New Video Resource Available for Cemeteries and Funeral Homes to Promote the Importance of Permanent Memorialization  

STERLING, Va. (October 13, 2025) – The International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral  Association’s Educational Foundation and Park Lawn Corporation (PLC) have partnered to  produce a powerful new video segment, now available for cemeteries and funeral homes to use in their community outreach and education efforts.  

The project began when Jay Dodds, Chief Strategy Officer at Park Lawn Corporation, was approached about the opportunity. Recognizing its value, he brought it to the attention of the ICCFA Educational Foundation, which quickly saw the importance of the topic and joined the  initiative. Together, the two organizations funded the project and brought the vision to life.  

Premiering in April 2025 on Advancements with Ted Danson, the segment highlights the essential role of permanent memorialization in the 21st century. It explores one of the most pressing challenges facing the profession today: ensuring that cremated remains are brought back to cemeteries and honored with a meaningful, lasting tribute.  

Through expert insights and real-world perspectives, the program emphasizes how the profession can work together to support families in making thoughtful, permanent placement decisions. Even as direct cremation rates rise, the segment underscores the importance of presenting every family with dignified options for memorialization that provide enduring comfort and a place of remembrance for generations to come.  

“We are honored to have helped make this project possible,” said Gino Merendino, President of the ICCFA Educational Foundation. “Our hope is that this video spreads an important message— that memorialization and remembrance are not only about honoring a life, but also about offering healing and connection for those left behind.”  

“Permanent memorialization is not just a professional responsibility—it’s a gift we give to families and future generations,” said Jay Dodds. “This segment is a valuable resource that cemeteries and funeral homes can use to inspire meaningful conversations in their communities and to reaffirm the lasting role our profession plays in guiding families through loss.”  

The segment is now available for deathcare professionals to share with their communities as part  of outreach, education, and engagement initiatives. It can be viewed from the ICCFA YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/TheICCFA. The full episode of Advancements with Ted Danson is also available to stream on Amazon Prime, Season 9, Episode 4.  

About ICCFA Educational Foundation 

The ICCFA Educational Foundation is a 501(c)(3) entity, established to make education accessible to future leaders in the deathcare profession and thereby raise the standards of professionalism within the industry. To learn more about the work of the Foundation and upcoming educational opportunities, please visit https://iccfa.com/educational-foundation/ 

Everest’s Graveyard: Permanent or Purgatory (Part I)

It’s no mean feat to recover the fallen from Everest, Earth’s highest mountain; the climb is notoriously deadly for all kinds of reasons (hurricane-level sub-zero winds; thousand-foot fatal falls; hypoxia; altitude sickness; avalanches; crevasses; and pulmonary and/or cerebral edema among them) and claims multiple lives every year. Human remains dot the landscape, serving as markers along the route.

Every year the mountain’s permanent population grows, partly due to the rising popularity of “summit tourism” (a trend of selling guided tours to climbers of questionable ability, an attempt that regularly claims the lives of the most experienced professionals). At this date there have been about 350 deaths, with an estimated 200 bodies remaining on the slopes.

As much as for its height, Everest is known for this ghastly display of victims. Nearest the summit, many still lie where they fell: an open-air graveyard dubbed Rainbow Valley for the colorful, frozen corpses adorning the last few thousand feet of the ascent. Bright down jackets poking through the snow along the route like colorful, grisly jewels.

Attempting retrieval

Many who die on Everest are likely to stay there forever, because it’s often impossible to get them down. A frozen body can weigh 300 pounds; depending on how long it has lain there, it can take hours, even days, to free from the ice. Once removed, frozen quite solid, remains are as apt to shatter into pieces as any icicle… and must be transported down the treacherous mountain. No helicopter assistance is possible above 21,000 feet; at this altitude, they cannot fly.

The process of removal (called “repatriation”) requires the efforts of entire professional rescue crews, often Sherpas, local climbers whose lungs are adapted to the altitude and often have elite abilities. Some have lost their own lives in recovery attempts. Only highly specialized teams trained in body extraction are granted permission, and costs are prohibitive at $20,000 – $70,000 USD or more per body.

And even with such skill and experience, attempts may fail. Locating remains is not always possible, or access may change due to natural processes in the Himalayas, such as earthquakes, avalanches, and rock collapse. Bodies may now be buried under feet of snow and ice.

Even if pinpointing the location of remains is possible, there are legal hurdles to overcome before a body can be removed, because the two main routes to Everest’s summit lie in different countries – the south in Nepal, the north in China — and each imposes its own legal requirements for the repatriation of remains being taken from the mountain.

Once the appropriate permissions have been obtained and the body is successfully recovered, remains will be handed over to local authorities for their own processing, and when complete, next of kin is notified.

The process may take months; sometimes the ordeal is worthwhile for a family in mourning, who will do whatever it takes to being their beloved home. And for all the challenges associated with the task, there’s no question of their commitment to seeing it through.

Once they come home and make it to the capable hands of death care pros, any number of special considerations of processing the bodily and psychological aftermath.

Then the real work begins.

