I would guess it was twenty years ago or about that length of time that I was asked to volunteer as a board member of our community’s largest non-denominational cemetery. The cemetery was large enough and did enough business that it had a full-time caretaker who took care of sales, provided interment services using cemetery owned equipment, and supervised a small staff of part-time lawn care workers. The cemetery also had a monument sales representative who worked on commission. Revenue […]
In a transaction announced last week but completed on December 27, 2021, according to this press release, Wilbert has merged operations with Memorial Monuments & Vaults (MMV) headquartered in Meridian, Idaho. According to the press release, MMV has 19 locations in the western part of the United States and provides monuments and related funeral services to retail, funeral, and cemetery customers. Here’s what Mark Bates, CEO of Wilbert, said of the transaction, “The combination of Wilbert’s financial resources, national distribution, […]
This article will be sent to Funeral Director Daily subscribers on the last day of 2021. By that time America will have passed the 800,000 number of deaths due to Covid-19 and will have had more deaths in 2021 than in 2020. That’s 800,000 individual human beings who have lost their lives and it is 800,000 times that the men and women of funeral service have answered the call to take care of these individuals. . . . individuals loved […]
Not every article that appears in Funeral Director Daily has a direct bearing on the business world of funerals, cremations, and burials. However, if you stick with me with this article, dealing with this discovery, we will discuss the power of heritage funerals among other things. A sword found buried in a Scottish grave in 2015 has recently been revealed as very rare. According to this article in Smithsonian Magazine, this find reveals only the 2nd “Type D” Viking sword […]
A New Hampshire community has again delayed – until at least Spring 2022 – the decision on an ordinance to allow “Green Burials” in two city owned cemeteries. The City Manager of Lebanon City, New Hampshire, Shaun Mulholland, was quoted in this article from Valley News as saying, “This has gone on for two years now. It really shouldn’t have gone on this long, quite frankly.” Mulholland was referring to the decision made in early December that the Lebanon City […]
Writing on “Death Care” gives me very wide latitude. There’s a lot to it — and it’s not only about funerals and cremations, funeral homes and crematories, cemeteries and burials, but there is the finances of the industry, the manufacturing of the industry, the mortuary training of the profession, and all of the interesting people involved in the profession. “Our” world is also about history, society, movements within the industry like the increase of cremation that has went on for […]
The numbers 11-11-11 have always been significant when I think of November 11. Yesterday was that day that we now refer to as Veteran’s Day in America or is referred to as Remembrance Day in Canada. Those numbers, 11-11-11, refer to the day and time that the cease fire that ended World War I in 1918 became effective. It was at 11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month (November) that the armistice (Latin for “stilling of arms”) […]
The World Series has been played for the past two weeks and I’m a baseball fan. . . and former little league coach. I’m “Old School” and don’t particularly like the “data-driven” strategy decisions used in today’s game of baseball. I like the past when you watched a hitter’s feet move to determine if they could hit a curve-ball rather than “check the charts”. In Death Care there is old-school also. This article from Atlas Obscura portrays a wonderful picture […]
If you have been a funeral director for any length of time a family member of a cremation disposition has approached you about their idea of scattering the cremated remains at a certain location. Most of the time the question has been asked in relation to a public park, a church yard, a lake, or some other public location that held meaning and was prized by the decedent. Were you ever asked for your opinion of the scattering of the […]
The City of Sheffield is located north of London and not too far from both Manchester and Nottingham in Great Britain. Sheffield’s City Cemetery was built in 1836 in response to the overcrowding and poor conditions in Sheffield’s churches. Today, 87,000 souls rest eternally in the cemetery, but you can also spend a night there. Cemeteries, in the age of cremation, are having trouble raising revenue and there have been all kinds of options including movie nights, historical tours, and […]
