in California. It was the most comprehensive
statement on the industry that had thus far appeared; it was detailed and well documented; and it made some very specific charges: “Even this honest majority [of undertakers] is guilty of accepting a mysterious, nation-wide fixing and raising of prices,” and “The burial industry’s great lobbying and political strength enables it to cow a significant number of legislators and jurists and do pretty much as it pleases.… The lobbying is spearheaded in the state legislatures by associations of funeral directors and cemeteries.”

The funeral press reacted, as usual, like a rather inefficient bull confronted with a red flag. In a brave attempt at incisive sarcasm,
Mortuary Management
prefaced an editorial: “Coal is black and dirty. A Collier is ‘a vessel for transporting coal’—Webster.” The words “shabby handling” and “dirty journalism” reverberated through its pages. Forest Lawn’s spokesman Ugene Blalock called it “an invitation to socialism.” But what was to follow required a subtler and more sophisticated approach than mere angry denunciation.

Because the article dealt quite fully with funeral industry abuses in California, the legislature of that state launched an official investigation into “Funeral Directors, Embalmers, Morticians and Funeral Establishments.” For a while it looked as though real trouble was in store. The resolution creating the investigating committee mentioned a “need for closer regulation” of funeral establishments and “needed revision of laws” relating to the funeral business. The funeral men were thrown into a state of alarm and confusion; should they or shouldn’t they answer the questionnaires sent out by the legislative committee? (“Don’t be in too big a hurry to complete and send in your questionnaire,” counseled
Mortuary Management
.) Should they or should they not cooperate with the committee’s investigators?

This consternation in the ranks proved to have been unwarranted, for their interests were being more than adequately protected. The committee’s report, when it finally appeared in June 1953, over the signature of Assemblyman Clayton A. Dills, must have been cause for much rejoicing and self-congratulation in funeral circles. What a relief to read, after the months of nagging uncertainty, “The funeral industry of California is unusually well organized for the public interest.… Criticisms of retail prices overlook the high operating costs, many of which are mandatory under the public health laws, while others are required under social and religious custom and the
stress of emotion.… It is the considered opinion of the committee that no further legislative action is needed in this matter.”

The report has a strangely familiar ring to anybody versed in the thought processes and literary style of funeral directors. There are phrases that could have come directly out of the proceedings of a National Funeral Directors Association convention: “Embalming is first and foremost an essential public health measure. A concomitant function, which developed with the evolution of embalming and funeral directing as a distinct vocation, is to restore the features of the deceased to a serene and natural appearance. Both functions demand a high degree of professional skill based on specialized education and training.” There is mention of the “evolution of the funeral director as a part of the American way of life”; there is praise for the funeral home with its “special features planned and furnished to provide facilities and conveniences to serve the living and reverently prepare the dead for burial.” The Association of Better Business Bureaus pamphlet
Facts Every Family Should Know
(itself based on material furnished by the NFDA) is reproduced in its entirety as part of the report.

Was this report really written by a subcommittee of the California State Assembly? Apparently not. A more plausible explanation of how it came to be written is contained in a letter that came into my possession. The letter—dated July 24, 1953—is from J. Wilfred Corr, then executive secretary of the California Funeral Directors Association, and is addressed to Mr. Wilber M. Krieger, head of National Selected Morticians:

Mr. J. Wilfred Corr later became the executive director of the American Institute of Funeral Directors. He contributed occasional articles to
Mortuary Management
in which he made ringing appeals for ever-higher ethical standards for funeral directors: “Perhaps we will live to see the triumph of ethical practices, born of American competition, fair dealing and common honesty.” Mr. Donald Welch was one of California’s most prosperous undertakers and the owner of a number of Southern California mortuaries. Mr. Warwick Carpenter was a market analyst who prepared the statistics on funeral costs used in the legislative committee report. According to
Mortuary Management
, the statistics were originally developed by Mr. Carpenter for Mr. Welch, “to illustrate an address he made before a national convention of funeral directors.”
Mortuary Management
opines that Mr. Carpenter “performed a very helpful service to funeral directors in California now under investigation.” The assemblyman from Glendale who actually read the report was the Honorable H. Allen Smith, who went on to Congress.

The report itself was liberally circulated by the undertakers, who rather naturally saw it as a first-rate public relations aid.

The ten years following the
Collier’s
article were relatively tranquil ones for the funeral industry, at least so far as the press was a matter of concern to it. Mr. Merle Welsh, at the time president of the National Funeral Directors Association, was able to report to the 1959 convention: “By our constant vigil there is a lessening of the derogatory and sensational in written matter. Several articles
of which we have been apprised have either not been written or were watered down versions of that which they were originally intended.”

A year later,
Casket & Sunnyside
made the same point: “For many years only a very few derogatory articles about funeral service have been printed in national publications.… Many times the information that an author is planning such an article is leaked to a state association officer or to NFDA, so that the proper and accurate information may be given such writer without his asking for it. In practically all such instances, such proposed articles either never appear or appear without their ‘sensational exposé,’ entirely different articles than were at first planned.”

The funeral men were far from easy in their minds, however, for a new peril was appearing on the horizon. Said Mr. Welsh, “I could speak for hours on the problems and rumors of problems besetting funeral service as a result of the times.… There are memorial societies and church groups trying to reform funeral practices. There are promoters telling funeral directors to take on a plan or plans or else. There are writers who would like to reduce the American funeral program to a $150 disposal plan.… While it is true we have patches of blue in our sky through which shines the light of professionality, there are also dark clouds involving crusades, promotions, unjustifiable attacks and designs to replace the American funeral program of to each his own with a $150 disposal plan.”

There is a semifictional character, who often crops up in lawyers’ talk, known as the “man of ordinary prudence.” He is a person of common sense, able to look at transactions with a normal degree of sophistication, to put a reasonable interpretation on evidence, to apply rational standards to all sorts of situations. He has, down the ages, often given the undertakers trouble; but never, it would seem, so much trouble as he is giving them in America today. He is, in fact, their worst enemy.

It is he who grins out at the funeral men from the pages of magazines, frowns at them from the probate bench, speaks harshly of them from the pulpit or from the autopsy room. It is he who writes nasty letters to the newspapers about them, and derides them in private conversation. The burden of his criticism has changed little over the years. He thinks showy funerals are in bad taste and are a waste of money. He thinks some undertakers take advantage of the grief-stricken
for financial gain. He thinks the poor and uneducated are especially vulnerable to this form of exploitation when a member of the family dies. Lately, he has begun to think that there are important uses to which a dead body could be put for the benefit of the living—medical research, eye banks, tissue banks, and the like. More significant, he is taking some practical measures to provide a rational alternative to the American way of death. Over the years, funeral societies (or memorial associations) have been established in the United States and Canada, devoted to the principle of “simple, dignified funerals at a reasonable cost.”