In Montgomery I stayed with the Durrs—it was they who arranged through intermediaries for me to meet the Southern gentry, few of whom were on their own social list, and to be invited to the country club. It was their ancient car, worth no more than its value to a junk dealer, that was burned outside the mass meeting. Obviously I would have to reimburse them for this loss. When I got home, I called my insurance agent, whose sympathies were all with the Freedom Riders, and unfolded my plan for a claim: had it been my own car, whose blue-book value was $850, the insurance company would have had to pay up. Since it was just by chance that I was using somebody else’s car, could I not collect this sum? Much to my surprise this rather specious reasoning paid off, enabling the Durrs, then living on the edge of poverty, to get a fairly decent replacement for the car.
The reaction of my Montgomery hostesses to the piece, as reported by Virginia Durr, was illuminating. She said they were not in the least disturbed by my remarks about their mindless bigotry — but were exceedingly offended by my description of the FOOD as being uniformly bland and creamy: “We didn’t have cream sauce, we had roast lamb the night she came.” “She never mentioned my lettuce-and-walnut salad.”
AMERICANS DON’T WANT FANCY FUNERALS
SATURDAY EVENING POST / November 23, 1963
Has the twentieth-century American standard of dying evolved in response to public demand, as the funeral industry claims? Do people really desire that modern technology and “know-how” should be applied to the production of ever more elaborate funerary merchandise, gaudier caskets, finer burial negligées, bigger and more beautiful undertaking establishments with softer and thicker carpeting? Is there a clamor for newer and better embalming techniques for the purpose of achieving an ever more lifelike appearance in corpses? And are people only too willing and anxious to pay for all this, as the funeral merchants insist?
Judging by the response to my recent book criticizing American funeral practices the opposite is true, and there is in fact a revolution underway by the funeral customer—the American public at large—against the funeral industry and its bizarre product.
It would seem that this is one area of our affluent society in which a great many people yearn to see an end to proliferating “improvements” and “refinements,” yearn for restraint and a return to rationality, and actively resent the fantastically high charges levied on bereaved families by the funeral trade.
The death industries—undertakers, cemetery men, florists, casket and vault manufacturers—are turning the deaf ear to rumblings of mutiny among their patrons. Nevertheless, they are in the grip of a nightmare: the deadly fear that their two-billion-dollar-a-year mortuary empire may be slipping from their grasp. At the moment, their spokesmen are rounding on “the Mitford menace” with fangs bared, refusing to see that their real trouble lies not with any one book or magazine article, nor with any one critic, but rather with large numbers of ordinary people in all walks of life who are becoming increasingly restive about the style and cost of the modern funeral.
The controversy that is taking place over my book seems to be shaping up not as a public debate in the usual sense of the term but rather as a battle between the funeral men on one side and the public on the other.
True, a small minority of undertakers are beginning to face the facts and to exhibit more flexibility in their approach to their customers, even to develop some understanding and respect for people who as a matter of principle do not want the full funerary treatment ordinarily prescribed by the industry. But the industry as a whole, and particularly the association leaders, are unable to come to grips with the situation that confronts them today because their whole operation rests on a myth: the assumption that they have the full and unqualified backing of the vast majority of the American people, that the costly and lavish funeral of today, with all its fabulous trimmings, is but a reflection of American insistence on “the best” in all things. It is particularly hard for them to grasp the idea that a person who has lived well or even luxuriously might prefer the plainest disposition after death.
The myopic assumption that all but a few crackpots and troublemakers approve and endorse the contemporary American funeral comes through strongly in the declarations of industry spokesmen. In the words of Mr. Wilber Krieger, Managing Director of National Selected Morticians: “Fortunately, there are tens of thousands of families in this country who, from experience, know this criticism is ill-founded. We leave it to them to judge the merits of the case put forward by Miss Mitford.”
One might have supposed, then, that many readers would be offended by my book, by the suggestion that the typical American funeral of today with “cosmetized” corpse in elaborate casket is grotesque, inappropriate, and a ridiculous waste of financial resources. The behavior of a society toward its dead is, after all, an extremely sensitive subject and criticism in this area might be expected to arouse deep emotions. Is there (as the undertakers claim) a pent-up reservoir of good will for the trade and for the type of funeral it prefers to sell based on untold thousands of satisfied customers? Would these satisfied customers rise in their numbers to defend the undertakers and their practices, to protest the suggestion of restoring simplicity to our exit from this world?
The protest, when it came, proved to be one-sided indeed, and from one quarter alone: the funeral men themselves.
Of the avalanche of letters I have received about my book from all over the country, from all sorts of people, I have yet to hear from a satisfied customer. I find it rather surprising, in fact, that not one correspondent has so far come forward to praise or justify the typical contemporary funeral, to commend the embalmer’s handiwork, or to say of a funeral in his own family, “It was worth every cent.” On the contrary, I have been deluged with new complaints, new “horror stories” about the depletion of small estates by funeral charges, new expressions of revulsion against the style in which we bury our dead.
