As pre-need sales continue to zoom, it cannot be long before every living American will own a grave, or at least have contracted to pay for one on the installment plan. Perhaps it is this prospect of a saturated market that spurs competing promoters in the race to get there first, to range ever farther in extending their chains of cemeteries to take in even the remotest hamlet. Only this can account for the prodigious rate at which cemetery development and mausoleum construction have been piling up. No community is too small to attract the attention of the promoters: Concept cites the case of a town with a population of less than 750 where a successful 288-crypt mausoleum has been established. A mausoleum building firm reported construction of a 336-crypt “indoor-outdoor” mausoleum in Reserve, Louisiana, which at that time had a population of 1,126.
From the point of view of the cemetery promoter, the special attraction of pre-need selling is its self-financing feature. With little or no cash, he acquires an option on some rural acreage and has it zoned for cemetery use. He has a landscape architect supply him with sketches picturing verdant terraces, splashing fountains, tall cypresses and blooming shrubs, and broad avenues converging on an imposing central “feature” (a word used throughout the trade for “statue”), usually in a religious motif. These can be ordered by catalogue number; popular models are The Good Shepherd, Model 221-Z; Christus; The Sermon on the Mount; The Last Supper. He gets plans and drawings of his mausoleum-to-be from one of the national organizations that specialize in this form of construction. He then contracts with a sales organization that makes a specialty of pre-need selling to handle his sales, and he is in business.
The money comes rolling in, and up to this point not a spadeful of dirt has been turned at the Beautiful Memory Garden; not a cement slab has been poured at the site of the Sweet Repose Mausoleum. It is standard practice in this business not to start construction until at least one-third of all the projected burial and crypt space has been sold. Since this amount is far more than will ever be spent on development and construction, the buyers of these little burial spaces will have furnished the promoter, in advance, with all the capital he will need, and a handsome advance profit as well.
It is not as hard as one might think to extract outrageous-sounding prices from the public, because pre-need payments are customarily made in painless installments over a long period of time. The cemetery owner can, after all, afford to offer generous terms. Unlike any other commodity offered for sale on the installment plan, this one remains always in the seller’s possession, and its use may not be called for until many years after it has been paid for in full. “Sunset View’s ‘Before Need’ ownership plan offers the opportunity for purchasing family lots in monthly installments so small that they are hardly noticeable,” says a circular mailed to me by a local cemetery.
Pre-need selling is a costly proposition, and it is the customer, of course, who ultimately foots the bill. The sales organization usually works on a 50 percent commission; the individual salesman gets 20 to 40 percent of the selling price. “In most cemeteries which have pre-arrangement sales programs, four to ten times more is spent for direct selling than is spent for the total cost of planning, development, and landscaping,” complains a cemetery architect.
The major conglomerates, such as SCI, Loewen, and Stewart, are able to circumvent these high costs by advertising for salespeople, “No experience required.” The hungry hopefuls, once enticed, learn that they will be obliged to meet a sales quota set by the company—one easily met by the novices when they sign up their kith and kin, but impossible to continue once that has been done. It’s a cruel but effective way to market a community at low cost, with no regular employees, no employee benefits.
The “space and bronze deal,” as it is called by the sales specialists, is exciting, heady work. The exuberant buoyancy, the spirit of confidence, the zeal and joie de vivre reflected in the soaring prose of the American Cemetery are in marked contrast to the embattled gloom, the righteous martyrdom, that stalks the pages of the undertaker’s trade magazines.
Before the advent of the commercial cemetery, the principal cemetery executive was the superintendent or head groundskeeper. Today, the unassuming fellow who kept up the cemetery grounds has been supplanted in place of first importance by a more dashing breed—a Memorial Counselor, who in this capacity must quickly acquire a few new postures. An executive of the California Interment Association sees the Memorial Counselor as walking a sort of tightrope: “Exploitation of cemetery sales achievements must assume the proper place in the delicate balance of ethical cemetery practices and the natural American drive to achieve the strongest possible business posture.”
