Going Discount on Death Rites

Soured by seeing grief-ridden friends sold “incredibly expensive” funerals for loved ones, Mike McEligot began shopping when cancer seemed about to kill his father.

“I didn’t want to wait and do it when my family was vulnerable,” said the 44-year-old bank branch manager from Costa Mesa. “It’s like having to buy a car when your own car has already broken down.”

McEligot not only shopped, he wound up at a storefront funeral “consultant,” where he figures he bought a casket and headstone for about half the mortuary price. Then the consultant gave him a list of nearby morticians whose fees were lower than average.

The funeral wasn’t cheap, McELigot said. Even with burial plots already bought, the funeral cost $7,500. “If I hadn’t known better, it would have been way over $10,000. . . . I wasn’t going to shortchange my parents, but I kind of had the feeling that if I spent what the mortuaries wanted, my parents would have said, ‘What are you, nuts?’ ”

McEligot, a self-described “typical baby boomer,” represents the crest of a wave poised to engulf the funeral industry with demands for reasonably priced, often individually tailored rituals of passage.

As a group, the 75 million baby boomers born in the two decades after World War II have changed virtually every aspect of American life they’ve touched. Their educations were mass-produced. They wrote their own wedding vows. They insisted on natural childbirth and breast-feeding. They created no-fault, mail-in divorce.

Now, as they arrange their parents’ funerals, the funeral industry is in their sights.

“That families would call and ask for prices was a shock,” said Bill McAulay, partner at McAulay & Wallace Mortuaries, established in Fullerton in 1911. “It just never happened. They came here because they knew my dad or granddad.”

Lisa Carlson, executive director of the nonprofit Funeral and Memorial Societies of America and oft-quoted critic of the funeral business, said the industry isn’t prepared to deal with boomers like McEligot. “I never thought people would buy a casket at a retail shop. I was astonished. I’m delighted.”

So far, the huge, international funeral corporations--which now handle 25% of the business in America and own an estimated 70% of all mortuaries in Los Angeles County, 60% in Orange County--have proved remarkably adaptable.

Where there has been competition from discount mortuaries and casket outlets, the corporations opened their own. When low-cost but profitable cremation “societies” sprung up, the corporations bought into that business.

“I don’t think at all that we’re going to see the end of the traditional funeral service,” said Brian Marlowe, executive vice president of Stewart Enterprises, one of the large international corporations. “But I think we’re going to need many more choices available.”

The most popular alternative so far has been cremation. Baby boomers who have discovered it like “taking the responsibility away from the funeral director and putting it in the hands of the family,” said Stephen Prothero, assistant professor of religion at Boston University.

“They get to personalize the funeral. You now have the possibility of Bob Jones dying and being cremated and his family putting his ashes in his golf bag, taking it to the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, reciting his favorite golf poems and scattering his ashes over the cliff.

“It’s a ritual appropriate only to Bob Jones rather than the cookie-cutter ritual you get from a minister and a funeral director,” Prothero said. “They love it.”

Few Cremations Before 1963 Expose

Funeral reform became a hot topic in America with publication of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 best-selling expose “The American Way of Death.” But Carlson thinks the only significant change has been in the rate of cremation.

Industry figures show that in 1963, fewer than 4% of those who died in the U.S. were cremated. In 1997, the rate was 24% nationally, but much higher in New England and in Western states such as Nevada (61%), Washington (54%) and California (45%). Scarcity of land for burial seems not to be a factor. Which has more open land than Nevada?

The rise, Carlson believes, was inevitable once large corporations began buying up family-owned mortuaries and raising prices. “They’re pricing funerals to an obscene level where people think you shouldn’t just dig a hole in the ground and bury $9,000 in it.”

The Cremation Assn. of North America projects that by 2010, cremation will be chosen in 42% of all deaths nationwide. Along the West Coast, the figure will climb to 73% in Washington, 55% in California and 93% in Alaska, they predict.

How will the mainstream funeral industry react?

Industry surveys indicate that only 25% of those who choose cremation do so because of price.

“They are looking for personalized funerals that give them much more meaning,” said Joe Weigel, spokesman for Batesville Casket Co. of Batesville, Ind. “I’m certain there will be a radical shift, but we really don’t know where the future will take us.”

Casket manufacturers already have a line of cheaper, more easily combustible caskets for cremation. Cemeteries are making more room for scattering gardens and for columbaria, walls of niches to store ashes. Churches and universities are expected eventually to provide places to scatter or enshrine ashes.

“Somebody has proposed a plan for cremation disposal in athletic stadiums for ardent Cubs or Dodgers fans,” said Marlowe of Stewart Enterprises. “Nothing has happened at this point, but there is certainly going to be greater creativity in the industry.”

Using Nonprofits Slashes the Price

Some who want to simplify funerals are turning to nonprofit memorial societies. They have been around for decades, trying to find local mortuaries and crematories willing to prearrange and discount their services to society members. But only after government regulations adopted in 1984 forced mortuaries to publish their prices did demand begin to rise for the societies’ cheaper funerals.

