Category: Uncategorized
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What Happens To Cremated Remains Thereafter?
When a New York funeral home closed its door a few years ago, it found itself in the midst of a moral dilemma it had never bargained for. There, on its shelves, were more than 275 boxes of cremains never picked up by the families of the deceased. Some dated back 100 years. Legally, it […]
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What You Need To Know When Considering a Home Funeral
In 1911, when newspaper publisher and journalist Joseph Pulitzer died, he was waked in the library of his Manhattan home. The room was filled with floral tributes and the furniture arranged for the assembly of mourners. Throughout the morning, family, friends, and employees came to pay their respects to the journalistic icon who reposed in […]
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DOA -RIP
For a brief time, when I was a young funeral director, I had license plates on my car which read DOA-RIP. Admittedly, I thought they were clever and set me apart. The plates garnered mention in a few newspapers, and other funeral directors who read about –or saw–them were not amused. In fact, they chided […]
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Sure, Let’s Dumb it Down Some More
Last spring, the New York State Funeral Directors Association sent licensed NY State funeral directors a survey about creating a new –and unlicensed –position: funeral director’s assistant. When the survey responses were tallied, the results showed a majority against creating such a position. Seemingly, that was not the desired result. So, we were all asked […]
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A Dying Business
One upon a time, a young woman walked into a funeral home in Queens, New York. She needed an after-school job to earn some money, while she worked her way through college, and the funeral home was hiring. She had dreams of one day becoming a great writer. Well, if not a great one, at […]
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Let’s Be Truthful
The Morte Girls are often asked by young people (and some not so young) about how to forge a career in funeral service, and what it’s like. We explain that the hours are long, that most of us work nights, weekends and holidays, and that the pay is generally little more than adequate. Additionally, the […]
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Our Latest Interview
In our recent interview with Authority Magazine, we reiterate the importance of funeral service & how we continue to uphold cherished traditions. Clearly, the Covid pandemic underscored (in a major way) what any funeral director can tell you: #funeralsmatter.
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Post Pandemic Funeral Service – Can We Find Some Normalcy?
As the winter of 2020 turned to spring, the death toll from Covid-19 seemed insurmountable. For funeral directors, it was the darkest and most challenging time we’ve ever faced. In an industry built on personal contact and a deep sense of tradition, we could count on neither. “The idea of not being able to do […]
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I Want to Watch
An essential component of our role as funeral directors is to maintain the sanctity of our work and protect the privacy of those in our care. Something that continues to trouble me is the prurient interest some have in the most private part of funeral service. “I want to watch? Can I?” It is an […]
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A Funeral Home Director’s View of the Pandemic
A Funeral Home Director’s View of the Pandemic In this article I wrote for Next Avenue, three seasoned, and respected, NYC funeral directors shared their thoughts and experiences with me. They were hard to hear, and even harder to write about, but such is the reality in these dark days. Funeral directors are doing all […]
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