What role do funeral directors play in this involved and convoluted process? Watch this space for Part II in this series on the recovery and processing of bodies from extreme mountain environments

If you have chosen cremation for your final plans, there is an additional selection and that is whether you would like to have a clean alternative to disposition or distribution of ashes. Callaway-Jones now offers you a “green” alternative to storing ashes in an urn. Instead, there’s a process where 100% of the ashes are converted to a collection of between 40–60 stones.

Stark-looking ashes, in this process, are converted to attractive white stones that can be distributed to family members to have on a bookcase as a memento. Stones are a simple keepsake and they can be shared for many generations.

It may be so far away from an idea you’d considered before, but there is great comfort that comes with the process of cremation. The Scriptures share many statements to that effect. In Genesis 3:19, God tells Adam, ”For dust you are and to dust you shall return.” In Ecclesiastes 3:20, it is written by Solomon, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”

Many families opt to places ashes in an urn and either bury the urn in a columbarium above ground or in a gravesite below ground. One of the very interesting things about the white stones is that they also make an attractive part of a memorial garden when surrounded by new plants.

A dear friend passed away just a few years ago, and her two grandchildren had been so close to her, and she’d pick them up from their school daily. Her daily presence in their lives was so incredible that their loss of her was devastating. Their mother came up with a perfect solution: a memory garden.

As you can see in the photos of their memorial garden, there is great potential for healing when children have an outlet to remember their loved ones. When they use their own hands and creativity to select colors of plants, help with the digging, planting, and watering, they have solid comfort from knowing they’ve done something to remember their loved one.

Every day they check the progress of the garden, find time to remove a few weeds, make sure the ground has water but not too much, and then to take pictures and share the scenes when they print them for their scrapbook.

Adults might find the cremation stones to be of equal comfort as you consider where you might collect and place them in your home, perhaps sharing with your siblings or others who loved the person you loved.

Saying goodbye is never easy but with this fairly new possibility of what to do with cremation ashes, we call “cremains,” it’s a very eco-friendly and clean, green way to process ashes in a permanent, respectful manner.

You can also add them to a family gravesite of another relative who would be proud to have a stone or two near their space.

Cremation jewelry and fingerprint jewelry are two optional considerations. Some of the ashes can be blown into colorful patterns in glassware and become extremely attractive desk paperweights.

Necklaces can be made for family members of all ages with small blown glass elements making an attractive pattern. Wearing a ring with your loved one’s memory is possible in our cremation diamonds. Visit

to see how these are grown. Check out

to learn more about our Legacytouch Fingerprint Keepsakes.

Cremation glass are custom designs of small portions of your loved one’s cremated remains inserted into glass when it is blown. Visit

to learn more.

Even if you choose burial, fingerprint jewelry is a good option for you to have a small part of your loved one’s memory with you always. All of these options are like a permanent hug from heaven, as many of our families have found.

Come in to our offices in Bryan and College Station to learn more about cremation stones or jewelry, or speak to a funeral director by phone who can help you arrange for this step in remembering your loved one. Although these ideas are not necessarily considered “traditional” yet, it takes a while for new options to become longtime traditions.

Blog Update: Watch our good friend, Justin Crowe, explain his opportunity to the sharks, including guest shark, Gwyneth Paltrow and see how it turned out:   

Cody D. Jones ’02

Owner & Community Member

How long is “Permanent”?  That is a question that has never been answered, but in many cases you will find out that “permanent” is not really “permanent”.

There is an interesting dilemma going on in Surrey British Columbia, Canada, right now.  According to this article, a popular pet cemetery is about to be repositioned into a new housing development.  According to the article a sign for the proposed new development has been erected on a plot of land that contains the remains of over 700 animals from as far back as the 1950’s.

And, at least some people familiar with the cemetery believe that there are also human cremation remains buried in the cemetery.

According to the article, Turnberry Developments, which has owned the property for 30 years “has investigated if there are human remains on this property.  None were discovered, nor did (they) find any urns containing ashes.”

The company also said it “searched vital statistics and contacted crematoriums and funeral homes to find the next of kin and ask for their guidance in the matter.”

Here’s another article on the situation.  When viewing the articles you will notice that they both have television video news stories about the situation also.

A volunteer who takes care of the cemetery thinks the land should be protected.  “It’s sacred ground” said David Corrin.  “I think it should be preserved as a memorial, sacred ground. Especially since there’s some old-growth original cedar trees that have been here for at least 200 to 300 years.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  This is certainly an interesting dilemma.  Obviously, this was once a vacant lot that the owners at the time let community members bury their pets on.  There seems to be no contractual obligations on either side. . . . but what about the moral and ethical ramifications?  And, does (possibly) having cremated remains on the property make a difference?

While this is no small situation to families that may have pets buried in this cemetery, the thought process brings up even larger and, possibly more consequential, potential situations.  For instance, what will happen to churches that have cremation memorial niche walls or funeral homes that have memorial niche walls in them at the time when those properties become obsolete for their present functions and are put up for sale or re-purposed?

Outside of some type of contractual situation that has been agreed upon, I think most families think the remains that they inurned in those places expect the remains to be there permanently.  What is the process if the future holds a demolition or some other change to that facility?

Are these problems waiting to happen?

Related Article —  “Should we be re-using Graves?”  Poppy’s – A fresh approach to Funerals – Great Britain

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