Luckily, it takes only about a week for a person to acquire the right amount of sincerity and truth at a school for Memorial Counselors. The trainee is “schooled in the best methods of gaining access into a home. He must be in a problem-solving frame of mind, and must be one who has come to render a service and not one who has come to sell something. During the week he is reviewed constantly on trial closes and answering objections.” At the end of the week the student is presented with his certificate as “Professional Memorial Consultant.”
In a typical sales argument, the idea of inflation is the first concern to plant in the prospect’s mind:
Mr. Jones, if something should happen to me in the years to come, my wife, bless her heart, would feel inclined to go out and emotionally overspend. She would use money I left for her comfort and protection and buy cemetery property at its then INFLATED price to show her love for me. That’s why I have tied her hands and protected her against her own affection and the rolling surge of INFLATION. This protection is possible only by acting now. I’m sure we husbands all agree on this point, don’t we?
And another:
Mr. and Mrs. Jones, our birth certificate is a purchase contract for our cemetery property. We must have a place to be buried. Furthermore the laws of all 50 states confirmed the sale. We must be buried in a duly approved cemetery.* The only choice left to us is which of the two prices we desire to pay. If we wait we pay the inflated price—all cash—yes we buy in an emergency. If we act now we stop inflation—under this program we even roll the price back. As good businessmen, we know which makes more sense, don’t we?
Why do the customers buy? The aura of genteel respectability conferred by ownership of cemetery property (often the only piece of real estate the prospect will ever own), the wisdom and economy of advance planning for a contingency that must inevitably arise, are powerful arguments. It sounds good, but the “economy” is a myth and the “wisdom” a snare. The customer in the pre-need era pays far more for burial than he would have in pre-pre-need days. Years ago, while there was no pre-need selling, there was a certain amount of pre-need buying (a most important distinction), generally by those solid citizens—staid families of substantial means—who were accustomed, in this as in other matters, to planning in advance. Acquisition of a “family plot” was not a costly transaction; if a family paid $100 for a four-grave plot, it was paying a lot. Single graves ran from $1 to $20. Even today, people who live in communities that have not yet been invaded by the commercial pre-needers can buy from municipal, denominational, or other noncommercial cemeteries burial space either in advance or when death occurs at a fraction of what they would have to pay a commercial solicitor.
Frequently people do not know of the existence in their community of a publicly owned cemetery; and few take the trouble to go there to make advance arrangements. Those who do so are prosaically just buying a grave, whereas the stay-at-homes, who wait for the Memorial Counselor to call, get so much more for their money: “Ideally a couple in their early years of married life will benefit by making arrangements at that time, affording them protection and economic benefits when they need it most and often creating a psychological bond that may enrich their marital relationship,” says the Interment Association of America.
The advent of the mausoleum boom added a new dimension to th
e pre-need sales rhetoric. “Talk Mausoleum!” urged Concept; and evaluating the results of a recent direct-mail campaign, it reported, “It was agreed that prestige and horror of ground burial motivated the bulk of replies.”
Mausoleum advertising reaches back into history for its theme—Abraham’s cave, the Pyramids, the tomb of King Mausolus, the Taj Mahal (usually referred to as “the $15,000,000 Taj Mahal”), the “$3,000,000 Lincoln Memorial,” Grant’s Tomb. Concept quotes Tressie Johnson of Texas (“she is a volume producer in mausoleum sales; sincerity plays a great part in her success”) on how to make the most of the historical theme. She suggests mentioning the Taj Mahal, Napoleon, Lincoln, Grant, and Lenin: “But what means even more to the family, tell them Jesus was supposed to have been placed in a rock tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.”
In real life, the brand-new mausoleums mushrooming in communities across the country do not look very much like the Taj Mahal. They look a good deal more like giant egg crates, and the little receptacles have a certain sameness about them—which is not surprising, since they are identical. However, since purchasing power varies from customer to customer, and since those able to pay more should be given every opportunity to do so, distinction and desirability have been conferred on some of the receptacles by the magic of the sales talk.
