Oddly enough, the funeral men, long aware that these attitudes are more commonly held than that of Mr. Chelini, are not particularly worried. After all, these people will not be around to arrange their own funerals. When the bell tolls for them, the practical essentials—selection of a casket and all the rest—will be in the hands of close relatives who will, it is statistically certain, express their sense of loss in an appropriately costly funeral.

This point was made rather forcefully by a funeral director in the course of a radio interview. The interviewer remarked that it is the law in some states that the express wishes of the deceased as to the mode of his funeral must be observed. What happens then, he then asked, if the deceased has left instructions for a very simple funeral, but the survivors insist on something more elaborate? The funeral director answered with rare candor, “Well, at a time like that, who are you going to listen to?”

Odds are that the undertaker will be the arbiter of what is a “suitable” funeral, that a decedent’s own wishes in this regard may not be the final word. Even if he is the President of the United States.

Franklin D. Roosevelt left extremely detailed and explicit instructions for his funeral “in the event of my death in office as President of the United States.” The instructions were contained in a four-page penciled document dated December 26, 1937, early in his second term, and were addressed to his eldest son, James.

The instructions included these directions:

• That a service of the utmost simplicity be held in the East Room of the White House.

• That there be no lying in state anywhere.

• That a gun-carriage and not a hearse be used throughout.

• That the casket be of absolute simplicity, dark wood, that the body be not embalmed or hermetically sealed, and

• That the grave be not lined with brick, cement, or stones.

Regarding the latter instruction, James Roosevelt writes, “So far as we can learn, he never had discussed this with anyone. Knowing Father, we can only speculate that he regarded the embalming procedure as a distasteful invasion of privacy, and that perhaps he had an inner yearning to follow the traditional funeral liturgy, ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.’”

Nobody in the Roosevelt household knew of the existence of this document. It was found in his private safe a few days after his burial. It is a common occurrence that when death comes unexpectedly to the ordinary home, burial instructions are found too late tucked away in a safe-deposit box or contained in a will which is not read until after the funeral; it seems ironic that the same mischance could occur in the White House itself. Furthermore, White House aides charged with arranging details of the funeral seem to have been as much at a loss, and as tractable in the hands of the undertaker, as any average citizen faced with the same situation.

News of Roosevelt’s death, flashed around the world on April 12, 1945, meant many things to many people. To millions of Americans it signified the sudden and disastrous loss of the most commanding figure of the century and with him the disappearance of an era. To Mr. Fred W. Patterson, Atlanta undertaker, at home enjoying an after-dinner pipe that evening when his phone rang, it was (in the words of the Southern Funeral Director) “THE CALL—probably the biggest and most important ever experienced by a contemporary funeral director.”

The Call was placed by Mr. William D. Hassett, a White House aide who was with Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, at the time of his death. He was charged by Mrs. Roosevelt with the task of buying a coffin; being entirely without experience in such matters, he consulted Miss Grace Tully, FDR’s secretary, and Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, who had attended the President in his last moments. Both were sure that Mr. Roosevelt would have wanted something simple and dignified, possibly a solid mahogany casket with copper lining similar to the one used for the President’s mother.

From accounts of the placing of the order for the solid mahogany casket, it appears there was more than one telephone conversation between Patterson, the undertaker, and the harassed presidential assistants. The following account of Hassett’s conversation is given by Bernard Asbell: “Hassett said he wanted a solid mahogany casket with a copper lining. Patterson told him that copper linings had disappeared early in the war. He did have, however, a plain mahogany one, but—Hassett broke in to ask if it were at least six feet four inches long. Patterson said it was—but it was already sold. It was to be shipped the next day to New Jersey to accommodate another undertaker. He added that he had a fine bronze-colored copper model that would—Hassett, in his gentle but most firm Vermont manner, said he wanted the mahogany brought at once to Warm Springs. Patterson asked if he could bring both. Perhaps, on reconsideration, they would choose the bronze-colored copper one. Hassett said he could.”

Patterson, writing in the Southern Funeral Director, describes a further conversation about the coffin, this time with Dr. Bruenn: “After he [Dr. Bruenn] consulted with William D. Hassett,… he requested that only the mahogany be brought; but on my request, in the event a change was desired, we were allowed to bring, in addition, the copper deposit.”

Mr. Patterson’s very understandable desire to acquit himself creditably and with honor in this situation comes through strongly between the lines. There he was, caught in the spotlight, before his colleagues and before the nation. He must have suffered a nasty moment before permission was granted to bring both caskets to the Little White House.

Patterson and his assistants drove to Warm Springs with two hearses, one containing the plain mahogany casket, the other the “fine bronze-colored copper model,” a National Seamless Copper Deposit No. 21200. Patterson relates how the question of which casket to use was finally resolved: “After Mrs. Roosevelt arrived at 11:25 and had seen the President’s remains, a conference was held as to funeral arrangements. Dr. Bruenn was asked what they wished to do about the casket. He consulted Admiral McIntire who came with Mrs. Roosevelt. In the conversation, the Admiral was heard to use the word ‘bronze’ and as the copper deposit had a bronze finish, of course that was the casket to be used.”

Did the presidential aides feel that one had been put over on them, albeit discreetly? We do not know.

In one important respect, Mr. Roosevelt’s instructions were observed: there was no lying in state. Mrs. Roosevelt felt sure that he would not have wished it. She said, “We have talked often, when there had been a funeral at the Capitol in which a man had lain in state and the crowds had gone by the open coffin, of how much we disliked the practice; and we had made up our minds that we would never allow it.”

Failure to carry out certain of his other instructions can only be laid to the unlucky circumstance that they were found too late. It is, however, interesting to compare President Roosevelt’s words with accounts given by participants in the funeral: