"I've been a funeral director for 53 years," he said.
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"Any family engaging a celebrant through a funeral director should ensure they ask questions of the funeral director that the person is a member of a reputable and regulated association with proper insurance," he says.
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This casket shaped palette was made for this millennial funeral director.
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The next day a funeral director brought Richie's ashes to me.
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Terry Bullis, the funeral director at Bullis Mortuary in Hardin, Mont.
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"Ironically around this time," funeral director O'Neil Swanson II told CNN.
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Her grandmother was the first death she handled as a funeral director.
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VICE: When did you know you wanted to be a funeral director?
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"They knew this day was coming," said Frank Lettera, a funeral director.
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The funeral director told her to take all the time she needed.
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In his new memoir, Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life, Wilde chronicles how he was able to alter his view of mortality and ultimately start to find fulfillment as a funeral director.
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Waiting in hospital wings and wondering if you will need a funeral director.
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A reputable funeral director will walk you through the expenses with no obligation.
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An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a funeral director.
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In 2014 she decided to go to mortuary school and become a funeral director.
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It's no surprise that the attorney, funeral director and philanthropist has a long list.
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For two straight days, a funeral director named Simona Ross worked over the body.
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In high school, a career aptitude test forecast his path as a funeral director.
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For Philadelphia funeral director Patricia Quinn, helping bereaved families bury their children is tough enough.
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The deceased's family will normally receive a copy of the certificate from their funeral director.
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I've never encountered a living body, and I don't know any funeral director who has.
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As a funeral director, Kemp believes, his job is to turn mourners' wishes into reality.
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Jonathan Fisher, a funeral director at Fisher Funeral Chapel and Cremation Services in Lafayette, Ind.
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The board agreed that clergy members may conduct "religious" burial services without a funeral director.
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Extra charges are assessed if a body is embalmed or a funeral director is involved.
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He is somewhere in between — a funeral director, helping South Carolina keep its season alive.
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Aimee Stephens had worked as a funeral director for R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc.
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After graduating, Donofrio took the New York State test to be certified as a funeral director.
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She said she was finally approached by a funeral director, who told her Harrison was dead.
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While making arrangements for her father, she saw a female funeral director for the first time.
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"A friend of mine is on a ventilator right now — he's a funeral director," Marmo said.
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The ACLU represents a biological male employee that the funeral home hired as a funeral director.
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Funeral director William Lynch started a chapter of the program at the funeral home in July 2018.
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She also got a promise from Shawn, a busy funeral director, to help more with child care.
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From early in her career as a funeral director, Ms. Doughty wanted to start her own business.
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Lauren LeRoy: I have known since I was 12 that I wanted to be a funeral director.
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I have a job to do as a funeral director, and I have to do that job.
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Once you've passed those, you have to do a year of residency under a licensed funeral director.
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You don't become a funeral director to make a lot of money, let's put it that way!
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The coroner, a funeral director named Erwin Sonnenburg, is red-faced and sweaty in the front row.
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Last week the Corrections Department sent a funeral director to visit his property, along with an anthropologist.
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She had little money, and one funeral director told her it would cost $700 for a cremation.
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"The numbers are daunting," said Bob Healy, funeral director of Funeria San Juan in Kissimmee, Florida, to PEOPLE.
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As a funeral director, she does "basically everything" — administrative work, service preparation, meeting with family members, embalming bodies.
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Her father, Allen Hayes, 20143, is the head funeral director — she did her apprenticeship with him in 2016.
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A new generation of customers, though, no longer unthinkingly hands over its dead to the nearest funeral director.
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Well, I was goth as fuck at the time, and also I was considering being a funeral director.
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Recordings went viral, prompting one commentator to say Schneider-Ammann was "about as funny as a funeral director".
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The video game takes players through the everyday pace of a funeral director, from corpse preparation to funeral.
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His body went unrefrigerated for so long that the funeral director could not embalm his badly decomposed corpse.
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"Let the people see what I've seen," she told the funeral director, insisting on an open-coffin funeral.
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Jodel Vogt, a funeral director at Keenan, did the embalming, dressing and makeup for Bowen, free of charge.
