We’ve all talked about it and see it out in the profession — a lack of trained and licensed funeral directors to combat the coming years when America faces a wave of Baby Boomer deaths. Without the influx of new professionals, many funeral homes will be understaffed which can lead to a vicious cycle of people leaving the profession for a variety of reasons, which in turn, causes less professionals available to do the death care work. . . . […]
It was announced last week in this press release that Carriage Services, headquartered in Houston, Texas, acquired substantially all of the assets of the Heritage Funeral and Cremation Services and Forest Lawn East Cemetery. The businesses are located in the Charlotte, North Carolina, market territory and consist of three stand alone funeral homes, a cemetery, and a cremation focused business. Steve Metzger, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of Carriage Services said this about the acquisitions, “. . .The […]
I attended a somber event last Sunday that at least in part reminded me, among other things, that funerals and memorial services matter to people. And, they are one of the events in a person’s life that can rekindle passionate memories. Last Sunday I attended the church service at tiny East Moe Lutheran Church in rural Garfield, Minnesota. . . a rural farm community about 8 miles from where I live. It is an area of gravel roads and farm […]
In the 50th Anniversary year of the 1972 Rapid City Flood, funeral director Ozzie Osheim will be awarded, on October 21, the Monsignor O’Connell Founders Award of the Catholic Social Services for his humanitarian role helping to care for the 238 who died in the then community of 40,000 people. The Rapid City Flood, according to Wikipedia, was caused by unique atmospheric conditions that caused “intense rain (to) began on the afternoon of June 9 and continued until after midnight […]
If you follow Funeral Director Daily with any regularity you will know that I returned from the 2022 National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) International Convention last week. This article, titled Back from Baltimore, published last week gave my general impressions on attending my first national convention in over a decade. In today’s article I’m going to try to list some of the “Buzz” that I heard while wondering and visiting the workshops, the convention floor, and just good heart-to-heart visits […]
Last week a jury in Maine deliberated and found a verdict against a Lewistown, Maine, funeral home and its owner. Here’s what the website CentralMaine.com said of the deliberations, “A jury awarded Marielle Bischoff-Wurstle, 34, of Falmouth, $5.5 million Friday as compensation for significant emotional damage suffered because her father’s body was left to decompose for weeks in the basement of the funeral home last year.” According to the same publication, which you can read here, the verdict damages awarded […]
Back when I was in mortuary school I read a book entitled something like “Who takes care of the Caretaker“. While there are other books with titles similar to that published later than the 1970’s I cannot locate the book I read, nor do I remember the author of it. Quite frankly, that’s not real important. I also don’t remember any of the content of the book and that’s not real important either. What I do remember is the name […]
A sale, or commerce if you will, occurs when a willing buyer and a willing seller reach agreement on a price for a good or service and then that price is paid from the buyer to the seller to mark the transaction. While we don’t always think of it in that term, transactions like this happen millions of times every day. . . . from the purchase of grocery items, to the purchase of fuel, to the purchase of businesses. […]
Labor Day means a lot of different things to many people. It might mean the end of the Summer, Back-to-School time, the start of football season, or the start of the political campaign season. For me, however, when I ran my funeral business, it was always the funeral home yearly check-up time. You see, after August 31 we have been through two-thirds of the calendar year and that was a pretty significant amount of time to see how your business […]
Funeral directors come with all kinds of interests and backgrounds. What makes them so interesting is the diverse backgrounds, cultures, and interests that are found among them. But the good ones all have the commonality of becoming ambassadors for the profession simply by plying their trade to humanity. Today, Funeral Director Daily tells you about one gentleman selected as the American Funeral Director of the Year by one publication, of an Irish lady who vied to become the wholistic ambassador […]
