LV mortuary market diversifies, flourishes

Stacy J. Willis

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 10:51 a.m.

Human bodies are burned 24 hours a day at the Palm Mortuary in downtown Las Vegas.

Four at a time, they are rolled into separate retorts, or cremation ovens, and burned at about 1,600 degrees for roughly four hours. The gas emitted from the oven vents atop the crematorium blurs the view of the nearby Jerry's Nugget casino.

Nevada has one of the highest cremation rates per capita in the nation. In 1997, 55 percent of Nevada's dead were cremated, compared with a national average of less than 20 percent, according to the state Bureau of Health Planning and Statistics.

Cremation rates are on the rise nationwide -- owing in part to a loosening of traditional American beliefs regarding death. Attitudes and rituals that surround death stem in part from religion, and as the country's religious landscape changes, so do its beliefs about death. From its religious roots to its commercial manifestations, the death industry is experiencing a makeover.

In Las Vegas, the mortuary market is flourishing. A few blocks away from Palm's crematorium, three more retorts are burning around the clock at Desert Memorial Cremation & Burial. Across town, the city's first "wholesale" casket shop recently opened its doors, pitching a "less somber" approach to death. And in the northwest suburbs, Palm recently opened a new 40-acre cemetery -- its fifth -- "in response to the growth of the city," a spokesman said.

While the presence of a dead body still summons musings of the afterlife, increasingly it poses shopping options. One can choose a streamlined, lilac-finished, stainless steel casket called "Tea Rose," a solid mahogany casket with velvet, cream-colored interior called "The Parliament" or a cast bronze urn called "The Aristocrat."

A body can be buried six feet under, or on top of a loved one, or on top of two loved ones stacked three-deep in a grave. One can purchase mausoleum space and have the body hydraulically lifted into a 20-foot high cement catacomb in a building named "Eternity" or "Devotion."

Cremains -- the ashes and bone fragments remaining after cremation -- can be buried, vaulted, displayed in a glass cubbyhole with memorabilia, spread in a rose garden or dropped in a tomb with other cremains.

"I think the future of this industry is open to the imagination," Ned Phillips, vice president of community relations at Palm, said. "Attitudes are changing. Some people are talking about shooting cremains into outer space in little rockets. As an industry, we need to be prepared for all kinds of things."

Death is often cited as the place at which religions are born, created to make sense of the cycle of human existence. Accordingly, funeral rites have long been dictated by religion.

Most religious traditions include some sort of ceremony to send the dead out of this world and, in some beliefs, to another. Through tightly prescribed prayers, music and acts, the religious approach to death has allowed for order at a time when people are facing the uncontrollable nature of death.

"People who come from some religious background have an easier time dealing with death than people who don't," said Garland Lee, co-owner of Alternative Source casket store, who has been in the funeral business more than 30 years. "It gives them something to guide them through hard times."

Beliefs about what happens to a soul upon death vary. In some religions, such as Hinduism, the soul may be reborn into another form of life. In others, such as Christianity, the soul moves on to a permanent heaven that excludes another earthly death.

Regardless of varying beliefs about the destination of the soul, the body is the thing with which the survivors are left to contend.

"Some see the body as very sacred, and some see the body as just a shell we put in the ground -- no big deal," the Rev. Mary Bredlau, a chaplain at Palm Mortuary, said. "What people do with a body after death tells a lot about how they view life."

In some cases, the disposition or manner in which the body is disposed is dictated specifically by religious beliefs. For example, Orthodox Jews prefer to have all-wood caskets with no metal nails, bolts or other man-made materials, in order to return the body to earth without interfering in nature's rate of decomposition.

Many Hindus prefer that their relatives' bodies be cremated. They believe that the body is clothing for the soul and should be discarded as would old clothes.

Muslims oppose cremation because "the soul really doesn't depart the immediate area of the body right after death," Mujahid Ramadan, a Muslim, said.

According to the Islamic faith, bodies should be washed, shrouded and buried within 24 hours, preferably among other Muslim graves.

"And it is preferred that the body is tilted so that it is facing Mecca," Ramadan said.

The Catholic Church frowned upon cremation for years because, during certain historical periods, it had been used with the intention of preventing the deceased's rise to heaven or to defame the body. In recent years, the church changed its stance on cremation and now allows it.

