Regulations
Late last week Fox 6 TV of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, broke a story pertaining to Death Care that I found to be incredulous. Here’s the headline, “Milwaukee County funeral home debt; officials move to collect fees”. You can access the story here. The headline itself is fairly innocuous but the story goes on to…
From 2015 to 2021 I served on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. That 12-person governing board for the State of Minnesota got to know each other very well. One of the people I served with, and sat right next to at board meetings for four years, was the Minnesota legislature’s former Speaker…
The longer we live, the more we learn about ourselves and others. As you may know my wife, Angie, and I winter for three months in Southwest Florida. This past week I’ve been alone as Angie each year takes a week or ten days to travel back to Minnesota to visit with her…
For a period of time it was unknown to the owners of Caskets of Honor, located in Calvin, Oklahoma, that selling caskets in their home state was illegal without the procurement of a funeral director’s license. Then, according to this recent story from KFOR-TV of Oklahoma City, the husband and wife ownership team of…
Green-Wood Cemetery, the venerable and historic cemetery in New York City announced last week a plan to become the first facility on America’s East Coast that will offer Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) or Terramation within its facililty. Legalized in the state of New York in 2023, Green-Wood says, according to this recent article from…
Funeral directors should feel good about their role in helping the “The Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration earn the highest customer satisfaction score ever achieved by any public or private organization measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), as part of the group’s 2025 report.” According to this press release…
According to provisional data released from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in January of this year the overall age-adjusted “Death Rate” in the United States for 2025 was about 722 deaths per 100,000 of population. In the Death Care business we have usually based our historical numbers on a “per 1,000” population number…
Texas Senator John Cornyn authored a bill that was passed by the Senate, the House, and signed into law by President Trump in late December 2025, that was included in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. The bill, as you can see and read in this news video report and print article from…
According to this recent article in Newsweek “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded more than $77 million in new grants aimed at expanding and improving state-operated Veterans cemeteries. The funding, announced by the VA in December, supports projects at 20 existing state Veterans cemeteries and includes an establishment grant for Alaska’s…
A lengthy legal case of about four years that involved a Service Corporation International (SCI) cemetery and also included a well-known and succesful business family has ended in a disinterment ruling of the keepsakes and ashes in the grave according to this article from Oregon Public Broadcasting titled “After cemetery sold the same plot…
