Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes

4 Personal Practice Stories

4 Personal Practice Stories The following personal practice stories are about funeral events in which the funeral directors were personally involved and accountable. They are oral history accounts in which the storytellers experienced what took place, whether good or bad. By sharing their stories with other funeral directors, employees, and the general public, they are letting the world know about the wonderful ups and downs of the funeral service profession. The stories involve embalmings, grave site selection, suicides, homicides, and military funeral services. Some mention snake handling, bedbugs, and animals in the funeral home. Others give accounts of apprenticeships , of driving ambulances and hearses, and of breaking up family fights. All provide information and insights about managing a funeral business and interacting with bereaved families and community members. Notes on Crow’s Funeral Home Services Years ago, some people in furniture and general store businesses made certain kinds of furniture and also provided caskets that they also made, which were called coffins in the old days. The Crow’s Funeral Home service probably stemmed from that kind of business. Up until the 1950s, most of the funeral directors would go to the homes to do the embalming, dress the body, bring the casket to the house, and sometimes have the visitation there at the home, [with] the funeral at church or sometimes in the front yard. They built our main chapel in the 1950s that we have now. When that happened, it was a big addition in terms of cultural changes. People started using the chapel here for funerals more often than we did in churches. However, we v 92 Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes still use churches for funerals quite often. And we started having more funerals here at this funeral home because we had a nice chapel that was probably bigger than most churches. The practice of keeping the body at home for viewing and for funeral services has not stopped completely. Once every few years we’ll take a body home like they used to do. But that’s very seldom done anymore. When I started working here by myself in August 1971, doing my apprenticeship, I was eighteen years old. At that time we would still take a few people home each year, back in the early seventies. We might take four or five home each year for visitation purposes. Then when it was time to bury the body, we would go back to the house to take the body to the cemetery. Generally, we would go from the home to a church for a funeral, then from the church to the cemetery, as is traditionally done now. When we would take the body to the home for the viewing and visitation, we didn’t always stay there, but we would go back periodically to check to see that everything was okay and to see if they needed anything. Of course, when we did that, we would also take over chairs and sometimes fans when people didn’t have the ability to cool their homes. We also took along a boxed set of portable curtains. We would take that box into the home, then find a corner in the living room, then unfold and open the box. The curtains would unfold out of that box and telescope up to where it looked like a backdrop for the casket. The curtains were usually velvet, maroon or dark-colored velvet material that had a swooping design on the front. The curtains would be a backdrop for the casket. We also put lamps at the head and foot of the casket to give the desired lighting effect over the open casket. Of course we had casket stands, or what in more recent times are called church trucks. The old name for them was “catafalque,” that the casket would be placed on. It was also called a casket bier. That was actually a casket stand on which the casket is placed during visitation or viewing. Presently, we call it a church truck; at least, we call it that around here. It is a portable, collapsible, four-wheel truck that we can put the casket on and roll it in and out of the church. Follis Crow, Glasgow, December 11, 2007 Personal Practice Stories 93 Wait till She Dies When Martin and I first bought this funeral home, we did ambulance service up until 1972. One Sunday afternoon, we...