"We believe that there will come a time when Christ returns and the dead shall rise and the just shall take their places in the Heavenly Kingdom," the Rev. Bob Stoeckig, a Catholic priest at Christ the King Catholic Church, said.

"We would say there will literally be a raising of bodies. ... But in this day and age, most places recognize the possibility of cremation. The Code of Canon Law 1984 says cremation is all right, provided that it is not inspired by motives contrary to Christian teaching. But we would prefer that cremation take place after the funeral liturgy."

Catholics, the largest religious group in the United States and in Las Vegas, embrace a three-part funeral ritual that includes a vigil for the deceased, a liturgy and a rite of committal or graveside service. Should a Catholic choose to be cremated, the church urges the family to bury the cremains rather than scatter them.

"We opt for whatever shows the greatest respect, and we don't like the practice of sprinkling and dividing cremains because of where the ashes often end up -- perhaps in a sanitation system," Stoeckig said. "It's a matter of respect."

"I would regard myself as a spiritual person but not as a religious person," Chris Walters, the embalmer at Desert Memorial on Las Vegas Boulevard, said.

Chris, 28, and his brother, Dave Walters, 34, run one of the largest funeral homes in the state and cremate more bodies than any other Nevada funeral home. In 1997, Desert Memorial cremated 1,275 bodies, about 85 percent of the bodies they were charged with handling.

Chris Walters said he was raised in a fairly churchless home in which his parents gave him "an open feeling toward God but no specific religion."

"I believe that the instant the body dies, the soul is gone," he said. "It was the vehicle that carried the soul on this earth, but once someone dies, the soul isn't there.

"That's why I don't feel like I'm violating someone when I'm embalming."

As many religions undergo a shift away from bureaucracy, away from ritual for ritual's sake, the treatment of death follows suit. Practical concerns are increasingly governing decisions about the disposition of a loved one's body.

"There are a lot of factors that lead to Nevada's high cremation rate," Dave Walters said.

"We're a transient population. In the Midwest or back East, people grew up and lived in one place and their families had plots. But as the population as a whole becomes more mobile, it's hard to have that same traditional funeral. We have so many retirees in Las Vegas whose kids are in Florida or Texas or somewhere."

Another reason some families are choosing cremation, he said, is a sense of environmentalism. "People have concerns about the environment with burials. They worry about the land it's taking up," he said.

However, in many cases, cost is the biggest reason for choosing cremation. Basic cremation starts anywhere from about $500 to $1,000. Basic burial, including a low-end casket, often starts at twice that amount. Consumers are faced with a number of options and ancillary costs associated with each method of disposition.

With cremation, one must purchase a container in which the body will be burned. To choose this, consumers at Palm are walked into a roomful of caskets and boxes with price tags on them. At the low end is a plain brown cardboard box: $25. Next up is a teal-painted cardboard box called "Simplicity," which goes for $139. At the high end, the "Endicott Hardwood," a cherry-finished wood casket, goes for $2,050.

Survivors also must arrange to do something with the cremains. Palm sells urns ranging from $75 to $2,000, and "keepsakes" -- items such as ceramic eagles with a hole in the bottom for ashes or pewter heart lockets -- ranging from $45 to $430.

If one chooses to have a viewing of the body before either burial or cremation, it will need to be embalmed. Although many people think embalming is meant to preserve the body once it is in the grave, that is not the main reason for it.

"The main purpose of embalming is to sanitize the remains and preserve them for the viewing or service," Chris Walters said. "The main reason you want to have it preserved is just so it will look good."

Other potential funeral expenses include a per-day refrigeration fee, a cleaning deposit, fees for religious items such as crucifixes, the cost of a cement burial vault, staff overhead, hearse transport and perhaps the cost of packing and shipping the body elsewhere.

At Palm, the Traditional Funeral Service with Ceremonies package costs $2,875. Included in that price is transport of the body, embalming, grooming, use of facilities and equipment, committal or burial, staff fees, a funeral register and a box of acknowledgment cards.

Add to that the price of a casket -- somewhere between $300 and $8,000 -- and survivors are looking at one of the largest consumer purchases of their lifetime.

Enter the "Funerals R Us" entrepreneurs.