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But a non-profit funeral director helped Cunningham through with a simple, cut-price cremation for her brother.
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At the Manikarnika ghat, Ram Yadav, a farmer from a nearby village, was arguing with the main funeral director.
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"I would say that almost all of them were [related to the hurricane],"said Germarie Hernandez, the funeral director.
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It concerns Aimee Stephens who worked for six years as a funeral director before announcing that she was transitioning.
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The staff acted as pallbearers and the funeral director, Lynay Straughn, received the flag on behalf of the family.
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Many professional licenses are closed to people with a criminal record — including those for cosmetologist, plumber and funeral director.
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In another sketch, Schumer takes a back seat to Liam Neeson, who plays a funeral director named Don Cheadle.
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In one case, Aimee Stephens worked for six years as a funeral director before announcing that she was transitioning.
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Philip Appell, a funeral director at Keenan, said he expects to use the platform more often with his customers.
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But as Arizona funeral director Joseph Stone recently told us, "This is the nature of the job we do."
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The state claimed he violated the Funeral Director Law by conducting funerals without a license and threatened to sue.
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Robert Cassieri, 84, who has been a funeral director for 60 years, and his son Anthony own the funeral home.
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The funeral director would be right with them, a woman's voice said through the intercom when they rang the bell.
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A funeral director then called Mr. Edge to report several more deaths of people evacuated from hospitals and nursing homes.
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"Cost is a driving factor," said Mike Nicodemus, licensed funeral director and vice president of cremation services for the NFDA.
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"We were all sat round the table while Marco told the funeral director what arrangements he wanted for David," Meling said.
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"Even reasonably educated people seem to believe they don't have a legal right to avoid paying a funeral director," he said.
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"The desirable crypts are now in the new air-conditioned section," another funeral director told Mitford when she updated the book.
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Eric gave her a firm handshake and said, "We're glad you could come," with the amicable solemnity of a funeral director.
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There's one guy who's a funeral director in his twenties—you wouldn't necessarily think of that as a young person's job.
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The family got in touch with Lucinda Herring, a licensed funeral director who specializes in green burial and at-home vigils.
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It was actually a pretty typical childhood — or at least it was for me, because my father was a funeral director.
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In 1993, Tiede left his job as an assistant funeral director to work full-time as Nugent's personal assistant and business manger.
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" Tom Ertl, a local funeral director and distant cousin of Alayna's family, expressed similar sentiments, according to the Press: "It's been hell.
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I don't think any funeral director likes that—it's a smell you never forget, but it's a smell that I can't describe.
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Buyers of funeral plans, too, like the fact that they can visit a funeral director, write down their wishes and pay immediately.
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The teen, who wants to be a funeral director after college, rolled up to her big night on Saturday in a hearse.
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After high school, Megan would like to attend Mercer County Community College's funeral service program and one day become a funeral director.
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Gilbert Cavazos, funeral director at All Faiths Funeral Service in Austin, Texas, said All Faiths provided a wake and funeral for Walker.
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"Two aerospace engineers and a funeral director tried to make a go of it with a company called 'Celestis,'" Chafer told me.
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After ten years of working as a funeral director for humans, she decided to open Pets at Peace: Pet Loss & Memorial Services.
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WATCH: 10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask... a Pet Cremator VICE: What made you decide to become a pet funeral director?
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The funeral director asked the family if they wanted some time alone at the gravesite, but they said they didn't need it.
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But a funeral director starting his own crowdfunding website is not the answer, either, said Mr. Slocum of the Funeral Consumer Alliance.
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In LinkedIn's analysis, professions such as professor and funeral director also saw greater balance in men and women taking on new roles.
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After graduation, my father worked as an embalmer for four years before being hired as a full-time funeral director in Orlando.
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That's when I decided I wanted to be a funeral director, even if I didn't know everything that it meant at the time.
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I'm just the funeral director, so whatever you want—as long as it's reasonable and doesn't hurt anyone—I'll do that for you.
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While she aspires to be a funeral director, she says the car's associations with death have little relation to her love of hearses.
