Funeral Director Daily

Vale Cemetery receives ACE Award

By Funeral Director Daily / December 22, 2020 /

Vale Cemetery of Schenectady, New York, was recently given the American Cemetery Excellence Award (ACE Award) as presented by American Cemetery and Cremation magazine. While the magazine calls it the ACE Award, I like to just refer to it as the “Cemetery of the Year” award because the magazine awards only one cemetery annually. According…

2020 and the realities of smaller cemeteries. . . Netherlands recommends alkaline hydrolysis

By Funeral Director Daily / November 23, 2020 /

Over the last couple of years that I have published Funeral Director Daily, I’ve written on this topic a couple of times. “This topic” is that of smaller association cemeteries and the financial plights more and more of them seem to be falling into. I limit this discussion to “association cemeteries” simply because church cemeteries,…

Lessons learned from growing up as an FDK (Funeral Director’s Kid)

By Funeral Director Daily / November 19, 2020 /

This article will be published on Friday morning because I figure it won’t be real business like, but it will be something that the reader can carry into the weekend. Lots of people talk about PK’s – Preacher’s Kids – but there is another group of us who grew up in a funeral home or…

Which side of the issue are you on

By Funeral Director Daily / October 26, 2020 /

I don’t think that there is any doubt that at one time we viewed cemeteries as a “place for the dead”. However, you could argue that over the years, while cemeteries still carry the reverence of places where we lay our loved ones to rest, they have become not only a place for the dead,…

The problem with cemeteries

By Funeral Director Daily / October 20, 2020 /

We’ve now moved into the 4th quarter of 2020 and with that timing we have had 6 full months of the COVID world results in death care. We know from listening to the news, looking at public death care company reports, and anecdotal reports from our colleagues that while funeral homes have been learning to…

Recompose getting competitors. . . and that’s okay

By Funeral Director Daily / October 6, 2020 /

This article from the Daily Chronicle tells how Recompose founder Katrina Spade has been working since 2014 to bring Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) to an acceptable and legal process of human disposition. She not only had to prove the science behind what many call “human composting” but had to find a legislative body to approve…

Arlington Cemetery Part 3: A personal story

By Funeral Director Daily / September 30, 2020 /

When I researched and wrote a story about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg being buried at Arlington National Cemetery little did I know it would lead to a Three-part series with Funeral Director Daily. However, the story triggered some memories in my life on what I knew about Arlington and, in today’s article, how I as…

Joe Louis and Arlington National Cemetery

By Funeral Director Daily / September 29, 2020 /

We gave a little history on Arlington National Cemetery in yesterday’s edition of Funeral Director Daily. As a follow-up to that I promised a little more today. I had always heard that the eligibility requirements for interment in Arlington National Cemetery were more stringent than in the other Veteran’s National Cemeteries scattered across the country.…

Justice Ginsburg to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery

By Funeral Director Daily / September 28, 2020 /

Late last week when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s body was being removed from Statutory Hall at the United States Capitol I heard that her body would be interred this week at Arlington National Cemetery. As a person who loves the history, majesty, and ceremony that is Arlington National Cemetery, I wondered a little…

Ritual vs. Memorialization. . . . do we need both?

By Funeral Director Daily / September 15, 2020 /

Deaths will always be with us. However, the way we ritualize death and provide permanent memorialization for our loved ones seems to be ever evolving. I believe that permanent memorialization has been under attack for a long time and faces long-term decline, but I also believe that ritual, and the way it evolves, may bring…

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