December 12, 2005
Dealing with death: Ashes to ashes | The increasing popularity of cremation is changing the face of Maine's funeral home industry
By Andy Vietze
A year and a half ago, Morrell York was running a funeral home in Cornish when he saw a business opportunity. York has worked in the death-care industry for more than 35 years, owning funeral homes in Kezar Falls and Gorham. But over the past few years, he found that people were increasingly interested in saying goodbye to their loved ones in ways that fell outside the industry-standard funeral, complete with wake, memorial service, hearse and limo, and graveside burial. The price of that sort of funeral was simply putting it out of the reach of many, and a lot of families didn't want all that anyway, preferring smaller and more personalized ways of bidding farewell. And more people were turning toward cremation.
"I was looking at ways to reach out and help families who wanted a simpler funeral," York says. "We realized that about 50% of the population wanted something
less than the traditional funeral as we knowit today. And the cost of funerals in greater Portland is way, way out of control."
York made a deal with the Jewish Funeral Home on Deering Avenue in Portland. He leased the use of its facility for his new enterprise, Independent Death Care of Maine. Because IDCM offers cremation exclusively, York was able to cut out a lot of the overhead that funeral homes, like the one he runs in Cornish, York's Funeral Chapel, have had to carry for more traditional funerals ˆ hearses, large selections of caskets, a big staff. These changes have allowed him to charge less.
"With direct cremation," he says, "which includes transportation, $300 crematory charge, legal certificate and an alternative container ˆ by Maine law, the body has to be received in some form of suitable combustible container ˆ we can charge $1,040." That's a lot different than the average traditional funeral cost of about $6,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. IDCM is now providing this service about 230 times a year ˆ handling more than three times as many deaths as does York's Funeral Chapel.
Morrell York is definitely on to something ˆ and he's not the only one. In the past five years, changes have been coming quickly to Maine's staid funeral industry. Older, established homes, like Portland's Hay & Peabody, which was once among the biggest funeral homes in all of New England, have shut down. Many of the large corporations that expanded like crazy in the 80s and 90s ˆ like Service Corp. International, the Houston-based owners of Hay & Peabody, as well as 16 of Maine's 155 other homes ˆ have gone out of business or sold many of their holdings. (Though SCI is consolidating, it's still the largest funeral provider in the world.)
In their wake, a handful of death care businesses have opened that, like Independent Death Care of Maine, offer alternatives to traditional funerals. They've set up shop around southern and central Maine, tending to operate out of much simpler places than the attractive older buildings in which Maine funeral homes are usually housed. Some are even storefronts in shopping plazas. Like IDCM, most emphasize affordability, simplicity, preplanning and a willingness to do the unusual, and among them cremation is the norm.
Auburn-based Funeral Alternatives is just such a place. The business was founded in 2002 by Chuck Kincer, who also runs a traditional funeral home, Kincer Funeral Home, in Richmond, from which he was able to watch trends developing. Unlike so many in the industry, he didn't grow up in the business, but came to it after college. (Kincer's brother, Kenneth, did get into the industry himself about four years ago.)
"The funeral home business is very nepotistic ˆ families pass homes on from one member to the next," Kincer says. "Sometimes working that way you can lose focus on what consumers are looking for. Looking from the outside in, I could see that a simple cremation service was what people would want."
Apparently they did. Within three years, Funeral Alternatives had facilities in Yarmouth, to cover Cumberland County and southern Maine; and in Augusta, to offer options to residents of central Maine; as well as its home base in the Lewiston-Auburn area. And things are going well enough that Kincer says expansion is under consideration.
Frozen ground
Cremation has exploded in popularity across the country in the past decade. A recent survey, "2005 Wirthlin Report: A Study of American Attitudes Toward Ritualization and Memorialization," conducted by Rochester, N.Y.-based Wirthlin Worldwide on behalf of the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, showed that, given the choice, nearly half (47%) of the people questioned would elect to be cremated. That's up from 32% in 1990 and roughly three percent in the early 60s. The actual cremation rate nationwide is 27.8%, according to the National Funeral Home Directors Association, up 20 percent from 1996. New England states tend to be ahead of the curve.
"The cremation rate is definitely growing across the country," says Mark Musgrove, a funeral home owner in Eugene, Ore., and the past president of the National Funeral Directors Association, based in Wisconsin. The trend is driven by things like dwindling cemetery space, increased mobility ˆ people move more now than they once did ˆ and affordability. "The Northeast, the Northwest and the West Coast tend to have the highest rates in the country," he says. "That's because our families tend to be less traditional than in the Southeast and the Midwest. That's just America."
In Maine, cremation has become particularly popular. "There were only two cremation services in the state of Maine in the mid-90s," says Funeral Alternatives' Kincer. "And now there are at least 15 out there. There's a good possibility that this year, for the first time in Maine's history, the cremation rate will come to over 50%." Kincer attributes this trend to a variety of factors, the first being that in the cold Northeast we can't bury our dead for many months out of the year due to frozen ground. Another is that Mainers tend to be less bound by religious traditions than people are in places like the Southeast. But, primarily, it comes down to per capita income. "Mostly, in Maine," Kincer says, "it's an affordability issue."