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The all-knowing funeral director guided the guileless consumer to the most expensive burial options — the most luxurious casket, the hardiest burial vault.
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She had been working as a funeral director and embalmer for RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Michigan, for almost six years.
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In that case, Aimee Stephens, formerly known as Anthony Stephens, worked for six years as a funeral director before announcing that she was transitioning.
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Steadman said that in back in 1972, Thompson had taken him to Los Angeles to discuss details of his death with a funeral director.
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Amy Cunningham is a progressive funeral director who owns Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, an eco-friendly, family-run funeral home in New York City.
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Mr. Janssen, the funeral director, said he was prepared for any kind of race that might unfold, but that for now he was happy.
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By the end, she has served as funeral director, minister and marriage counselor, mocking the authority of such professions while also underlining their necessity.
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Aimee Stephens was fired from her job as a funeral director in Michigan after opening up to her employer about being a transgender woman.
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His résumé included such jobs as master of ceremonies for a water ski show, valet car parker, citrus grove worker and apprentice funeral director.
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In 2011, a funeral director named Jeff Edwards began performing alkaline hydrolysis in Ohio even though the state had not explicitly legalized the process.
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And the octogenarian funeral director, who as often as three times every week greets parents who have lost sons and daughters to gun violence.
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"We don't know if they didn't have enough medicine, or oxygen — all of them were without electricity after the hurricane," said funeral director Francisco Velez.
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The most difficult part of being a funeral director, she says, is explaining why people have to pay for certain services that the home offers.
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"Whether we as an industry want to recognize that or embrace it or dance with it, that's up to the individual funeral director," Jorgenson said.
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"The family's been robbed of all these things that could happen," said Kevin Moran, a funeral director at the John Vincent Scalia Home for Funerals.
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"We are the ones who walk the patient out of the hospital for the last time, handing them off to the funeral director," she says.
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Einstein employed a licensed funeral director to examine the bodies and take his selections to its morgue, where they were embalmed for the long term.
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Gripped by grief, relatives placed their hands on the coffins — the child's draped in pink cloth — as a funeral director, Nadezhda Monzhorova, recited a farewell.
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It follows Charlie, a recent college graduate who was just hired as a funeral director for a small mom and pop funeral home called Rose & Daughters.
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A funeral director, also referred to as an undertaker or mortician, is a professional in the death care industry involved in the business of funeral rites.
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Earlier this year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of former funeral director Aimee Stephens, who says she was fired when she began transitioning.
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The funeral director reportedly told Lussi's son not to place the bag of cheesesteaks in Richard's coffin before the viewing, for fear of someone eating them.
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Farewelling, the brainchild of entertaining expert and event planner Karen Bussen and funeral director Elizabeth Meyer Karansky, aims to make talking about death and dying easier.
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Mental health crisis Catsvilla owner Guo and funeral director Li were both one of the thousands of Chinese people who have turned to animals for support.
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Miles away from the stereotype of the dour funeral director, Spade is quick to smile, and clearly adored by everyone involved in the Urban Death Project.
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So when I fainted, and being a funeral director who thinks every time I get a cold it's possibly cancer, I thought: this could be it.
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Amber Carvaly, a funeral director at Undertaking LA in California, doesn't think embalming is necessary for most natural deaths, although it might firm up the skin more.
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I also suggested that, uncomfortable as it might feel, she select a funeral home and have a conversation with the funeral director now, while things were stable.
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The 26-year-old doesn't look the part of your stereotypical funeral director, but she has done more than a 1,000 funerals in her six-year career.
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The dark comedy chronicles the relationship between Nugent and Tiede, who quit his job as an assistant funeral director to become Nugent's business manager and personal companion.
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They may either work with or replace the funeral director in terms of organizing the transportation of the body from the funeral home to the burial site.
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She recalled that her father's casket had been open at his funeral, and that Wim had instructed the funeral director to apply extra makeup to Cor's face.
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As a pet funeral director, she oversees a simple service to honor your pet's life—typically consisting of friends and family sharing funny stories and special memories.
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I don't think they realize how much we really do, and I think that people are quite surprised that as a funeral director, you also embalm bodies.
