Pennsylvania Story Highlights Very Real Problems of Unclaimed Remains and Unpaid Bills … and a Possible Solution

Jeffrey Butya was something of a local celebrity in the Robinson Township community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Described in a February 12, 2025 tribute as a “local bar and grill manager, former rock ‘n roll roadie and perhaps most notably, one of the most unforgettable walk-ons in Penn State football history,” seemed to have made an impression on all who crossed his path. 

When Butya passed away on Friday, February 7 after suffering a stroke two months earlier, his family members were overwhelmed by the outpouring of condolences. Although he had never married and had no children, Butya and his uncle, brother, and sister-in-law were longtime owners and operators of several beloved family-owned taverns and neighborhood bars. It was Cassie Butya, the widow of Jeffrey Butya’s late brother Ken, who shared with the West Hill Gazette on February 12 that there would be no public viewing for Jeffrey, but that she and her sons would be announcing a “memorial get-together” when details were finalized.

In the public eye

Fast forward to last week — July 19, 2025, to be exact. This was the day Frank Garland, Partner and Editor at the West Hills Gazette, and the author who penned the beautiful tribute to Butya in the same paper on February 12, wrote an update piece entitled, “Unclaimed remains: The fate of Jeff Butya’s ashes.”

Garland shared a truly sad story — but one that is not at all foreign to deathcare professionals. The cremated remains of Jeffrey Butya were still in the custody of Thomas-Little Funeral Service Inc. and Crematory — along with an unpaid bill of $3,285 for the removal and direct cremation services that were authorized by Butya’s brother Brian in February. 

Five months in limbo

There had been no memorial get-togethers for the man who was known as “Booty” by his friends. In fact, the funeral home had achieved very little contact with the family, according to Thomas-Little funeral director Mya Garrett. Despite Brian Butya’s promises to “sell a couple of things” to pay the balance on February 17, and then stopped returning Garrett’s calls, which she placed on a weekly basis. Garrett had the same results with Jeffrey Butya’s sister-in-law, although Cassie Butya did contact the funeral home via email in April and responded to Garland’s email in June.

In these correspondences, Cassie Butya shared that her brother-in-law had left no will, no life insurance, or a power of attorney, and that the situation was “complex and delicate.” She added that she was not truly “connected” to the Butya family as she had remarried and was “not involved in any part of the funeral planning and decisions.” Lastly, she told the funeral home that “while she had the ‘utmost respect for Jeff and sympathize with the situation, funeral expenses are typically a personal responsibility and not one assumed by the employer. As such, we are not in a position to cover the outstanding balance.’”

Not as uncommon as one might think

Garrett told the Gazette that this was only the third time in 30 years that a family had failed to pay for a cremation or pick up their loved one’s cremains. She added that if no one claimed Butya’s remains, they would be buried in a community vault for unclaimed remains in a local cemetery.

Garland’s article included statements from representatives of the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association and the Pennsylvania Department of State about the growing problem of unclaimed remains and the lack of mandatory holding periods in most states. 

It was clear from the story that Garrett and her team at Thomas-Little went above and beyond what regulations might have mandated in her quest to reunite Jeffrey Butya’s remains with his family. She had reached out to everyone she could, including Jeffrey’s elderly father, George, who lived in a community care facility, and had created a GoFundMe page for donations toward the bill. As of July 19, the balance in the GoFundMe account was zero.

An unexpected result

That all changed after Garland published his article in the West Hills Gazette. The following day, in an article entitled “Family steps up to claim Jeff Butya’s ashes,” Garland reported that a family member had paid the outstanding balance and a nephew would be picking up the remains. The family member was none other than Cassie Butya, and the nephew was one of her sons. That nephew asked that the $70 that was donated to the GoFundMe account after Garland’s story was published be given to charity. 

“This is what needed to happen,” funeral director Mya Garrett said. “I’m glad someone stepped up for him and he’s going home.”

Lessons learned?

So, would publicly sharing a story about the unclaimed remains and unpaid bills in your funeral home result in a similar successful outcome? Maybe, but maybe not. Considering privacy laws, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), and the potential for defamation or libel accusations, it can be a slippery slope. However, in the case of Jeffrey Butya, Garland’s article appears to be a true human interest piece — a follow-up about a beloved community member and the sad fate of his remains. No matter what the intentions of the author, the end result of a zero balance, a donation to charity, and the reunion of Butya’s cremains with his family certainly seems worthwhile.