Like uncounted millions of other Americans, I was visited by a cemetery “Memorial Counselor.” He spread out for my delectation page after page of shiny color representations of rolling lawns, limpid pools, statues of the Good Shepherd, of sundry Apostles; “And here are some of our special Babyland features,” he announced proudly, producing a folder of statues of toddlers and lambs. On each picture was printed in small letters “Artist’s Conception.”
“Can I go out and see it?” I asked.
“Well, there won’t be anything much to see for a while yet; most of it is still in the planning stage. Here’s how the mausoleum is going to look.” He pulled out a folder showing “Preconstruction Corridor” in pink and gray marble, and “Sunshine Garden—An Innovation in Out-of-doors Memorial Construction” in cream and blue. It was gratifying to note that the brochure advertised “Mausoleum staff to serve you every day of the year from sunrise to sunset,” and particularly comforting (in view of the purpose of the property I was being offered) to learn that one’s crypt would be “Judgement Proof.” From the counselor and his brochures I began to get an inkling of how the pricing is established; how liabilities can be transformed into assets, and economies—convenient for the cemetery promoters—made attractive. The crypts facing the corridor are called “mausoleum crypts.” The ones facing outside, and forming in fact the outside wall of the structure, once less salable and therefore lower in price, are now called “garden crypts”—a stroke of creative genius—and often command even higher prices than the stuffy old indoor ones. “It’s all part of the trend towards outdoor living,” explained the counselor. The pavement of the corridors does not go to waste, either. A crypt below floor level has none of the associations of the bargain basement if it is labeled “Westminster Crypt”—on the contrary, it conjures up flattering thoughts of reposing eternally cheek by jowl with the great and famous. Likewise, the cost of a dividing wall between two crypts can be eliminated if they are advertised as a “True Companion Crypt—permits husband and wife to be entombed in a single chamber without any dividing wall to separate them. Here, husband and wife may truly be ‘Together Forever.’ ”
“Then, the corridor crypts would all be one price, the garden crypts another, and so on?” I asked. Oh no, said the counselor, there’s quite a difference. The corridor crypts vary considerably; the cheapest are the ones near the top. “And the most expensive?” “Heart level,” he replied, tapping that organ with his right hand and giving one of his sincere looks.
Later, when I went to see the cemetery, I could see why the counselor was not too anxious to have prospects go out there. It was merely an expanse of dusty, dried-out California hillside, with a fine view of the factories and warehouses of the industrial section below. The Lifetime Green artificial grass mats stacked near the office offered a lurid contrast to the vistas of brown land on either side; the mausoleum was a stunted dwarf compared with the massive structure of the “Artist’s Conception.” The “features” were apparently also in the future, except for a rather forlorn-looking huge tin Bible at the entrance. A small slope, about the size of a town dweller’s back garden, was already converted into graves; I counted seventeen of them, and six occupied crypts in the mausoleum. The Memorial Counselor had accurately told me that of fifteen hundred burial places sold, only twenty-three were actually in use.
The profit potential of a cemetery does not by any means end with the sale of burial space. Adjuncts of cemetery operation, such as the digging, planting, trimming, and general maintenance of graves, which fifty years ago (before the advent of the commercial cemetery) were looked upon simply as chores to be handled by the groundskeeper or the sexton, are today systematically turned to good account. And there are today many extra profit items for the cemetery owner which played no part in cemetery operation or finance in the days before Forest Lawn became the arbiter of fashion in the burial world—the sale of vaults, bronze grave markers, flowers, postcards, and statuary, and the collection, control, and management of huge “perpetual care” funds.
