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Promoting a simpler way
Monday, May 24, 1999 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tom Kerr's father died more than 30 years ago, but the distaste still lingers from the presentation a funeral director put on for him and his mother as they discussed details of the death ceremonies.
"I was appalled at the promotional aspects of the arrangements, almost like the steps they take you through in an auto showroom. I felt they had a fairly practiced language that was their pitch," said Kerr, 80, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of industrial administration.
Unease with the methods and prices of the funeral trade led Kerr and his first wife to become members of the Pittsburgh Memorial Society. When she died in 1990, the H. Samson Funeral Home handled her cremation expediently at the price the memorial society had negotiated for its members.
The memorial society offers an alternative form of handling death for individuals who don't want long talks with funeral directors, lots of people staring at bodies in a funeral home and lots of money spent on merchandise and ceremonies.
It's a philosophy based on simplicity, and it doesn't suit everyone. The Funeral and Memorial Societies of America estimates it has perhaps half a million members in chapters nationally, including about 5,000 in Pittsburgh, who pay a $40 one-time fee for joining.
In general, they are individuals of higher income and education levels than the average American, and chapters are often centered around university communities. Most members are elderly or approaching that stage, and most intend to be cremated when they die. They'll frequently hold a memorial service afterward, but one conducted in a home, church or other setting outside of a funeral home.
Anyone can make similar choices individually, but the society promotes such practices for the general public and suggests funeral homes that are eager to handle the arrangements at minimal expense -- often for less than $1,000. The local chapter is run from a part-time office at First Unitarian Church in Shadyside, where the congregation includes many members.
"We were formed to give an alternative to the area," said Kerr's second wife, Pat Swedlow, a board member of the society who arranged her first husband's cremation and memorial service in 1989. His ashes are stored in an urn inside Kerr's and Swedlow's Squirrel Hill home, while Kerr scattered his former wife's ashes on their favorite section of New Jersey beach.
The couple estimate that 90 percent of their friends, who are largely in academic and professional circles, are cremated when they die without any open-casket visitation preceding it. A memorial service held days later is just as meaningful, Swedlow says.
"The memorial service can be the psychological healing event that the funeral directors say the funeral is. It was for us," she said of her first husband's family. "There was a four-day or five-day hiatus between my husband's death and the memorial service. We all felt pretty crummy all week, and after the service we felt good. It was a celebration of Jerry's life."
Twenty-eight funeral homes in the Pittsburgh area participate in the memorial society's network. Some funeral directors who haven't joined say the prospect has never come up, or if it did, they didn't feel it would be cost-effective to participate.
Information about the Pittsburgh Memorial Society can be obtained by calling 621-4740, and the national organization offers a range of funeral-related information on an Internet web site: http://vbiweb.champlain.edu/famsa/.
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