Introducing Eulogize: The Simplest All-In-One Solution for Videos, Booklets, and More in Minutes

As more and more families expect highly personalized celebrations of life from deathcare providers, you and your team will spend more hours creating tailored memorial products like tribute videos, memorial folders, and other keepsakes. Unless, that is, you use Eulogize, an incredibly simple suite of creative tools that helps deathcare professionals produce unique and stunning tribute materials in minutes, not hours — and, perhaps most importantly, allows families to create their own incredible memorials with their Family self-service functionality. It also offers funeral homes the opportunity for infinite personalization, with features and freedoms that will garner endless compliments — and referrals.

Meet Eulogize

Eulogize is an all-in-one cloud-based platform that helps funeral teams create one-of-a-kind, personalized tributes with ease. Their current product suite can create tribute videos, TV welcome screens, memorial cards, funeral service folders, bookmarks, and thank-you notes, with more products launching regularly. Eulogize is truly user-friendly and doesn’t require funeral home staff to have any design expertise. “We are not a case management tool, a CRM or website provider,” explains Nick Kelly, Head of Product & Partnerships at Eulogize, “we don’t require anyone to change their existing systems; Eulogize works alongside your current platforms to both speed up and simplify the creation of beautiful tributes.”

After his mom struggled with the tribute creation process for his grandmother’s funeral service — choosing between restrictive and expensive in-house solutions or the daunting choice of creating it himself, co-founder Ben Sutton was inspired to build Eulogize Memorials in 2019.

So easy your mom could do it

Sutton knew there had to be a better, easier way for families to produce professional, personalized tributes for loved ones. Leveraging his years of experience with creative & digital technology, Sutton created Eulogize Memorials, initially launching the product to consumers. The product was an instant success because it was easy to use with no training and allowed for seamless collaboration among multiple family members and friends.

“We built this specifically for funerals from the beginning,” explains Sutton. “We’ve removed anything unnecessary, which allows us to create a far more streamlined and efficient platform and process.”

Creating a tribute with Eulogize is simple and doesn’t require dedicated devices, downloads or even any design experience. It’s also designed to be virtually error-proof, dynamically adjusting to whatever information the user enters. Text boxes automatically expand so everything fits and formats, warnings pop up when designs veer outside print margins, and video timelines automatically adapt to any number of slides or songs. Eulogize offers a theme-based workflow, with new themes added every month. This means the same design you use for a service folder easily translates to the slide show or memorial cards.

“It’s not just easy to make something good,” Sutton says, “but it’s really hard to make something bad. We always joke that we beta-test every new product with our moms, but it’s really not a joke. If they can’t use it the first time, we rebuild it.”

It didn’t take long for deathcare professionals to show interest in Eulogize. Kelly joined the team to create a version of the platform that would meet the specific needs of funeral home teams while keeping the simplicity that initial consumers loved. They roadtested the product by working alongside deathcare professionals in there home continent of Australia.

The result is a modern tribute creation platform that gives full control to funeral professionals and saves teams hours each week. With Eulogize, tributes are so quick and simple to create that you can create mock-ups with the family in the arrangement room faster than they can select a casket or flowers. The platform easily integrates with other deathcare technology. Information about the decedent and services flows into the program, saving time while drastically minimizing the potential for errors. The videos and digital versions of the stationery can then be hosted on the funeral home’s website or obits.

Only the features you need

Eulogize’s mission has always been to make lives easier, and that is demonstrated right through their business model.

“It’s not just the tributes you can personalize, it’s the whole platform,” Kelly explains. “You tell us what products you want to offer, what themes are available, what access the family should have, and even how and where or if you want to print.”

The team describes their platform as modular, where each funeral home can select which parts of the platform they wish to use to serve their communities best. “Some clients are only looking for a new video solution; others really like their video product but want something more modern for stationery. That’s great; we can create a unique platform for each funeral home with the features they need. The same goes for themes and backgrounds. We like working with each new client to create bespoke designs that will really connect with their communities”.

Within weeks of launching the professional version of Eulogize, the team started fielding inquiries from US-based funeral homes asking if the product could be used internationally. It posed a question for the young Eulogize team: focus on their own backyard or chase the much larger prize of the US market. “It was a big decision,” says Sutton. The risk was not just timezones and relocating but adapting the product to fit a new audience. “We decided to come over for one convention first and see what the local reaction was. It was better than we could have hoped for” Sutton finishes with a grin.