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That's according to a licensed funeral director, embalmer, and body removal expert who works for a company handling transport of most COVID-19 bodies in the city.
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Sidebar WASHINGTON — In 2013, a funeral director who had been known as Anthony Stephens wrote to colleagues at a Michigan funeral home, asking for patience and support.
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"We can confirm that Joel Taylor has passed away while on a cruise," funeral director Richard Duggar II said in a statement on behalf of Taylor's family.
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She joined Harris Funeral Homes as an apprentice in October 63 and served as a funeral director/embalmer from April 26 until her termination in August 26.
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It has to be transported by a funeral director — they&aposre the only ones legally allowed to do so — and they have to file the death certificate.
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She asked her lawyer, she said, if she could specify in her will that no funeral director or anyone else straighten her hair for her final repose.
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What that means is that hardly any funeral director — even in states where laws about human remains are loosely worded — would risk offering it without state permission.
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Since 2015, Sarah Wambold, a funeral director in Austin, Texas, has led development on Conversation Burial, a project to establish green burial grounds adjacent to state parks.
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Stephens had presented as a man when she started for the company in 2007, working her way up to funeral director at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc.
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Percival, who looks like the Upper East Side's most discreetly expensive funeral director, displays an unseemly interest in that unruly force, which runs deeper and darker than the subway.
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Funeraria Hernandez-Rivera, the fourth funeral home in the region, received 15 bodies since the hurricane, including five or six heart attacks, according to funeral director Raul Hernandez-Rivera.
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I don't know if the job itself has helped that or not, but what being a funeral director has done for me is not take any day for granted.
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But should that turn out to be the case, you're to consult with the funeral director, and then call the telephone number on your orders to receive further instructions.
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Though she loved her job at Harris, where she had worked her way up from apprentice to funeral director, she felt she had to hide who she was there.
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My childhood may not have been typical, but I'm thankful for all the sights, sounds and, yes, even the smells my dad introduced to me as a funeral director.
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That means that in most states, a young funeral director who doesn't want to include embalming in her business still has to go through training and do an apprenticeship.
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This past May, a man in Michigan—which uses EDR—was placed on the DMF because a funeral director accidentally entered one wrong digit of someone else's Social Security number.
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Bill Henwood, a funeral director at York Funeral Home, whose business is located inside the cordoned off area on Brookside Drive, said the lockdown occurred before anybody got to work.
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She advocates for families to participate in the simple, ritualistic act of bathing and wrapping the corpse of a loved one—with or without the help of a funeral director.
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The story of Bechdel's own realization that she is a lesbian is told in tandem with the story of her father, a small-town funeral director, and his repressed homosexuality.
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"To not focus solely on death and dying for once is a nice change," said J. D. Slack, a funeral director from Ellicott City, Md., who worked on the project.
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The package price is typically the initial offering presented to the funeral director or private party by the newspaper or ad group that is selling the obituaries on its behalf.
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In 2007, the funeral home hired a male employee as a funeral director—a position that serves as the face of the funeral home and works closely with grieving families.
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Under discussion was Aimee Stephens, formerly Anthony Stephens, who had been fired from her job as a funeral director in Michigan after announcing she would start living as a woman.
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Memento Mori A part of the death industry that was skirted in Rebecca Mead's article about the artisanal funeral director Caitlin Doughty is the cemetery ("Our Bodies, Ourselves," November 30th).
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High-fat low-carb keto diets have been in fashion, in some form or another, since at least the 1860s, when a British funeral director first shunned starchy, sugary foods.
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"They are very, very proud and just want what's best for him," Mary Ann Davidson, a funeral director whose family has known the Zamarripas for years, told the Dallas Morning News.
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This high level of stress and anxiety commonly reported among caregivers is also known as "compassion fatigue," or CF. Hardin said she'd heard it called "funeral director fatigue" in mortuary school.
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They are less likely to miss important details, and they don't have to rely on a hodgepodge of advice from advisors, attorneys, religious/spiritual leaders, friends and even their funeral director.
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"There are some states you don't even have to be a funeral director," said Scott M. Schmidt, the president of the New York State Association of County Coroners and Medical Examiners.