They have come not only to help change death's image, but to change the business of death.

In recent years the funeral industry has seen a number of back-room changes, largely overlooked by the consumer, such as a trend in which big mortuary companies bought up mom-and-pop shops, often owning several mortuaries under different names in the same town.

In Las Vegas, several mortuaries own a high-end mortuary and one that offers less expensive merchandise and services, such as Palm and Affordable Cremation & Burial, which are "separate corporations that share common ownership," according to a spokesman.

Other local mortuaries were bought in recent years by larger funeral-home corporations. Desert Memorial was sold last year to Sentinel Cremation Services, a subsidiary of the international Steward Enterprises. Now consumers are being asked to take a closer look at the market -- and change it -- by responding to a new image being pitched by some in the business.

In one local television commercial, a friendly man who still has a pulse stands in a casket and matter-of-factly answers questions about its comfort. "Fits great," he says.

Garland Lee, co-owner of Alternative Source, which ran the ad, said he is trying to strip away the "somber" image of the death industry.

"There's a change in the funeral industry. Now you can go buy a headstone and be happy about it. This sort of attitude takes the chill off of it a little bit -- and that's what the young people want," said Lee, whose shop does no embalming or body preparation, and no cremation.

Located in a shared building space on West Desert Inn, Alternative Source is brightly lit and has a casket showroom with a dozen choices. "We provide a service here. We sell caskets at wholesale prices direct to the public. We also sell headstones, nameplates and register books, too," Lee said. "And we deliver to any funeral home they want it delivered to."

Lee orders caskets literally by the truckload, 110 per haul, from an out-of-business manufacturer's stockpile in Toccoa, Ga. He then sells the caskets, which he says are comparable in quality and style to those sold at large funeral homes, for less than the market standard.

For example, he says, the Baron Silver stainless steel casket with white crepe interior sells for $650 at his shop, compared with $798 at Palm. "It's the same gauge metal, made by a different manufacturer. They are virtually all made the same."

Some will dispute his claims. Caskets are made with various materials to various standards, and some include thick rubber gaskets aimed at ensuring that water doesn't penetrate the inside -- all small details that can change the price significantly.

The Federal Trade Commission prohibits any funeral home from claiming that a casket will last indefinitely -- no casket can live up to that billing.

Perhaps more than any other type of discount store, direct-to-the-consumer casket shops raise skeptical eyebrows.

"The larger funeral homes are counting on that attitude," Lee said. "In a time of grief, people sometimes don't want to think about price. That's how the funeral homes were charging so much money a few years ago."

In an effort to control soaring prices, the FTC cracked down on the industry in the mid-1990s and created the Funeral Rule, which requires all funeral homes to provide an itemized price list immediately upon a shopper's request.

Lee's store is the first of its type in Las Vegas but represents a growing trend around the nation toward offering competition to the traditional funeral home.

"Funeral service will grow into a retail-oriented profession," Thomas J. Barnard writes in The Director, the official publication of the National Funeral Directors Association. "Within the next five years, those funeral directors selling services in an inviting way will win the consumer."

Palm's Phillips said that personalized funerals also are growing as people shun ritual and seek instead to honor the individuality of the deceased. Recently a consumer bought a casket, took it home and returned it to the mortuary painted to look like a race car because the deceased had loved racing.

The growing openness toward options in dead-body disposition primes the market for small retail shops, for personalized service or even for giant funeral superstores to put pressure on traditional funeral homes in the future.

"Funeral superstores ... will target boomers in an atmosphere (in which) they are comfortable. A chain of stores in France offers customers everything from monuments to flowers and even remembrance gifts. It's not morbid. It's been accepted as a way of life. The United States could easily be heading to this notion of 'Funerals R Us' to satisfy customer needs," Barnard writes.

"In Japan, families can go into 'The Tunnel of Light' with their deceased loved one," Gard Jameson, a UNLV religion professor, said.

"You apparently pay for this package and take the whole family literally into this tunnel with a light at the end. It's set up to allow them to experience what the dead person is experiencing, to give them a sense of participation in the afterlife. It's kind of a Spielberg twist on funerals."

Although such a package has not yet been introduced in Las Vegas, speculators note that this is the city that turned the once religious, formal marriage ceremony into a drive-through experience.

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