An atomic attack on our Christian funeral customs…
…hang over our heads like the fabled sword of Damocles.
The Memorial Associations are like all the other selfish interest groups that infest the American way of life like so many weasels sucking away at the life blood of our basic economy.
Those who seek to destroy the very foundation of the American funeral program are making headway.
What do we do about this menace? How do we fight it?
It poses a threat to religion itself.
Those who promote it are in the same class with the demagogue, fadist, and do-gooder who from time to time in history has jumped on his horse and ridden off in different directions.
Some telling blows have been struck directly at the heart of funeral service recently. So far we have been able to roll with the punch. But we must come back championing our heritage. We cannot throw in the towel or fight the way the enemy wants us to. To compromise or do what the opposition does is to lose forever the finest funeral standards in the world.
The very concept of the memorial society is alien to every principle of the American way of life. Therefore, it must be opposed with every ounce of decency we can muster.
What, then, is the “concept of the memorial society” against which these ounces of decency must be mustered? It was originally set forth in a pamphlet issued by the Cooperative League of the USA, entitled
Memorial associations and their members seek modesty, simplicity, and dignity in the final arrangements over which they have control. This concern for spiritual over material values has revealed that a “decent burial” or other arrangement need not be elaborate…. Some families wish to avoid funerals and burials altogether. They prefer cremation and a memorial service later, at which the life of the deceased and the spiritual aspects of death are emphasized, without an open casket and too many flowers.
Still others want to will their bodies to a medical school for teaching and research. They also may offer their eyes to an eye bank so the corneas may be transplanted and the blind may see.
Whether it’s an unostentatious funeral, a simple burial, cremation, a memorial service, or a concern for medical science, these people want dignified and economical final arrangements. Accordingly they have organized several kinds of memorial associations in more than a dozen states and several Canadian provinces….
Even for the person whose family wants the conventional funeral and burial, membership in a memorial association offers support and counsel in achieving simplicity, dignity, and economy in a service that centers not on public display of the body but on the meaning of death.
Above all, the memorial association provides the opportunity for individuals to have the kind of facilities and services they choose at what is perhaps the most mysterious moment of all.
With these modest objectives, a number of associations flourished by the late fifties. They were organized for the most part by Unitarians, Quakers, and other Protestant church groups; they flourished best in the quiet backwaters of university towns; their recruits came from youngish, middle-income people in the academic and professional world rather than from the lower-income brackets, or, as the
Some of the societies function as educational organizations and limit themselves to advocacy of “rationally pre-planned final arrangements.” Most, however, have gone a step further and through collective bargaining have secured contracts with one or more funeral establishments to supply the “simple funeral” for members at an agreed-on sum. There is some diversity of outlook in the societies: some emphasize cremation; others are more interested in educational programs advocating bequeathal of bodies to medical schools; still others stress freedom of choice in the matter of burials as their main concern.
All operate as nonprofit organizations, open to everybody, and all are run by unpaid boards of directors. Enrollment fees are modest, usually about $20 for a “life membership”; a few groups collect annual dues. The money is used for administrative expenses, printings, mailings, and the like, and in a few cases for newspaper advertising.
A major objective of all the societies is to smooth the path for the family that prefers to hold a memorial service, without the body present, instead of the “open-casket” funeral—and to guarantee that the family will not have to endure a painful clash with the undertaker in making such arrangements. The memorial service idea is most bitterly fought in the trade. With their usual flair for verbal invective, industry spokesmen have coined a word for the memorial service: “disposal.” “Point out that those who know say the disposal-type service without the body present is not good for those who survive,” said the president of the National Funeral Directors Association.
The idea the funeral industry wants to get across is that a memorial service without the body present is a heartless, cold affair, devoid of meaning for the survivors, in which the corpse has been treated as so much garbage. Actually, the character of a memorial service depends entirely upon the wishes of the family involved. It may be a private affair in a home (or in the chapel of the funeral establishment), or a regular church service conducted according to the custom of the particular denomination. The only distinguishing feature of a memorial service is the absence of the corpse and casket.
The memorial societies might have gone on for years, their rate of growth dependent mainly on word-of- mouth advocacy in very limited circles, had it not been for Roul Tunley’s “Can You Afford to Die?” in the June 17, 1961, issue of the
Tunley told the story of the Bay Area Funeral Society, describing its activities in these words: “San Franciscans have lately become witnesses to one of the most bizarre battles in the city’s history—a struggle to undermine the funeral directors, or ‘bier barons,’ and topple the high cost of dying.” He concluded that three choices confront the average citizen intent on making a simple, inexpensive exit from the world: “(1) You must make strict arrangements in advance for an austere funeral, a plan which may be upset by your survivors; or (2) You must join a co-operative enterprise like the Bay Area Funeral Society; or (3) You must will your body to some institution. If you do none of these things… the final journey will probably be the most expensive ride you’ve ever taken.”
Roul Tunley’s article, though milder in tone and less sharply critical of the undertakers than the one in
Pandemonium broke loose in the industry, reflected in headlines which appeared in the trade press: SENTIMENT AND MEMORIALIZATION ARE IN GRAVE DANGER!; MISINFORMATION SPREAD AMONG FIFTEEN MILLION AMERICANS!; LORIMER WOULD DISOWN IT, OR WE’LL ALL HANG SEPARATELY!; and my favorite, in
There was at first a strong tendency to panic.