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Agricultural price supports are a typical example; so are licensing laws that make it difficult for a funeral director or barber to set up shops that would compete with existing ones.
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Burial regulations vary by state, so that, for instance, you're required to employ a funeral director in Alabama, while in Pennsylvania there are no such laws, making your options more complicated.
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A funeral director who also works as a body broker could have a financial incentive to sell a body for its valuable parts rather than provide an inexpensive burial, for instance.
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Her doctor called with the results from a recent biopsy while she was on the phone with a funeral director mere hours after her husband John died at the age of 44.
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When Flaherty arrived at the prom, a top hat-wearing chauffeur, who happened to be a family friend (and funeral director), opened the back of the hearse to reveal an open coffin.
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The EEOC is seeking to revive its lawsuit accusing RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by firing funeral director Aimee Stephens.
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She provides much of what you'd expect from a regular funeral director, helping with the bathing, grooming, and positioning of the pet so that the final goodbye looks as natural as possible.
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"It's usually two persons at a cremation, and normally we would both be there hands-on," said Clay Dippel, a provisional funeral director and embalmer at the Bradshaw-Carter home in Houston.
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To see how the rising death toll is affecting "deathcare" — services that families use to put the bodies of loved ones to rest — I shadowed Patrick Marmo, a funeral director from Brooklyn.
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"One of our ways of giving back to the community of Naples is we offer free funeral services to any indigent or homeless veterans," funeral director Michael Hoyt told CNN on Monday.
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"There's almost a revulsion at times, when you talk about human composting," said Brian Flowers, the managing funeral director at Moles Farewell Tributes, a company north of Seattle that supports the bill.
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"I rarely say I'll be there right away, unless the family requests it," says Amy Cunningham, a funeral director who owns her own funeral home in Brooklyn and helps with home funerals.
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No one wants to have to talk to a funeral director, least of all a parent whose teenager has just been slaughtered in their classroom, as eight Santa Fe students were that Friday.
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The mom of two boys — 6 years old and 5 years old — was on the phone with the funeral director on June 16 when her doctor called and told her the devastating news.
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The good news for undertakers, one such lender brags, is that people who have been given loans are more likely to spend more on a funeral, "meaning more sales for the funeral director".
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CreditCreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times The world watched in December as a 22020-year-old funeral director pushed the coffin of President George Bush into a polished Cadillac hearse in Houston.
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This concern animated the second case involving Aimee (née Anthony) Stephens, a transgender funeral director who was fired after telling her boss she would begin presenting herself as a woman while at work.
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They were troubled that her body had been shuttled back and forth between the funeral home and state crime lab before being cremated by the county coroner, who is also the funeral director.
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After graduating from Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan and Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., Mr. McManus worked in the Times's production department and, like his father, as a part-time funeral director.
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But if a police officer or funeral director sees a bullet or knife wound or sign of injury, they will call it to the medical examiner's attention, which "happens, but rarely," Dr. Baden said.
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The group's research, he said, shows that people choose a funeral home mainly because of factors like a relationship with a particular funeral director or a home's location, with price a less important criterion.
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I didn't either, until I attended a class taught by a funeral director named Amy Cunningham, who directed her students to a product called Let Your Love Grow that makes remains suitable for plants.
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After six years as a funeral director in Michigan, Aimee (née Anthony) Stephens wrote to Thomas Rost, her boss, explaining that she planned to transition and would present herself as a woman at work.
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Amy Cunningham, a funeral director and the owner of Fitting Tribute, a funeral home in Brooklyn, said the gift card should be for a service the person already uses and for a generous amount.
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"Mortician" is an outdated term—in part because "funeral director" has replaced it, a title that requires being intimately aware of the rules and regulations that dictate how the dead must be laid to rest.
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Walker Posey, a spokesman for the association and a funeral director in North Augusta, S.C., said directors wrestled with how to convey differences in personal service, not just price, that can affect a customer's experience.
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EEOC In 2013, Aimee Stephens was working as a funeral director and certified embalmer at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Michigan when she wrote a letter to her employer that would change her life.
