The American Way of Death Revisited Read Free Page A

direct-cremation venture that enjoyed immediate success and soon attracted imitators throughout the country.
    However, more recent changes on the funeral front should go far to dispel any feeling of complacency on the part of consumers. Cremation, once the best hope for a low-cost, simple getaway, has become increasingly expensive; furthermore, morticians are fast developing techniques for upgrading this procedure into a full-fig funeral. The Federal Trade Commission’s much heralded trade rule has huge loopholes. Most sinister of all is the emergence over the last fifteen years of monopoly ownership of hitherto independent mortuaries and cemeteries.
    These developments are the main reason for this updated version of
The American Way of Death
.

1

Not Selling
    W hen funeral directors have taxed me—which they have, and not infrequently—with being beastly about them in my book, I can affirm in good conscience that there is hardly an unkind word about them. In fact, the book is almost entirely given over to expounding
their
point of view. It is chock a block with their Wise Sayings, observations, exhortations, and philosophical reflections culled from funeral trade magazines and interviews with individual funeral directors and official spokesmen.
    I did mention that “like every other successful salesman, the funeral salesman must first and foremost believe in himself and his product” ( this page – this page ), and that “they long to be worthy of high regard, to be liked and understood, a most human longing.… Merchants of a rather grubby order, preying on the grief, remorse, and guilt of survivors, or trained professional men with high standards of ethical conduct? The funeral men really would vastly prefer to fit the latter category” ( this page ).
    To what extent, if any, has their outlook changed over the decades? I had a rare opportunity to observe a representative cross section of the industry in action when to my astonished delight I was invited by Ron Hast, editor of
Mortuary Management
, to be a featured speaker at a two-day Funeral Service Seminar to take place in October 1995 in Tiburon, California. “That’s like Ralph Nader being invited to address General Motors!” a friend said. For me, the anticipation was akin to that felt by a five-year-old promised a trip to Disneyland, or a teenager offered a bit part in a Hollywood movie.
    The reality did not disappoint. Tiburon is in Marin County, which, aside from being one of the richest communities in the country,has a cremation rate of about three times that of the national average. And thereby hangs a tale; for while the seminar topics could have fit handily into any trade-meeting agenda—“Maintaining an Effective Workforce,” “Responding to Community Trends,” “Better Public Relations,” etc.—the subtext of many a speech was how to extract maximum profit from cremation.
    We gathered in the Tiburon Lodge meeting hall overlooking a huge swimming pool, a congenial WASPish crowd consisting of forty-four funeral directors from around the country, five presidents of casket companies, a few insurance men, the president of Dinair Airbrush Systems, and various spouses.
    Welcoming the group, our host—Ron Hast—glumly mentioned that there had been plenty of protest about my presence at the seminar, not the least of which was a state funeral directors’ association executive’s dire threat to have his members cancel their subscriptions to
Mortuary Management
.
    The audience was soon put at ease by the first speaker, perhaps appropriately from the world of big business: John Baker, spry young former manager of a United Airlines subsidiary with a staff of one thousand, responsible for all employee programs. His subject: “How to Maintain an Effective Workforce,” which he attacked
con brio
, with much folksy banter and down-home humor. His first question to the audience established the tone: “Who’s minding the store when you’re away?”