A generation ago, gravedigging and markers were provided by cemeteries at a nominal cost. Park and Cemetery (a fuddy-duddy forerunner of Concept) reported in 1921 that cemeteries in Seattle were charging $7 for opening and closing a grave. Now a mechanized operation, opening and closing a grave can be completed in about fifteen minutes. Today, cemeteries are charging $600 to $900 for this service, even more on Sundays and holidays. Opening a mausoleum vault, which means simply removing the 25-by-32-inch faceplate, will cost a comparable amount. Zestiest of all for the cemetery are the charges made for opening niches to contain urns in the columbarium. The faceplate of a small niche measures 14 by 14 inches; the charge for opening it in the Neptune Society’s San Francisco columbarium is $300. What needs to be done to open it? I asked an undertaker. “It’s all in the wrist,” he replied. The cost of a niche runs upward from $3,500, but this, I was assured, includes all charges for care “in perpetuity.”
Other profit items which the commercial cemetery tries to preempt for itself are the sale of vaults, grave liners, and markers.
The cement marker, once a threat to bronze sales, is no longer a problem. The commercial cemeteries, authorized by law to make their own rules, simply prohibit their use. The cemetery’s specifications for. the size, shape, and installation of the bronze, granite, or granite-and-bronze markers which they now require are likely to be so stringent as to make it inconvenient to buy this commodity elsewhere, or to have it installed by an outside supplier. The ordinary bronze marker, inscribed with the name of the deceased and his dates of birth and demise, sells for about $350 for a single grave. The standard cemetery markup is 100 to 200 percent.
In areas already saturated with grave and mausoleum sales, a second pressing of the vintage, so to speak, can be harvested by selling bronze markers “in advance of need” to people who have already purchased interment space. Although I find it hard to picture the customer placing the order for his own memorial ahead of time (“How shall I order the inscription? ‘To My Dearly Beloved Self,’ perhaps, or just simply ‘Dear Me’?”), such sales are being made in substantial volume.
The bronze deal, whether pre-, post- or at-need, can be greatly facilitated by the use of sales letters, which are followed up by telephone calls and personal visits from the Bronze-Memorial Counselors. The Matthews Memorial Bronze Company has prepared dozens of suggested sales letters with which the cemetery can pepper lot holders at appropriate intervals:
Dear Friend,
The other day, we and our Maintenance crews were out working the section of the cemetery where your family estate is located. Naturally, we couldn’t help but notice that the gr
aves were unmemorialized.
One of the workmen commented that an unmarked grave is a sad thing.
Some of the letters are geared to seasonal use: “Dear Friend, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” … “Dear Friend, In a few weeks the forsythia and daffodils will raise their golden horns to the sky and trumpet in the warm winds of spring.” … “Dear Friend, Soon the year will repeat its old story.” … “Dear Friend, Soon Easter will be upon us once again.” … “Dear Friend, The second Sunday in May is Mother’s Day.” … “Dear Friend, Does Memorial Day make you think about a drive in the country?” … “Dear Friend, Decoration Day is just a few short weeks away.” … “Dear Friend, Once again Christmas is almost here.” After four or five paragraphs of trumpeting forsythia or happy Mom’s Day visits, the point is made: “But if you want bronze memorialization by the holiday, you’ve got to act swiftly. You see, it takes many weeks to individually handcraft and deliver the memorial of your selection.”
Another tactic being used by cemeteries is to contact lot owners, asking them to come in so the cemetery can update its new computer. Once there, the future resident is reminded of the ever-looming threat of inflation and persuaded to purchase vault and memorials “now.” Opening and closing can be paid for in advance, too, and one Virginia gentleman was induced to plunk down $900—to cover the weekend or holiday rates, just in case.
Just what happens to the money that is collected on the “pre-need bronze deal” is not quite clear. The pre-need space buyer receives for his money a salable ownership interest in an existing bit of real estate, whereas the pre-need “bronze” buyer receives only a certificate telling him that when he dies a piece of metal will be manufactured and set in his grave. The seller meantime—and it may be a very long time—has the use not only of the money paid for the memorial-to-be, but an additional sum which the purchaser has been obliged to pay for its perpetual care! Regulatory laws that might give the buyer some measure of protection have not yet, in many states, been enacted.
The American Way of Death Revisited Page 12