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An agent with the FBI has interviewed at least four former employees who worked for funeral director and body broker Megan Hess, seeking information about how she operates her businesses, the former workers told Reuters.
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In Wasserman's case, he filed his own lawsuit against the board before settling in 2012, when the board agreed to amend the law to say "clergy" could conduct "religious" burial services without a funeral director.
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So in one of the funeral homes in Jayuya, I was talking to a funeral director, and he was telling me about all of the people who had come through and died of hurricane-related causes.
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"I think 99.9 percent of people's natural inclination is to call the police or call a funeral director or call somebody to report a death," says Scott Gilligan, an attorney with the National Funeral Directors Association.
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A licensed funeral director and embalmer, who works for a company that removes bodies, said hospital morgues are seemingly full of COVID-19 bodies while the city — the backup option for hospitals — seeks additional temporary storage.
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Currently, Fowles is studying to become a funeral director, where her focus is on improving the look of the deceased in a way that might ease the suffering of loved ones before they say final goodbyes.
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"I'm surprised they let me into churches, but they do," she adds, before confiding that she stole a mug emblazoned with the logo of a funeral director from the church's kitchen, to keep as a souvenir.
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"Families that want burial will take care of one of these categories and then tell their kids, 'Everything is taken care of,'" said Jeff Jorgenson, funeral director and owner of Elemental Cremation & Burial in Bellevue, Wash.
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Not long ago, Amy Cunningham, a funeral director for Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, convened about twenty strangers in a third-floor room at the Sixty-seventh Street library in Manhattan, for a workshop on writing condolence letters.
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On Saturday morning, Marlon Esquilín, the funeral director in Isabel Segunda, opened the doors of his hearse to pull out the black-bagged body of an older woman who had died of natural causes the night before.
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"Our position is to suggest to people who are making choices to keep within their means," said R. Bryant Hightower Jr., a funeral director in Carrollton, Ga., and a board member of the National Funeral Directors Association.
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If so — or, if you're a Norwegian funeral director looking to save money on gas — then you might want to check out a new listing in Norway for a Tesla Model S that's been converted into a hearse.
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Nora Menkin, a funeral director at Seattle's Co-op Funeral Home, told me that under the old system, death records "went through just fine about 80 percent of the time," but under EDR, she hasn't experienced any errors.
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According to Amber Carvaly, a funeral director and co-founder of the pioneering all-female death-positive funeral home Undertaking LA, burying people in whatever they like, no matter how outrageous, is absolutely the right thing to do.
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When Nariyasu Mishima, 218, a former funeral director from Osaka, Japan, visited the cemetery, he was struck by a thought: How wonderful would it be to be buried alongside some of the greatest musical minds of all time?
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While public cemeteries often have long waiting lists, tombstones at private ones can cost from 500,000 yen ($4,000) to multiple millions, with the location and type of tombstone bumping up prices, according to former funeral director Yusuke Wada.
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"The conflict of interest of having a side business in body parts just leads to problems," said Steve Palmer, a funeral director in Cottonwood, Arizona, and former member of the policy board at the National Funeral Directors Association.
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The court also will hear a Detroit funeral home's bid to reverse a ruling that it violated federal law by firing a transgender funeral director named Aimee Stephens after Stephens revealed plans to transition from male to female.
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VICE spoke to funeral director Patrick Schoen—who arranged Easterling's memorial—to find out how these kinds of nontraditional services are put together, why they're gaining popularity specifically in New Orleans, and why families are choosing to have them.
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The most pertinent news for him, as her boss, was that she would from that point forward go by a different name at work, and she would still wear professional attire appropriate for her work as a funeral director.
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Stephens, the plaintiff in the case, was working as a funeral director and embalmer when she came out as a trans woman in 2013, informing her employer with a letter explaining why her transition was necessary for her quality of life.
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"It's happening in restaurants, nightclubs, wedding venues, country clubs and it's very dangerous," Bill McReavy, an undertaker from Minneapolis, told his vigorously nodding peers at the annual gathering of the American National Funeral Director Association (NFDA) in Boston last autumn.
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TMZ Sports has obtained the Richie Incognito 911 call made by a funeral home staffer Monday who was clearly in fear for her life -- when the NFL star allegedly threatened to shoot the funeral director at a mortuary in Arizona.
