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 National Funeral Service Journalput it, “The movement appeals most strongly to the visionary, ivory tower eggheads of the academic fraternity.”
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. Casket & Sunnyside’sexpert on proper reverence wrote, “The increasing support which members of the clergy have been giving to the memorial society movement stems in part from a lack of understanding on the clergy’s behalf of what proper reverence for the dead really means to the living. They have little knowledge of the value of sentiment in the therapy of healing.”
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 Saturday Evening Post. This article provided an unlooked-for boost for the tiny memorial associations. With its appearance, the conflict between the funeral industry and the Man of Ordinary Prudence came into the open.
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 Collier’s, represented—from the point of view of the industry—a far more potent threat, for it dealt with the kind of practical remedial action which people in any community could take. This put the cat among the pigeons. The “bizarre battle” was about to become positively outlandish.
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 Mortuary Management, THEY CAN AFFORD TO DIE!
There was at first a strong tendency to panic. Casket & Sunnysideeditorialized:
There is little doubt that funeral service today, beset by powerful adversaries, will buckle under the strain unless there is united action in a common cause by all groups of funeral directors. If not, funeral service faces the danger of retrogressing to a point which we do not care to contemplate.
And the American Funeral Director:
Although articles critical of funeral practices have been published many times before in magazines and newspapers, there are aspects to this one which are especially disturbing…. The article is a persuasive sales talk for the memorial societies which today constitute one of the greatest threats to the American ideals of memorialization.
And the President of the NFDA:
…part of an organized move to abolish the American funeral program.
From the cacophony of angry voices, a number of distinct viewpoints could be discerned; differences of opinion emerged as to the essential nature of the threat.
The editor of Mortuary Managementwrote:
Offhand, it would appear that memorial societies have the one aim of reducing the price of funerals. As you study it, however, you begin to realize that it runs far deeper than price alone…. The leaders in these memorial society movements are not necessarily poor folk who cannot afford a standard funeral. Many of them are educated people. Many are both educated and of substantial means. Their objective is only partly to force lower funeral prices. Equally strong is the desire to change established customs. It can be focused on funerals today and on something else tomorrow. The promulgations of these outfits hint at Communism and its brother-in-arms, atheism.
The point that memorial society advocates are not only, or even perhaps primarily, interested in funeral costs was expanded by Mr. Sydney H. Heathwood, a public relations specialist in the funeral field, credited by the National Funeral Service Journalwith having, years ago, “originated and developed the ‘Memory Picture’ concept which was adopted by the Joint Business Conference and became familiar to the whole profession.” Mr. Heathwood saw “the continuing growth of clericalcriticism” as the fundamental problem facing the funeral men, and says that as a consequence of it, “the past few months have marked a gathering storm—more dangerous, I believe, in its potential harm to the whole profession than anything before it of the kind.”
What he found particularly devastating in the Postarticle was the words of Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Unitarian minister and one of the organizers of the Bay Area Funeral Society: “My people are in increasing rebellion against the pagan atmosphere of the modern funeral. It is not so much the cost as the morbid sentimentality of dwelling on the physical remains,” and “[The funeral societies] vowed to work together for simpler and more dignified funerals which are not a vain and wasteful expense and do not emphasize the mortal and material remains rather than the triumph of the human spirit.” Mr. Heathwood, in an analysis of the article, concludes: “The criticism of modern funerary refinements is not—in essence—against the costs, as such. Rather, the central part of all the criticism is against the actual goods and services which comprise the modern funeral service.” He dismisses as “woolly argument” the charges that “either the critical clergymen are hungry for the funeral director’s fees or their criticism shows that they are halfway communists or fellow-travelers.”