I’m beginning to transition my funeral industry posts over to the new site, so I’ll just be posting excerpts and links here now.

Flat land is at a premium in Santa Coloma. Its 124,000 people are shoehorned into just 1.5 square miles. There just wasn’t enough space to build a large enough solar farm to be effective. There was some resistance at first; citizens were concerned about such an installation showing a lack of respect for the 57,000 dead buried at the town’s cemetery. Eventually, the town council won public approval through a careful public-awareness campaign, and installed some 460 solar panels on the mausoleums throughout the cemetery.

Now, “There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed. This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased,” said Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan.

Could something like this catch on here in the States? Possibly. It wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I’ve decided to split my funeral industry posts off into their own site, to be posted at www.funeralnewscentral.com. The domain is live, but there’s nothing to see there yet. I’m working on installing WordPress as well as a pretty nifty theme to dress things up a bit and organize them much better.

Once that’s done, this blog will move up a level from bob.ravensbeak.com to www.ravensbeak.com. The other parts of my site (Mystery Writer’s Forum and Genealogy) will stay where they are. I think this will make it easier to organize my writing, as there have been recent events that I’ve wanted to post about that are completely unrelated to the funeral industry.

I hesitate to give an exact launch date for the new site, so let’s just say “Coming in Winter 2008!”

The sheriff’s office asked us to take a particular route, so they could run a traffic stop on the limo where the brother was riding. We declined to take that route, due to safety considerations (they wanted to do a felony traffic stop in the middle of a 4-lane freeway), but gave them a safer, lower-traffic route.

The SO also made contact with the funeral home, had plain-clothes deputies in the service at the funeral home, and driving in the procession. It was all done very carefully, and as respectfully as possible. In the end, deputies waited until after the graveside service was completed, and surrounded their target with several deputies, and he was taken into custody very quietly.

Contrast that with what happened Nov. 15th in Wilmington, North Carolina. New Hanover County Sheriff’s deputies had a warrant to serve, on the son of the deceased. The plain-clothes deputies decided to execute that arrest warrant at the end of the funeral, as the son was loading his father’s casket into the hearse.

In the ensuing pandemonium, the son, Gladwyn Taft Russ III, was Tased, and his sister alleges that deputies pointed their weapons at nearby family members and threatened to shoot them.

Russ had previously agreed to surrender on a variety of charges, but had failed to do so on at least 2 occasions, so deputies felt the funeral was the best time to take him into custody.

Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Ed McMahon apologized for his agency’s part in the way things turned out, saying, “It was never my intention to create any more problems for the family, and I am truly sorry and apologize for that. I feel like we should have waited till after the cemetery.”

In 2004, they released the clothing for a homicide victim, but kept Chad Mulvin’s body. The victim’s mother had her son cremated, but didn’t find out for over nine months that she had only his clothing. At some point, when someone wanted to see the victim’s clothing, ME staff members realized their error, and turned over his remains. The county settled a lawsuit for $15,000 over that situation.

Now we hear that the ME office released the wrong body, and shipped it to Jamaica. Kemoy Crawford died in March of 2008, and was supposed to be sent home. This time, the funeral director in Jamaica discovered the error. It cost Allegheny County $9,000 to make it right. Dr. Karl Williams says three employees have been disciplined, and one was fired, and that his office has implemented safeguards to prevent this situation from occurring again.

The FBI is investigating allegations of “corporate misconduct” in the downfall of the company, and doesn’t have the staffing to send agents to every funeral home in 19 of the 43 states where National Prearranged Services did business, so they’ve turned to a written survey. Agents are asking directors about their contracts with National Prearranged Services and any promises that the company may have made.

The company served some 2,600 funeral homes, and had 158,153 active preneed funeral contracts valued at nearly $662 million. NPS was placed into receivership in May of 2008, and ordered liquidated in September.

Associated Press

Seattle’s KING5 report, which talks about potential liability issues

How many World War II veterans are left?

The Missing In America Project

Jacquelyn Taylor admits that she doesn’t look like the stereotypical undertaker, “I’m white and female, and I used to be young,” the fiftysomething mortician says with a laugh.

The Boston Globe has a nice piece on Jacquelyn Taylor, executive director at the New England Institute at Mount Ida College. She talks a bit about the industry, and how she became interested in becoming a funeral director.

The 3d Infantry - The Old Guard - serves Arlington National Cemetery. The Caisson Section of the Military Honors Platoon at Fort Sam Houston serves Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Read more about what the Caisson Section does.

Food has been somewhat more problematical. If you’re local, you can make something and take it to the home. But if you’re in Seattle, and you want to do something for your friend in Miami, you haven’t had many choices.

Enter David Storke, owner of Storke Funeral Home in Bowling Green, Virginia. Storke recognized the difficulties in taking care of friends and family over long distances in today’s society, and came up with Sympathyfood.com as “as a way of bringing back the Southern custom of bringing home cooked “comfort” food to families who have experienced a death in the family.”

Storke partnered with a restaurant food supplier in Greensboro, North Carolina that services high-end restaurants and country clubs. You can order food to be delivered whenever you want, whether right at the time of the funeral, or later after everyone has gone home. You can also send a gift certificate that the family can use later.

Storke’s colleagues like the idea. Funeral Director Tom Gale, of of Currie Funeral Home in Kilmarnock loves the idea. “Flowers are nice. I like flowers, but food is a necessity.”