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Home at Last

Tuesday, 08 March 2005

Recent crematory scandals make us want to keep closer tabs on our loved ones.
We're a culture that prefers to keep death behind a curtain. Massachusetts law governing the funeral industry goes to some lengths to insure post-mortem procedures are shielded from public view and are decorous. But some recent horror stories involving cremation remind us that what is out of sight can also be out of mind - and uninspected.

At the Tri-State Crematory in north Georgia, 334 bodies were mishandled over the years, more than a hundred just laid out in the woods next door.
At the Bayview Crematory in Seabrook, N.H., which had no state license, a body being held for paperwork was found in a broken refrigerator and a fetus was found cremated in the same retort as an unrelated adult. Then reports surfaced of people being sent the wrong remains.

It's worth noting that both operations are free-standing, located in semi-rural areas. The Bayview building carries no signs that identify what goes on inside. It was known as a low-cost operation with a sketchy reputation, according to a Boston-area funeral director who spoke to the Globe. Bayview's truck reportedly made twice-weekly rounds of Boston-area funeral homes.

The question: Would we feel more comfortable if cremations were handled closer to home, perhaps in the same town and by the very funeral director in charge of the other arrangements?

Massachusetts is one of only two states that prevent funeral homes from operating their own crematoriums, just as it prevents ownership of casket or gravestone companies.

But Jim Rudolph, president of Nationwide Cremation Consulting and Training in Clearwater, Fla., points out that today in most states "owning a crematory is as routine as owning a hearse." He believes the "archaic" law bears some responsibility for events like those in New Hampshire, since all funeral homes that do not own a cemetery (the one exemption in the law) are forced to send bodies out.

Not all funeral directors agree on the extent of the problem or the solution. David Walkinshaw, an Arlington funeral director and spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association, said the group has no official position on the crematorium-ownership law. The group lobbied in the past to maintain the state law, but with cremations becoming more common, some operators are taking another look.

Former Harwich director Roger Hamel, who now runs a funeral home and the Cremation Society of Massachusetts in Quincy, has been pushing for a law change.

Clearly, location is a factor for some directors. The technology would not be welcome in urban areas. Volume and cost-effectiveness also figure in.

In the meantime, funeral directors can reassure their customers in other ways, Walkinshaw said. He said he drops in unannounced at his crematory of choice, at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. His home also personally delivers the bodies.

Most Cape cremations are now done at the town-run crematory at Duxbury. But it already handles between 2,200 and 2,400 bodies a year, an average of nine each weekday. With cremation choice approaching 50 percent and an aging population, a home-owned crematorium should figure in the Cape's overall quality-of-life - and death.

(Published: March 7, 2005, Cape Cod Times)

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