Typical of these was a letter from a schoolteacher in Chicago who had worked and sacrificed to provide adequate nursing and some comforts for her father during a terminal illness. When her father died, she refused to purchase the elaborate casket urged on her by the undertaker. She shocked him to his boots by insisting that even the “minimum-priced service” at $695 was too high; that if he would not supply a plain wood coffin for half that sum, as specified in her father’s will, she would take the body elsewhere. This threat worked (as it often does) and the reluctant undertaker complied, but she learned later that he had confided to her relatives that “she must be a little off in the head.”
There was the advertising executive who, while arranging for the funeral of his mother, was called on by the undertaker to choose between two materials for the casket lining. “What’s the difference?” he asked. The undertaker explained that the more expensive material was pure silk and the cheaper was rayon: “We find rayon is a lot more irritating to the skin.”
And then there was the report from a TV crew which recently filmed a program in the establishment of one of the largest and most “reputable” undertakers in California. The owner piously assured them that no hard selling was done in his place, the choice was entirely up to the family; in fact, they were encouraged to browse around among the caskets without a salesman even present. The TV men were impressed—until one of the sound crew spotted a hidden microphone in the casket selection room, placed there for the purpose of eavesdropping on the conversation of the bereaved family!
A further application of electronics to modern dying was revealed to me in a letter from a former embalmer. As soon as the undertaker, conferring with the family, ascertains the amount of insurance and other death benefits available, he signals by push button to an assistant in the casket sales room. The assistant’s job is then to rush around changing the discreet little price tags on each casket so that the entire range of prices offered will be raised or lowered to fit the appropriate financial bracket.
Some of these revelations—and the extent and de
pth of resentment felt by people generally over funeral practices—came as a surprise to me. Not so the reactions of the funeral men, of which I had advance notice.
Long before The American Way of Death was published, the funeral industry became aware that it was in progress. Headlines began to appear in the undertakers’ trade journals: “MITFORD DAY DRAWS CLOSER!” “JESSICA MITFORD PLANS ANTI-FUNERAL BOOK,” and, on a more optimistic note, “WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG, BAD BOOK?” On the eve of publication of my book, the Director, official organ of the influential National Funeral Directors Association, carried a front-page editorial on the subject, advising the nation’s undertakers to “adapt to the situation calmly, to refuse to panic in either thought or action, remembering that the funeral is a custom long established by common consent.” Mortuary Management, an undertakers’ monthly voiced the same idea: “These are the days when you must hold steadfast even though you have every right to lash out against the unprovoked attacks with every weapon at your command.”
Sound advice, perhaps, but not always easy to follow, as subsequent reactions showed. The very next week the National Funeral Service Journal was adapting far from calmly—was in fact lashing out with every weapon at its command: “A considerable amount of the current epidemic of funeral service criticism might properly be termed ‘the Mitford syndrome,’ evidences of which are vitriolic, vituperative and wholly unjustified attacks on American funeral customs and the dedicated people whose profession it is to bury the human dead with reverence and respect.” And the bulletin of the Minnesota Funeral Directors Association delivered this bewildering judgment: “The Jessica Mitford book is probably the most damaging book of its kind ever written about the funeral profession. The author’s approach is cunning, sly, at times intelligent, deceptive, often crude, completely biased, and sometimes truthful.”
Mortuary Management said: “Actually, the danger to the equilibrium of funeral service is not in the book per se. It is in the residual use of Miss Mitford’s material.... Newspapers, large and small, are reviewing the Mitford volume, passing and repassing its poisons among the citizenry.”
The undertakers, long accustomed to operating behind discreetly closed doors, their business methods shrouded in secrecy, have traditionally done their best to avoid the spotlight. The focus of their fear is that the “citizenry” will become informed of facts hitherto concealed, facts about the repulsive and unnecessary procedure of embalming, the part this plays in “building up the sale,” and, above all, facts about pricing of funerals. The undertakers are no doubt aware that public ignorance of these matters has long been the major factor in inducing the American public to accept the industry’s funerary offerings without argument. They also know that the more people learn about these things, the greater the danger that they will seek some alternative and that the rebellion will spread.
My book describes a funeral reform movement, the funeral and memorial societies, first brought to national attention by the Saturday Evening Post two years ago in Roul Tunley’s article “Can You Afford to Die?” These groups, led for the most part by the clergy, are organizing to guarantee freedom of choice in funerary matters. They help those who prefer simplicity to obtain dignified, inexpensive funerals—a return to the plain wood coffin at a reasonable price, usually between $100 and $200. Emphasis is on the spiritual aspects of death rather than on the beautified corpse in open casket. A memorial service honoring the memory of the deceased, and conducted by a clergyman of his faith, is generally held after burial or cremation—without benefit of the ubiquitous offices of the “Funeral Director.”
An example of what one such society has accomplished for its members may explain the terror in the ranks of undertakers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the minimum-priced funeral package (casket and undertaker’s “services,” including embalming and maquillage) offered in the great majority of establishments is in the range of $450 to $500. This, which covers only the undertaker’s charges and does not include grave or burial vault, would be the rock-bottom price for the average individual—unless he could prove he was a charity case. The secretary of the Bay Area Funeral Society tells me that in the past year—June, 1962, to June, 1963—there were 250 funerals of Society members whose families had contracted for the simple funeral costing around $150. He estimates that each of these families saved at least $300, for an aggregate saving to the families of $75,000.