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Donofrio is the funeral director for the Staten Island wing, and he has to clean the tahara room at the cemetery, where he ritually prepared the body of the 88-year-old woman named Vivienne who is about to be buried.
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Michael Neel runs First Call Care, a transport company based in Monmouth County, N.J. Though the state does not require certification to transport bodies, Mr. Neel is a licensed funeral director, a designation that he feels gives him a competitive edge.
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One obstacle to wider-spread adoption: Big Funeral needs to back it, and according to Fisher, who was a funeral director before working in body donation, industry leaders have been reluctant to offer it for a simple reason: "Money," he says.
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U.S. District Judge Sean Cox dismissed a 2014 lawsuit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that said RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc unlawfully fired funeral director Aimee Stephens when she told her bosses she would transition from male to female.
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It is impossible to say that the funeral home is treating men worse than women; if a female funeral director asked to violate the dress code by dressing as a man, the funeral home would say no to her request, too.
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"You can die in a way that has beauty attached," said Amy Cunningham, 22016, a funeral director in Brooklyn who specializes in "green" burials, without embalming or metal coffins, and assists families who are caring for their dead at home.
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Two years ago, the Scott Funeral Home in Jeffersonville, Indiana, got a liquor license, and offers an alcohol-friendly package that includes the beverages of your choice, a special visitation space, and a funeral director who doubles as a bartender.
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Even though the relationship between life and death is like day and night, says Ahmet Kargi, a Muslim funeral director in New York, Muslims like to build mosque and cemeteries where people have easy access to pray and pay respect.
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Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske had this dispatch from a shelter in the Lajas region: About 100 people died in the three days after the storm in the Lajas region, twice the typical rate, according to a local funeral director.
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The decision is the latest in a back-and-forth between the federal government and Detroit-based R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, which fired its transgender funeral director, Aimee Stephens, because she began transitioning and "dress[ing] as a woman" at work.
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A transgender former funeral director asked a federal appeals court to let her lawyer appear at oral argument in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's challenge to a ruling that blocked its job discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, a Detroit funeral home.
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In a brief filed on Wednesday, RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc urged the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the EEOC's bid to revive its 2014 lawsuit claiming the home unlawfully fired former funeral director Aimee Stephens for being transgender.
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The third case is an appeal from a Michigan funeral company home that the 6th Circuit ruled unlawfully discriminated against its funeral director, Aimee Stephens, by firing her after she announced she was transgender and would begin dressing as a woman at work.
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On Monday, I spoke with Aimee Stephens, the trans woman at the center of the case who was fired from her job as a funeral director and embalmer almost immediately after coming out to her employer, and came away impressed with her cool optimism.
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The Supreme Court in April agreed to take up two discrimination cases by gay men and one by a transgender woman who was fired from her job as a funeral director when she told her boss she planned to transition from male to female.
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When his body arrived at a funeral home, it showed troubling signs: Mr. Palmer's head had been badly damaged and a ring of black and purple bruises ran around his neck, according to the funeral director, who was the first to see the remains.
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Anchored by her relationship with her father — a closeted English teacher and funeral director obsessed with appearances — and by the story of the author's own coming-out, the book exquisitely frames Bechdel's complicated childhood as shaped by literature to reveal her origins as an artist.
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Caitlin Doughty, 35, a funeral director who describes herself as a mortician activist and funeral industry rabble rouser, recently re-enacted a Victorian-style post-mortem photo shoot with a tintype photographer at the Merchant House Museum in Manhattan, and shared it on YouTube.
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A transgender former funeral director told a federal appeals court that a Detroit funeral home should not be exempt from federal anti-bias law because it had a religious motivation for firing her after she informed her bosses she was transitioning from male to female.
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But she has sidestepped Impressionism's speedy improvisation for an implicitly static style: the dot-by-dot pointillism of the Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, a method that has all the deliberation and precision of a funeral director preparing a corpse for an open coffin.
