Harsh Headlines & Historic Horses | 4M #192

Welcome to the hundred-and-ninety-second edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #192, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

Stepping in and stepping up

No deathcare professional wants to hear that another funeral home — even a competitor — has dishonored the industry. But some, like Staten Island’s Rocco Paccione of Martin Hughes Funeral Home, go further than others to make things right for another’s victims.  When Paccione heard that a nearby funeral director had died while awaiting trial for allegedly bilking several families out of their preneed funds, he immediately stepped in to help. Paccione has pledged to honor the services and products for which those families had paid the now-shuttered competitor — at no charge. The only fees the families will pay Paccione are those over which he has no control, like church charges and permits. Kudos to you, Mr. Paccione!

Cease fire

Fort Cavazos is an active military base covering more than 340 square miles in central Texas. Within that vast space are more than a dozen cemeteries — but they don’t get many visitors. That’s because the cemeteries are only open one day a year for tourists and descendants. For the last three decades, the base has ceased all live-fire training on the Sunday before Memorial Day just so folks can pay their respects. 

The reality of deathcare

Real Housewives of Atlanta is in its 16th season, and the cast still includes Phaedra Parks, who in addition to being a reality TV personality is also an attorney, business owner, and a mortician. In a recent episode, she shared with a few of the other RHOAs that she was messaging “the guy that taught me how to embalm.” When another housewife asked if she could come to the funeral home to witness an embalming, Phaedra warned, “It’s a lot of blood and brains.” She added that “The funeral business is going excellent.”

Terrible terms

Just when the general public is starting to learn about new, eco-friendlier alternatives to traditional burial and flame cremation, the press has stepped in to muddy the waters. Rather than describing the positive potential for alkaline hydrolysis to be approved in the UK, the Telegraph newspaper chose this headline instead: “Boil in the bag funerals could be given go-ahead: Flush and bone rituals proposed as a new, ‘gentler’ funerary method.” Then, the article begins with “People could soon be able to choose to be boiled and flushed down the drain instead of cremated or buried…”  Now, the rest of the story may show AH in a better light, but alas, the article is paywalled, and that’s all non-subscribers will see. Ugh.

The caissons are back!

The beautiful and historic horse-drawn processions returned to Arlington National Cemetery last week after a two-year hiatus — during which $28 million (!!) was spent to overhaul the entire program. Fittingly, the first assignment for the revived U.S. Army Caisson Detachment was to escort the remains of Private Bernard Curran, who was killed in 1942 after being captured by the Japanese during World War II. He was laid to rest in a common grave in the Philippines, but was returned to the U.S. after the military identified him last year. Rest in peace, Private Curran.