Faith, Family, Funerals… and a Plane That Scatters Ashes | Funeral Nation Ep. 268

Funeral Nation just relaunched, and it didn’t tiptoe back. It sprinted onto the NFDA show floor, grabbed a few legends, and dropped a first-episode-that’s-actually-episode-268 that sets the tone for where death-care conversation needs to go next: honest, useful, a little unhinged, and rooted in what matters—Faith, Family, Funerals (in that order).

This new era is less “news desk” and more “real talk.” Ryan and Jamie are both CEO’s running companies, raising families, serving people, and they’re bringing that POV to the mic. If you want safe soundbites, go elsewhere. If you want the truth with a grin (and the occasional “boom shakalaka, baby”), hit play.

What’s Inside This Episode

1) Big debut: ASD’s “Cremation Air.”
Yes, you read that right. ASD’s Zacher family unveiled Cremation Air, an aerial-scattering service built the right way: FAA/EPA-compliant releases 3 miles offshore, a two-person onboard team, and three cameras capturing the moment from both wings and the chute, plus GPS coordinates documented for the family. Pilot Andrew explains the aircraft (a Beechcraft Bonanza G36) and the process, including why you don’t open a window mid-flight (shocking stories included). Initial coverage: East Coast, Gulf, and Great Lakes—with a scalable network ahead. It’s a fresh revenue path for directors who want to serve cremation families with something meaningful and memorable.

2) The 3 F’s: Faith, Family, Funerals—without the cringe.
Ryan and Jamie talk straight about how faith informs their leadership and how family stays central while building teams and brands. It’s not a sermon, it’s the scaffolding of their decision-making. You’ll hear how that priority list shapes the show, their businesses, and the way they serve families.

3) Legends in the house: Doug Gober.
Wearing a blinding crimson sweater and 47 years of perspective, Doug reminds us why this profession is special: it’s a small community committed to doing the right thing, for families and for each other, even when we’re competitors. He tells stories, revisits an LSU/Alabama bet (you’ll laugh), and drops the line of the day: “Do the right thing. The right thing is always the right thing.”

4) Pee Wee football, mustard on the lettuce, and other necessary nonsense.
Jamie moonlights as the voice of his sons’ youth football team and debuts the call that will live rent-free in your head: “Uh-oh—little mustard on the lettuce.” It’s ridiculous and exactly the kind of levity that keeps this show human.

Why This Matters

Cremation continues to grow. Families want personalized options that feel significant. Cremation Air gives funeral homes a turnkey way to offer a premium memorial experience—complete with video and location proof, without buying an airplane or building processes from scratch. At the same time, Funeral Nation is planting a flag for content that serves the whole professional: faith-first, family-anchored, business-smart.

Notable Quotes

• “For resurrection to happen, there has to be a grave. Something’s gotta die for something new to live.”
• “We’re bringing sexy back… to death care.”
• “Do the right thing. The right thing is always the right thing.”
• “Uh-oh—little mustard on the lettuce.”

Episode Highlights (Skim & Jump)

• 00:00 – Relaunch vibe check: what the “new” Funeral Nation is about
• 06:30 – The 3 F’s framework (why faith comes first)
• 12:10 – ASD unveils Cremation Air: concept, compliance, cameras, coordinates
• 25:40 – Pilot’s view: aircraft, safety, weather windows, scaling a route map
• 34:20 – Industry relationships, innovation at NFDA, what’s launching next
• 40:15 – Doug Gober on culture, competition, and doing the right thing
• 52:10 – Pee Wee football philosophy + catchphrases you’ll steal
• 57:00 – What’s next for the show: cadence, guests, and where to follow

Watch & Listen

Follow @FuneralNationTV across platforms. Got a bold product launch, a hard-earned lesson, or a spicy take the profession needs to hear? Pitch it, we’re booking guests who move the needle for real families in the real world.

Bottom line: Episode 268 proves the relaunch isn’t a nostalgia tour. It’s a blueprint: lead with values, serve with creativity, and keep it human. Now hit play and tell us what you think.

My wife sometimes accuses me of being too friendly.  You see, I’m okay in a crowded coffee shop or elsewhere, asking if I could share the table with already seated customers. . . .while Angie would simply leave the shop because it was too busy.

I try not to be intrusive on other people because I have times I don’t want to be bothered as well.  However, I’m met some great friends and had great discussions with strangers who were willing to share their table with me.

John Adams

One of those times was at the Baltimore Convention Center during the 2022 National Funeral Directors Convention.  I randomly sat down with two Brits attending the convention, one of whom I learned was Great Britain’s President of their National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), John Adams.

I learned that Adams works in a family-owned funeral home, Perry & Phillips, which you can read about here.  The business was founded in 1835.  In sitting down with Adams I learned a little of his background, including that his mother died when he was 12 years old.

That experience for him, as you can read about here, was a rallying cry for his term as President of NAFD.  Adams believed that a missing element for young people was the lack of learning about how death, dying, and bereavement can affect a child as he or she grows up.