“So far as we’re concerned, the big change has been that undertakers are willing to cooperate with us now,” said Ruth Harmer Carew, a retired university professor and president of the nonprofit Los Angeles Funeral Society.

Part of the reason is that the society has signed up some 25,000 members in its 41 years. As a result, 24 mortuaries throughout Los Angeles County have signed contracts to get the society’s business. They provide simple cremations as cheaply as $450, simple funerals as low as $550, on the average about 20 a month.

The Tri-County Memorial Funeral Society, formed in 1962 to serve Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, has been less aggressive. It has signed up 9,000 members since that time and has four mortuaries under contract. Its prices are higher than those of the Los Angeles society.

“The first question [mortuaries] ask is how many deaths do you have each month,” said Robert Kunz, the Tri-County society’s president. “We have maybe 10, maybe one, and that’s not enough for them to lower their prices.”

Nor does the Tri-County society want to offend anyone. “We’ve always wanted to have good relations with the funeral industry, and we’ve had them,” said Kunz. “Others are trying to take on the industry.”

Karen Leonard is one of those. As executive director of the Redwood Funeral Society headquartered in Sonoma County, she is trying to open a nonprofit, no-frills cemetery, crematory and auditorium for services near Santa Rosa.

A Movement That Cuts Out the Mortuary

Fellow activist Jerri Lyons is going further. She helped form the Natural Death Care Project in Sonoma County to teach people how to care for their own dead without morticians.

“This is for families who don’t want to use a mortuary at all,” she said. “I think it’s growing, slowly, because of the high cost of death and because baby boomers, my generation, are looking for alternatives.”

She said that in three years, she has helped 80 families prepare, commemorate and deliver their loved ones to crematories and cemeteries.

The funeral industry can take comfort in the fact that death is a growth industry.

In Orange County, for example, the death rate--6% per 1,000 population--has held steady since the early 1970s. A growing population, however, still makes for increased demand.

“Just based on volume, there will be an increased need for services,” said Marlowe of Stewart Enterprises. “I would expect the pace of acquisition to continue for a number of years.”

Over the past decade, the big three international companies--Service Corp. International, or SCI, of Brentwood, Tenn.; the Loewen Group of Burnaby, British Columbia; and Stewart Enterprises of New Orleans--have been acquiring mortuaries, cemeteries and crematories at an increasing rate, concentrating on high-volume locations in urban and suburban areas.

SCI, the largest by far, had 850 locations in 1992. Five years later it had 3,700 locations. During that period, revenue climbed to nearly $2.5 billion.

Carlson said many nonprofit memorial societies monitor the prices in their areas. Their surveys show that when corporations acquire a local mortuary or cemetery they seldom change its name, managers or appearance but almost always raise its prices, she said.

Entrepreneurs Offer Caskets and Service

The trend has spawned competitors, most notably about 150 discount casket retailers nationwide. In Southern California they are numerous enough to have their own Yellow Pages heading.

Most tend to locate across the street from corporate-owned cemeteries, where they beckon to deal-conscious baby boomers.

That’s where Tom Oswald sits, across Beach Boulevard from SCI-owned Westminster Memorial Park, offering his services as a funeral broker and discounter of caskets and headstones.

“I knew this was coming,” Oswald said. “Now there are seven casket stores in Orange County alone. This business is changing so fast.”

Angus McAulay thinks he’s riding the right wave, too. He was a partner with his brother at McAulay & Wallace Mortuaries in Fullerton. He sold his share and now runs New Options Funeral and Cremation Services from his home in Placentia.

He still has his funeral director and funeral home licenses, but he has no casket salesroom, no chapel, no viewing room--only his home office and an embalming room tucked inside a Fullerton industrial park.

McAulay comes to your home to make arrangements at discount prices. He said he’s had nearly 100 customers since he opened in September 1997.

He’s taking aim at baby boomers, he said, because “they’re looking for value. They’re shopping on the Internet. I’m looking to set up a really nice Web site. I think this will become a strong, grass-roots type thing.”

Reformers as well are hoping for public support. They are hoping to get new laws and regulations on the books at both the state and national levels.

The Federal Trade Commission is poised to consider further funeral industry regulation next year, and reformers are gearing up for the fight.

Carlson, executive director of the Funeral and Memorial Society of America, says nonprofit memorial societies are about to move lobbying far up their priority lists. Her recently issued book, “Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love,” is a guide to funeral laws state by state.

Until recently, Leonard of the Redwood Funeral Society did the lobbying for all California societies, and it was all uphill. It took 14 years to repeal California’s ban on private scattering of ashes, a law she said was never enforced. It disappears from the books Jan. 1.

Reformers now plan to lobby for a board to act as watchdog over the California funeral industry, Leonard said. “After six years of watching how Sacramento works, I can tell you the consumer will have no protection until you have that board.”

Public pressure could succeed in the long run, she said. “I don’t think the issue is going away. As the populace understands the problem, they will be willing to do something about it.”