Sutton and Kelly introduced Eulogize to the U.S. in April at the 2024 International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association Convention & Expo in Tampa. It only took one day at the convention for the team to realize they had made the right decision, immediately committing to the US expansion, booking in stands at CANA in Chicago, the NJFDA convention in Atlantic City, and the recent NFDA expo in New Orleans. “ICCFA was meant to be a soft launch, but the immediate reaction was so great that we knew we needed to immediately focus on bringing the product to the US” Kelly explains.

Connecting Directors’ Ryan Thogmartin was quick to recognize the potential of the platform and its usefulness right out of the box. Thogmartin introduced Eulogize with an interview with Sutton this spring.

Are family self-service tributes the future?

Recognizing the time limitations of deathcare professionals and the evolving consumer market, Sutton and Kelly created Eulogize to be a one-stop-shop solution that minimizes input but still produces the creative, individualized results that families expect.

“No one wants to say, ‘I want to put less time into a family’s memorials;’ that sounds awful,” Sutton says. “But we created a way for you to be incredibly efficient with your time and provide that absolute top level of personalization simultaneously. Our key thing is to make it more personal, make it more meaningful, but don’t make it take more time, and remove those stress points.”

One time-saving Eulogize feature is the ability for funeral directors to collaborate with families to create tributes if this is an option you’d like to offer.

“This has been one of the most popular features with funeral directors,” Kelly explains. “Giving families direct access cuts out a huge amount of back and forth, getting details, names or photo orders right and because the platform was originally designed direct to consumer, we know that it’s super easy for first-time users. Funeral homes that have lost large amounts of revenue due to the still rising rates of direct cremation have particularly liked this one, as they can’t justify a team member spending hours creating a video or program for these lower-cost options. Eulogize lets the funeral home sell access to our editor or include it in a package. This also means the funeral home can still benefit from the ability to host our videos on their obits or even sell custom branded photo albums and video books, which we can supply.”

In addition to eliminating email attachments, drop boxes, disks, and drives, using Eulogize offers families a truly indescribable and irreplaceable bonus: emotional relief.

“Grief experts have talked to us about the incredibly beneficial cathartic effect of the family spending time to go through these photos and tell stories to each other.”

Customize your Eulogize partnership today

Getting started on the Eulogize platform is simple and doesn’t incur any start-up costs. At this time, users can create six products through the Eulogize platform: tribute videos, TV welcome screens, memorial cards, order of service booklets, bookmarks, and thank-you notes. However, new and exciting print and video additions to this line-up are in the works that will create even more revenue-producing opportunities for deathcare providers. Sutton, Kelly and their team are always open to suggestions for enhancements or new options.

“Eulogize lets funeral businesses offer the unique personalization of an in-house graphic designer with the click of a single button,” Sutton adds. “The United States is such a huge place, and in a certain area, someone may say, ‘Hey, we do things a bit differently here.’ Those are the conversations we’re having, and we’re saying, ‘Fantastic! Tell us about what it is that you’d like for our technology to do for your families.”

Sutton and Kelly explain that partnering with Eulogize doesn’t require subscriptions, contracts, or commitments. “Plans are customized, with one base rate for printed suite projects and one for video suite projects but it’s only billed on generation. So if you start creating a tribute with a family and they decide not to go ahead, we don’t charge you”. This flexibility has helped with the platform’s rapidly growing popularity with clients big and small. “We have celebrant clients who may not make a tribute for a month because either it’s not their only job or the funeral home has taken care of it, but we are there when they need us.”

Like the tribute products you will create with the Eulogize platform, your partnership with Eulogize will be personalized based on your needs and wants.

“You tell us what your families are looking for, and what your business is looking for, and we’ll create a custom version of our product — a package for you that’s going to work best for your families, that’s going to fit seamlessly into your staff and their current workflows. It’s not going to be disruptive. You’ll be able to turn it on and use it pretty much the next day, and it’s going to run and give you the best opportunity and best chance to serve both your families and your business as we move through 2024 and beyond.”

Reach out to Ben Sutton, Nick Kelly, and the Eulogize team today for a zero-obligation demo via email partnerships@eulogizememorials.com or call 1-800-947-9064. You can also complete a contact form online at https://eulogizememorials.com/funeral-professionals.