During his preseidency and beyond, Adams pressed forward in his quest to have all children in Great Britain be taught about death,dying, grief, and bereavement.  He began a petition asking Parliament to look at that question as it continued to refine its public school requirements.  In addition, he met with King Charles to bring attention to the issue as you can read here.

There are now results —  Adams’ quest for children to learn that “Death is part of Life” has culminated with Adams being informed and Parliament now requiring that before a student finishes Primary School they must understand “That change and loss, including bereavement, can provoke a range of feelings, that grief is a natural response to bereavement, and that everyone grieves differently”.

Here are the new “General Requirements” for Primary School students in Great Britain to know in the “General Wellbeing category” effective September 1, 2026 (#8 is the new requirement that has been added):

Curriculum content:
1. The benefits of physical activity, time outdoors, and helping others for health,
wellbeing and happiness. Simple self-care techniques, including the importance of
rest, time spent with friends and family, as well as hobbies, interests and
community participation.
2. The importance of promoting general wellbeing and physical health.
3. The range and scale of emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise,
nervousness) that they might experience in different situations. Pupils should
understand that worrying and feeling down are normal, affect everyone at different
times, and are not in themselves a sign of a mental health condition.
4. How to recognise feelings and use varied vocabulary to talk about their own and
others’ feelings.
5. How to judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving is
appropriate and proportionate.
6. That isolation and loneliness can affect children, and the benefits of seeking
support.
7. That bullying (including cyberbullying) has a negative and often lasting impact on
mental wellbeing and how to seek help for themselves or others.
8. That change and loss, including bereavement, can provoke a range of feelings,
that grief is a natural response to bereavement, and that everyone grieves
differently.
9. Where and how to seek support (including recognising the triggers for seeking
support), including who in school they should speak to if they are worried about
their own or someone else’s mental wellbeing or ability to control their emotions
(including issues arising online).
10.That it is common to experience mental health problems, and early support can help.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  From my perspective, making children aware of the consequences of grief and bereavement is extremely important in society.  According to this article and video report from ABC News 1 in 12 children (8.3%) in America will experience the death of a parent before they turn 18 years of age.

According to Micki Burns, the co-author of the report cited in the ABC feature, “Children who have lost a parent can feel isolated because it’s difficult for other kids to understand grief and loss. Recognizing that [losing a parent or sibling] is prevalent is important.  It’s something that we need to start to talk about more openly and more easily so that the children don’t feel so isolated.”

As she intimates, knowing about grief, loss, and bereavement is not only a good thing for those that lose loved ones, it is important for those who are friends of the bereaved so that they know about the emotions and feelings of one who has lost a parent.

The ABC article mentions that in America, the state of West Virginia has the highest percentage of “childhood grief” at 13.3% of all children in the state while the state of Minnesota has the lowest percentage of childhood grief.  The article postulates that poverty and resources availability may be one of the factors in the difference.

Finally, again from my point of view,  I think the more that we can teach the “soft sciences” such as grief and bereavement to our children the better society we will live in.  From my experience on the Board of Regents at the University of Minnesota I found no shortage of scholars among our youth — We are in good hands in that regard.  However, many of those same students would ask about classes that would help them navigate life as to finances, mental health, and good living practices.  I was always disappointed that I could not get the powers that be to offer more classes in those disciplines . . . . .so, I’m extremely appreciative that John Adams has!!!

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In the years that I’ve been publishing Funeral Director Daily I’ve witnessed those in Great Britain become concerned because approximately 20% of the country’s deaths have been memorialized with only a “Direct Cremation”.   Just so we are on the same wave length for purposes of this article’s discussion, here is how one British company defines “Direct Cremation”:

“Also known as a cremation without ceremony or a basic cremation, a direct cremation is a cremation that family and loved ones don’t attend”

That same company says this about the rise of “Direct Cremation” in the United Kingdom. . . .”Cremations are the most common type of funeral in the UK. In 2023, 53% of funerals were traditional cremations. This has dropped, however, from 74% in 2019, while direct cremations have risen from 3% in 2019 to 20% in 2023.”

“Traditional cremations” would have included some type of service and family attendance at a visitation or memorial service in addition to the cremation.

One thing that I’ve learned in my career is that the funeral home business is truly local in nature but consumers eventually follow a national trend in services selected.  If that hypothesis is true, then I think trending statistics indicate that North America’s traditional funeral homes will see a rapid increase in “Direct Cremation with No Service” choices by consumers.

I’ve been in the business for over 40 years now and as I witnessed Great Britain’s Direct Cremation percentage incease every year up to, and probably over, 20% by 2025 I thought that was a rapid growth.  However, there is some data that might lead one to believe that the North American “Direct Cremation” rates may be twice that percentage number.