While the 250 funerals arranged for the Society members represent only a tiny fraction—a little over 1 percent—of the total deaths in the area, they are nevertheless regarded by the undertaker as a dread portent for the future. He is aware, too, that the influence exerted by the societies on funeral costs and customs extends far beyond the actual membership.
The methods by which the undertakers propose to silence criticism and hang on to their enormously lucrative traffic in the artifacts of death were blueprinted early this year by Mr. Frederick Llewellyn, Executive Vice-President of Forest Lawn Memorial Park. In a series of articles written for the American Funeral Director entitled, “Are Funeral Customs Going the Way of the Buggy Whip?” Mr. Llewellyn sets forth for his colleagues the major arguments to be used:
There is a great tide sweeping over America today, washing away at the foundations of decent memorialization.... If the Communists can help undermine one of the most fundamental of religious rites, the way in which we care for our dead; if they can get more and more people asking, not “Is it right?” but “Is it practical?” they can undermine religion and along with it the laws of the land. Then, as Mr. Khrushchev said, “America will fall like a ripe plum!”
Elsewhere in the series he quotes the famous Khrushchev remark “We’ll bury you!”—perhaps fearing that Khrushchev was actually intending to move in and give Forest Lawn competition in this respect.
The lesson was further driven home by Mr. Wilber Krieger, Managing Director of National Selected Morticians, who states in his press release about my book:
A determined effort is being made today to strip the American funeral of all of its religious significance by the memorial society movement and substitute the funeral service, as we now know it in this country, with that practiced in communistic countries such as the Soviet Union.
The latest in this particular vein to come to my attention is an advertisement in an Oakland newspaper sponsored by the “Renowned Abbey Memorial Gardens” of Vallejo. A well-dressed father is pictured talking to his well-dressed little boy: the heads of both are bowed in sorrow. “My dear son,” the father is saying. “I am so sorry you are going to have to live under Communism. It seemed to come so quickly. I didn’t think their lies could win....” Follows the punch line: “No nation has ever turned to Communism, Socialism or Fascism until the leaders have first been able to destroy MEMORIALIZATION. The dignity of man, the freedom of life and the worship of God—these principles on which our nation was founded—throughout all ages and in all lands have never been any greater than the MEMORIALIZATION shown in death. Many so-called ‘memorial societies’ are trying to destroy this MEMORIALIZATION....”
Beyond these orbital flights of rhetoric, attempts on the part of industry leaders to refute the facts set forth in my book have been rather vague and obscure. For example, I estimate that the funerals of adults who died in 1961 cost an average of $1,450—including everything, undertaker’s charges, burial vault, grave, marker, and so on. Howard C. Raether, Executive Secretary of the National Funeral Directors Association, says he thinks this estimate is high, but he does not attempt to supply one of his own; he says, “It is difficult if not impossible to estimate an average funeral, taking all expenses into consideration.”
Discussing the memorial service of the type advocated by the funeral societies, held after the funeral with the body not present, he quotes a clergyman as saying: “It sets up a psychological detour around the reality of what has happened by encouraging a refusal to view the remains.... A memorial service does not furnish the surroundings that make it easy to
express deep feelings, nor does it furnish the opportunity to give group support to the bereaved.” This peculiar statement is not explained further. We are not told why a memorial service, which is generally held in a church or a home and is attended by friends and family of the deceased, fails to “furnish the surroundings that make it easy to express deep feelings,” nor in what way it fails “to give group support to the bereaved.”
Mr. Krieger of National Selected Morticians gets more specific. In refutation of my charge that in most communities it is impossible for the average person to buy a funeral for less than a fixed minimum of several hundred dollars, he says: “Families faced with the responsibility of arranging funeral services will find that every established and reputable funeral director can offer them a wide range of prices covering their services and the necessary merchandise beginning less than $200.” This is the same Mr. Krieger who a few months before said in a speech to the members of his organization: “I am greatly disturbed at what I am seeing across the country. Where many funeral directors today are showing a minimum over $600, that is not defensible.”
Is there such a thing as manipulation of the bereaved family to induce them to spend more than they might have intended? Of course not, says Mr. Krieger: “No reputable funeral director would attempt to influence the survivors on such a personal matter, or take advantage of their emotional state at such a time. It would be unthinkable.” This is the same Mr. Krieger who developed an elaborate and clever scheme of casket arrangement in the Selection Room (where the customer is taken to make his purchase) designed to extract the maximum amount of cash from each sale. According to Mr. Krieger’s plan, the higher-priced caskets should be placed in a nice, roomy part of the Selection Room which he calls the “Avenue of Approach” leading off to the right (because, he says, most people are right-handed and if lost they tend to turn to the right). The cheaper units can be crowded together off to the left in an aisle he calls “Resistance Lane.” He warns his colleagues against displaying a “heavy concentration of units under $300, which makes it very easy for the client to buy in this area with complete satisfaction.”
Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking Page 9