Larry Tank, 46, a GTE technician from Garden Grove, is doing his part. He says he’s still “kind of a wreck” after arranging his father’s recent funeral. But he learned a lot and is telling all his fellow boomers about it.

His advice: “If you know it’s coming, shop around first, then see what a broker can do. Mortuaries are going to get you for whatever they can. I have seen it happen to too many friends.

“I’ve told so many people about my experience that it’s in their databanks,” Tank said. “They didn’t know you could go to brokers. They’re definitely going to look into it.”

Lisa Carlson said she believes the industry isn’t prepared for the hundreds of thousands of Larry Tanks about to descend on them.

“The reaction against the industry is not just from the crunchy-granola crowd. It’s very middle-class. It’s a direct reaction to what the local funeral home wants to charge them,” she said.

“They are more knowledgeable and are simply not going to be as gullible as their parents were.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MORTUARY FEES

Since 1984, the Federal Trade Commission has required morticians to make available their fees. The following are based on a membership survey by the National Funeral Directors Assn.

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Item Independent Corp.-owned Undeclinable fee $1,069 $1,200 Embalming 368 389 Other preparation (cosmetics, hair, etc.) 132 151 Visitation/viewing 306 293 Funeral at mortuary 326 335 Memorial service 332 415 Graveside service 285 414 Transfer of remains to mortuary 133 153 Hearse (local) 161 169 Limousine (local) 131 123 Service car/van 81 75 Acknowledgment cards 19 22 Forward remains to another mortuary 1,157 1,317 Receiving remains from another mortuary 1,001 1,169

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If family provides container:

Direct cremation

Independent: $1,163

Corp.-owned: $1,349

Immediate burial

Independent: $1,235

Corp.-owned: $1,373

*

If mortuary provides container:

Direct cremation

Independent: $1,263

Corp.-owned: $1,486

Immediate burial

Independent: $1,573

Corp.-owned: $1,781

*

Caskets:

Cloth-covered wood

Independent: $577

Corp.-owned: $674

20-gauge steel, nonsealed, crepe interior

Independent: $951

Corp.-owned: $1,113

18-gauge steel, sealed, velvet interior

Independent: $2,153

Corp.-owned: $2,651

Copper, sealed, velvet interior

Independent: $3,817

Corp.-owned: $3,942

Select hardwood, crepe interior

Independent: $2,325

Corp.-owned: $2,651

Bronze

Independent: $5,413

Corp.-owned: $6,093

Source: National Funeral Directors Assn.

About the Series

Beyond 2000 is a series of articles that explore how our lives will change in the next millennium. The series will continue on Mondays as The Times Orange County examines what’s in store for the county in such areas as transportation, education, growth and technology.

On The Internet

The Beyond 2000 series and an interactive discussion are available on the Times Orange County Edition’s Web site at https://www.timesoc.com/HOME/NEWS/ORANGE/beyond.htm

LAUNCH POINT 2000

Information on today’s topic can be found on several Web sites:

National Funeral Directors Assn.: This site, offered by the world’s largest funeral service organization, offers important resources to both the consumer and the funeral service professional. Read about current trends, issues and career opportunities as well as find helpful publications on planning a funeral and dealing with grief.

https://www.nfda.org/

Forecast, April 1997: The Information on Cremation: Find out why cremation is increasingly being chosen and what creative ways baby boomers have come up with to dispose of their ashes.

https://www.demographics.com/publications/fc/97_fc/9704_fc/fc97044.htm

The History of Cremation: Learn about cremation from its beginnings in the early Stone Age to the present day. https://www.cremationinfo.com/cope/history.html

Funerals--Death and Dying Netlinks: This useful collection of sites explains embalming, cremations and memorial services and gives tips on how to save money on funerals.

https://dying.miningco.com/msub8.htm

Find a Grave: View the grave sites of many notable people through this searchable database.; https://www.findagrave.com/

Los Angeles Funeral Society: Includes various publications including low-cost funeral options, how to donate your body to science, helping grieving people and alternatives to traditional funerals. Fee requested. P.O. Box 92313, Pasadena, CA 91109; (626) 683-3545; https://vbiweb.champlain.edu/famsa/lafs.htm

Funeral and Memorial Societies of America: Information on funerals, funeral options and funeral industry trends. Also includes online bookstore, ombudsman and funeral humor. P.O. Box 10, Hinesburg, VT 05461; (800) 765-0107; https://www.funerals.org/famsa

California Department of Consumer Affairs, Cemetery and Funeral Programs: Guidelines for making decisions about funeral and cemetery arrangements, how to file a complaint and how to find out if a cemetery is licensed. 400 R St., Sacramento, CA 95814; (800) 952-5210; https://www.dca.ca.gov/cemetery

*

Other sources:

Cremation Assn. of North America: 401 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611; (312) 644-6610. Send return envelope with 78 cents postage.

Tri-County Memorial Funeral Society (Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino): P.O. Box 114, Midway City, CA 92655; (714) 962-1917