I recently received the 2025 Performance Tracker X Trends and Insights Report published by Johnson Consulting Group (JCG) and powered by J3 Tech Solutions.  It is data driven by 135,100 total funeral home contracts in 2024 that represent 113,921 sales and survey data records. . . . .That’s 3.7% of the estimated 3.046 million deaths in America for 2024 and may be the most comprehensive data available except for Service Corporation International’s (SCI) closely held internal data on the 355,000 or so services that they provide annually (about 12% of US deaths).

SCI does make public the percentage of what they call their Comparable Cremation Rate which is defined by them as “the total cremation rate including all sales channels” (of their business).  I take that to say that “all sales channels” not only includes their traditional funeral homes but their cremation operations such as Neptune Society as well.  Their 2024 annual report lists that number as 64.4%. . .meaning that 64 out of every 100 dispositions they performed were cremations.

Others also provide cremation rates to the public.  For instance JCG’s At-Need cremations came in at 58% of deaths and the Cremation Association of North America’s (CANA) 2023 cremation rate was at 60.6%.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

When you couple those numbers with information and data from the JCG Trends and Insight Report one can hypothesize the “Direct Cremation” percentage of dispositions in North America — at least with the data they have provided.  The JCG Trends and Insights Report has data on “case mix” of cremation dispositions.

That “case mix” section of that report indicates that 69.7% of all cremations in 2024 were “Direct Cremations”, 11.3% were Traditional (casketed) cremations, and 19.0% were cremations with memorial services.  The report also has a “case mix” for burial dispositions that falls this way. . . 81.4% of burials were “traditional burials”, 13.6% of burials were Graveside Service only burials, and 5.0% were “Immediate burials” — meaning no services at all.

While these are the “case mix” numbers from the JCG Trends and Insights Report, they may or may not be the close to the exact numbers of the “case mix” for North America.  It could be argued that Johnson Consulting’s reporting clients are “more or less” direct cremation oriented than others.  But using a statistical sample that is 3.7% of all deaths and includes 41 states in the data, I’m presuming that the statistical sample input data for my calculations is at least “in the ballpark”.  Using 3.7% of the death data is much more representative than any presidential poll — and those polls can be pretty accurate.

From those available numbers, we will use CANA’s percentage rate of 60.6% and the “case mix” numbers on over 113,000 sales records from the Trends and Insights Report, one can get a rough idea of the “case mix” of all dispositions in North America.  Using the numbers from both CANA and the Trends Report here’s how the “ballpark” math on those disposition choices works out for every 100 deaths :

• 42.5%  —  Direct Cremation

• 31.7%  —  Traditional Burial

• 11.6%  —  Cremation with Memorial

•   6.9%  —  Traditional Cremation

•   5.3%  —  Graveside Burial Services

•   1.3%  —  Immediate Burial – No Services

Note:  *Not exactly 100% because of rounding

So, when I see those “Disposition/Memorialization” method choice numbers I am somewhat shocked that the “Direct Cremation with no services” in North America has moved to a choice of 42.5% of consumers.  Fifty years ago that choice of consumers was about 90% Traditional Burial.  There is no doubt that there has been “Change”.

And I’m guessing that change will continue.  There will be other choices that, while minimal today, will grow in practice.  They include natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis.

Change always happens. . . .it brings both risk and opportunity —  There is no doubt that these numbers show change is happening.  It leads me to another portion of the JCG Trends and Insights Report that I found very interesting.  That being the data on “How or why a particular provider was chosen”.

It is interesting to note that of those that selected the “Traditional Burial” option, 29.8% of them had used the chosen funeral home previously.  For those that selected the “Direct Cremation” option, only 19.0% of them had used the chosen funeral home previously.

In addition to that, of those that chose the “Traditional Burial” option, 0.9% chose the funeral home because of its website, 0.9% chose the funeral home because of online ratings, and 2.3% chose the funeral home because of price.

In contrast to that, of those that chose the “Direct Cremation” option, 3.9% chose the funeral home because of its website, 3.5% chose the funeral home because of online ratings, and 8.8% chose the funeral home because of price.

Those numbers tell me that the consumers for these differing Death Care services are different consumers.  My first thought on the subject is that “Traditional Burial” consumers are satisfied customers willing to go the same route for the next death.  And, that the “Direct Cremation” consumers are customers who are “searching” for the proper fit for their needs, including almost 10% of them who are looking at price.

It leads me to believe that those traditional funeral facilities that are content with serving the previously served are at risk of losing case numbers if they are not willing to change a portion of their marketing to reach out to the consumers “searching” for that proper fit for their changing needs.

And to those start up firms who may specialize in “Direct Cremation” with no services, it appears that you can benefit by reaching out to this new consumer who is changing the landscape of Death Care.

In any case. . . .I see change happening — and happening faster than I realized.

For your own free copy of the Johnson Consulting Group Trends and Insight Report click here.

Related Article — “Why are direct cremations so popular?”  Golden Charter Funeral Plans  (2024 article) Great Britain

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”