Funeral industry pinched by the ongoing recession

Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Cindy Jamison and her dad had been as close as father and daughter could be, but by the end he didn’t recognize her or her mom anymore.

Fees at his Alzheimer’s facility had run $6,000 a month, so when time came to make funeral arrangements, Jamison and her family chose cremation over burial.

“It’s obviously a much less expensive road,” said Jamison, who had been laid off from her job as a sales rep the week before her father died. “It’s not like that isn’t a concern, these days especially.”

Amid an ongoing recession, those in the funeral industry say cost-conscious consumers are facing similar decisions when honoring loved ones — price-checking, skipping limos in favor of personal vehicles and forgoing discretionary items such as catering, extravagant flowers or long obituary notices. Receptions and even services are taking place in community centers or at home.

“Everyone seems to think that funeral service is a ‘recession-proof’ profession, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said Jessica Koth of the National Funeral Directors Association, in an e-mail exchange.

“We’re hearing from our members that they have been feeling the impact of the economy just as much as any other business.”

Customers are picking less showy coffins or urns, having graveside memorials or skipping visitation services to cut expenses.

“More people are shopping around as a consequence of the economy,” said Michelle Bailey of Seattle’s Memorial Gallery, which offers a discount line of urns and cremation jewelry — rings, pendants and other items in which to keep ashes.

To be sure, not everyone is seeing such thriftiness. Donna Wagner, a representative for the Houston-based Service Corp. International, said that while items such as flowers have seen a slight dip, not much has changed otherwise.

“We’re seeing that people are choosing what they would have selected a year ago. ... I think this is one area where people think, it’s the last thing I can do for Mom or Dad, and they’re giving them the same thing they would have in good economic times,” Wagner said.

Likewise, David Bielski of Fern Hill Cemetery in Aberdeen, Wash., said business is relatively stable.

However, he does see people spending less on headstones, which can range from about $300 to $750 for individual markers depending on size and shade.

While the granite quality is consistent, he says, “they’re going for the grays and simpler browns rather than the blues and greens and expensive reds.”

The cutbacks are evident at Seattle’s Olympic Motor Escort, where Dave Eady and his fleet of gleaming white Harleys guide funeral processions from ceremony to cemetery with a regal sense of decorum and a dash of yelping sirens.

But while his business once served 50 or so funeral motorcades a month, that number has fallen to about 30.

“The money crunch has really impacted us in the last year,” Eady said.

Nationwide, the cremation rate is rising, according to the Casket and Funeral Supply Association of America, which says the rate was steady at about 4 percent for decades. It hit 17 percent in 1990 and is now projected at 35 percent.

“A lot of times, they’re having a memorial service with an urn of ashes and some pictures, and they do not need a funeral procession to put it on a mantel or a bookshelf in somebody’s home,” Eady said. “It’s taken its toll.”

Last month, Darla Stanek’s husband, Paul, a cigarette-store cashier in Jefferson, Ore., died of a stroke at age 41. “I wasn’t quite finished having a husband, but now I guess I am,” Stanek said.

Stanek earns a modest wage at a Home Depot, but when she walked into an Oregon funeral home and saw a coffin priced at $16,000, “I just about had a heart attack myself,” she said. “I’m not exactly rich.”

She, too, opted for cremation over burial, and the entire bill came to around $5,000 — including cremation jewelry items for herself and nine other relatives purchased from Seattle’s Memorial Gallery.

Similar concerns have benefited People’s Memorial Association, a Seattle-based, low-cost funeral cooperative with 80,000 members statewide. “We are seeing a definite bounce,” said John Eric Rolfstad, the group’s executive director.