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Chris Robinson, a board member of the National Funeral Directors Association who is a fourth-generation funeral director and managing owner of Robinson Funeral Home in Easley, S.C., said members of his trade association were getting swamped with questions and requests, and scrambling to find answers.
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During that same marriage-equality spring of 2015, in Michigan, Aimee Stephens, a funeral director, was in the midst of her own fight, taking on her former employer, Thomas Rost, and his family business, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, with support from the American Civil Liberties Union.
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She told the funeral director that she was a death-care guide and that she needed a private room, where she could bathe and dress her brother and niece after they were returned from the coroner and where the family could gather for an intimate funeral service.
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"I've been in the funeral business for 42 years, and in my 42 years in this industry we have never experienced anything else of this magnitude," Bob Healy, funeral director of Funeria San Juan in Kissimmee, Florida, which worked with the families of six of the victims, tells PEOPLE.
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Part of what changed was a funeral director in Los Angeles named Caitlin Doughty, who dressed like a lost member of the Addams Family and posted a series of plucky YouTube videos called "Ask a Mortician" that spoke frankly about corpses and decomposition and routinely topped 20113,000 views.
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Similar state laws prevent home-funeral guides, unless they have a funeral director's license (and some do), from touching dead bodies for payment (many charge a consultation fee or accept contributions from families), lest it be construed as acting as a funeral director and practicing without a license.
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"I've been in the funeral business for 42 years, and in my 42 years in this industry we have never experienced anything else of this magnitude," Bob Healy, funeral director of Funeria San Juan in Kissimmee, which worked with the families of six of the victims, told PEOPLE earlier this week.
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Another newcomer to home funerals is the funeral director Amy Cunningham, who is based in Brooklyn and worked at a large funeral home for four years before striking out on her own this month to start Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, which also offers green burials, witness cremations and postcremation memorial services.
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The case was brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent federal agency, on behalf of a funeral director who had been fired by a Michigan funeral home after informing the owner that she intended to transition from male to female and would dress as a woman while at work.
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"Your funeral director won't tell you a green burial will save you two-thirds of the cost, or that the expensive shiny brass coffin handles you paid extra for will be thrown in a tub and sold as scrap metal," says Derrick Grant, founder of cost-friendly funeral company Willow.
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Started last May by Mike Allison, a former funeral director who turned his homebrewing hobby into a thriving small business in his hometown, Hand of Fate took its name from the town's origin story (during a card game between two early settlers, Peter Lukins and George Warburton, Warburton drew the losing hand).
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A pair of workshops will coach attendees on writing: "'Selfie-Obit': A Workshop to Write Your Own Obituary" will offer guidance on creating a personal obituary, and "How to Write a Condolence Letter," with the funeral director Amy Cunningham, will include readings of historic condolence notes by Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens and others.
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Newton — a former funeral director, who placed fourth on Brad Womack's season of The Bachelor in 2011 — gave birth to her second child with husband Paolo Poidmore, son Leo, in October, and soon learned after seeing her newborn had a large birthmark covering one side of his face that he had Sturge-Weber syndrome (SWS).
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The two oldest children, acclaimed writer Steve (Michiel Huisman) and frigid funeral director Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser), experienced the least amount of activity at the house and are arguably therefore in the most denial about what kinds of events actually occurred there — even though they've built their careers in an attempt to process what they experienced.
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Part of that means personalizing the service for your loved one by incorporating certain songs or giving guests the chance to tell their own stories, for instance, which is a trend that has been on the rise for a while now, says Amy Cunningham, a funeral director in New York City who specializes in green services.
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"Death cafes are a kind of beautiful rehearsal for coming closer to death and understanding it and grappling with it, so that when we do have a death pending in our families, as is inevitable, we might be a little more prepared for it and slightly less rattled," said the funeral director and death educator Amy Cunningham, who facilitated the get-together.
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Other clergyman at the meeting echoed the vicar's worries, and Dr. Peter Rouch, an archdeacon, more explicitly claimed, "We have some funeral directors [who], even though advised by the police of an individual with sexual offenses against children, continue to use that person for funerals," alluding to a case in which a funeral director allegedly ignored police warnings and employed a vicar who was under investigation for sexual abuse abroad.
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