“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There is just stuff people do.”     –Casy, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

    John Steinbeck was the great observer of the human foible in tough times. In Cannery Row there was this reflection: “It always seemed strange to me,” said Doc, “the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
    As funeral service evolves with families selecting simpler services and nominal merchandise selections, providers are forced with realities of reduced income. Some prepare for this by reducing overhead and offering more enticing products and unique services and others try to gain more earnings by non-performance of contracted and expected ethical services. The latter is what motivates more and more families to eschew funeral service all together in favor of low cost direct cremation services and full body donations.
    Some examples:
    Frederick Winkleman, 56, of Toledo, Ohio died in April 2015. His family had cost concerns and turned to the Tate Funeral Service to handle his cremation at an agreed upon price of $1200. When they paid the fee, a few weeks later, they asked to see his remains. Frederick Winkelman was brought on a “gurney”. His niece, Pam Feahr was quoted: “He looked a mess. It was awful. His hair. His beard. I broke down and cried. It is an image that I will never forget. Couldn’t they have made him look a little more presentable?”
    On May 28, the family contacted the Ohio State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors after trying to find out from Tate Funeral Home when the cremation would take place.
    The next day an inspector visited the funeral home, after touring the funeral home and speaking with the staff, he called the board director who called Toledo police.
    Decedents in Tate’s care were found in the chapel, the embalming room and the garage. There was no refrigeration in any of these rooms. Mr. Winkelman was identified as was Mrs. Green who died April 26. Jewell Lee died on January 8. A six month old child’s remain were found in the embalming room. He died May 7. His remains had been placed in a medical container filled with embalming fluid. Many of the remains were moldy and decomposing. One was infested with insects.
    Funeral director Robert Tate identified each of the decedents and claimed he intended to have them all cremated but offered no explanation why he had not done this.
    In total, 11 bodies were found.
    Tate Funeral Home contracts with Caring Cremation Services to perform these services. The explanation was clear and simple.
    “He just wasn’t paying his bill,” Robert Scott of Caring Cremation told authorities.
    Tate Funeral Home’s license has been suspended.
    The neighbors of Powell Mortuary Services of Philadelphia noticed that a garage the funeral home owned had a foul odor. Three deceased persons were found in the garage by investigating officials.
    Powell Mortuary Services’ license had expired in February 2012 but continued to operate. Director Janet Powell Dailey’s license had expired in February 2014, yet she continued to operate the funeral business.
    The business had been sued several times since 1988, including two dozen times from the IRS. The city filed a claim $214,425 in 2013. Philadelphia Department of Revenue filed a claim for $25,971 and the Philadelphia School District filed another claim for $15,232.
    Janet Powell Dailey had been operating services from the Price Funeral Home in West Philadelphia. Director John Price seemed surprised at about the revelations of Dailey and the Powell Mortuary Services.
    Also in Philadelphia, again, three deceased persons were found in an unlicensed funeral home. Hawkins Funeral Service of 5300 block of Vine Street is not licensed. It is site of the former Gaither and Kimble Funeral Home, which was licensed. Director and operator Blair Hawkins is licensed.
    One decedent was embalmed and in a casket but two others were not in refrigeration and were decomposing, according to police.
    In March 2014, Conestoga, Pennsylvania funeral director Benjamin Siar, Jr. was sentenced to 5 to 10 years on 88 felony and misdemeanor counts of theft and deceptive business practices. Lancaster County Judge Dennis Reinaker later added 1-4 years for abuse of a corpse.
    Siar owned the Gundel Funeral Home and it began to fail financially. One property the funeral home leased owed $12,000 in back rent.
    Siar took money to cremate four persons in late 2012 and early 2013. The four decomposing decedents, Rosa Kleinhuas, 76 (died December 20, 2012), M. Elizabeth Klug, 97, (died December 26, 2012), Ranasia A. R. Knight, 2, (died January 12, 2013), and Sandra Hotchkiss, 71 (who died January 21, 2013) were found in the basement. One was in a cooling unit, two on a table and one in a cardboard cremation container.
    He was also ordered to pay the victims a total of $160,000.
    Preneed theft has been such a major temptation to failing and cash strapped funeral directors that it would take a volume to cover.
    One recent case, though, I will report.
    Homesteaders Life Insurance has filed suit against Poca, West Virginia funeral home Gatens-Harding. Owners Chad and Billie Harding are accused of falsely reporting 111 deaths of insured persons for a total of $900,000 over a ten year period of time.
    Poca resident Mario Jackson told WCHS Eyewitness News, “It’s a small town, he grew up in this town. Like I say it’s kind of shocking to grow up in the same town as that guy and go to school with him, and supposedly he does something like this.”
    Financial sense.com has this perspective: “If there were a truism to fit a broad cross-section of behaviors in our society today, the catchphrase ‘desperate men do desperate things’ fits well, for sure. This is because you can see it everywhere on an increasing basis as economies of all shapes and sizes disintegrate.”
    There are so many funeral home operators that truly earn the trust of the community they serve. Stealing and dishonoring a deceased person in their care would be unthinkable.
    Yet every year, as the financial squeeze of a changing market continues, how many more will disgrace themselves and the families they serve.

    “You have a responsibility to care for the dead as you are supposed to.”     –Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Walker