Like Independent Death Care of Maine, Funeral Alternatives offers direct cremation for about $1,000. "That's opposed to a national chain funeral in Maine, which could be upwards of $3,000," says Kincer. "And that's a bare bones funeral with no hearse, no limo, no flower cars. It can be almost double that." Internment costs about $75-$150 for cremated bodies. "If you have a traditional burial, that can be another $700-$800, depending on the cemetery. That varies by city, too. Portland will be more expensive."
But it isn't just the people with limited resources who are turning to cremation. "The demographics that I've found are that folks are often highly educated; they come really from both ends of the spectrum," says Kincer. "It seems as though the middle class are the ones who are really traditional at this point." Morrell York has noticed the same phenomenon. "The people we serve in Falmouth and Cumberland Foresides, certainly money is no problem," he says. "They're looking for simplicity."
The rise of cremation has prompted many of the transformations the industry has undergone in recent years. "This has been a fundamental change," says Musgrove, of the National Funeral Directors Association. "It's really as large a change as has happened to the funeral business in decades." He thinks cremation had something to do with the crash of the large corporate ownership of funeral homes. The huge conglomerates, which seemed poised to take over everything in the mid-90s, have been divesting like crazy in the past five years. "You'll see more local and regional ownership now. That's because of the cremation rate," he says. "The profit margin is different when people select cremation rather than a traditional funeral."
Independent homes often have an easier time adjusting to those smaller profit margins than do the large corporations. "A lot of independents live on the premises, they're a family operation, maybe a husband and wife, and they can take the profits that are there at the end of the day." Corporations, beholden to stock markets and shareholders, can't abide those margins.
Getting personal
Two of the other hot trends in the funeral business ˆ personalization and pre-planning ˆ can also be partially attributed to cremation. Once someone decides to take a step away from tradition, they have to think about the other options. The Wirthlin study showed that 72% of people surveyed felt it would be better to prearrange their own service. Another study by the National Funeral Directors Association had similar findings, with 75% of respondents interested in pre-planning. Sixty-two percent wanted to customize or personalize their memorial, and only 13% were interested in a traditional funeral.
If cremation is one driving force, the other is the baby boom generation, which is beginning to bury its parents on a large scale and occasionally its own members. "We are dealing so much with the baby boomers," says Morrell York. "They want to do things their way."
George Clarke, executive director of Deerfield, Ill.-based Selected Independent Funeral Homes, which represents some 1,450 homes across North America, agrees. "The baby boomers have been accustomed to personalizing all aspects of their lives, from their homes to their automobiles to their vacations. So when it comes to services for their loved ones, they want to personalize those as well," he says. "What they're looking for is meaning."
"I tell every family, 'You get one shot at this, make it as personal as you can,'" says York. "They're getting away from organs, chimes and hymns, and bringing in photos and quilts. They're making some beautiful decisions, as far as I'm concerned." (See "Death takes a holiday," this page.)
None of this is good news for traditional funeral homes. "I don't see families going back to traditional funerals as we know it," says Morrell York. "I've had people that have spent thousands and thousands for a service ˆ when their emotions are dictating what they're purchasing ˆ come back to me and say, 'Maybe we didn't really need all this.'"
This sort of reaction will have the old-fashioned funeral home owners looking over their shoulders, according to Chuck Kincer. "It will become more and more difficult for traditional funeral homes," he says, "especially the smaller operators. I never fault funeral homes for the money they charge. There is an astounding overhead. But if you don't diversify, some day down the road you could be in trouble."
George Clark of Selected Independent Funeral Homes thinks that most funeral homes will be able to adapt. "Certainly there have been alternative providers that have entered the marketplace, but the funeral homes that have been in the business for generations are able to meet the needs of the baby boomer generation," he says. "I don't think it's all or nothing."
"I was looking at ways to reach out and help families who wanted a simpler funeral," York says. "We realized that about 50% of the population wanted something
less than the traditional funeral as we knowit today. And the cost of funerals in greater Portland is way, way out of control."
York made a deal with the Jewish Funeral Home on Deering Avenue in Portland. He leased the use of its facility for his new enterprise, Independent Death Care of Maine. Because IDCM offers cremation exclusively, York was able to cut out a lot of the overhead that funeral homes, like the one he runs in Cornish, York's Funeral Chapel, have had to carry for more traditional funerals ˆ hearses, large selections of caskets, a big staff. These changes have allowed him to charge less.
"With direct cremation," he says, "which includes transportation, $300 crematory charge, legal certificate and an alternative container ˆ by Maine law, the body has to be received in some form of suitable combustible container ˆ we can charge $1,040." That's a lot different than the average traditional funeral cost of about $6,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. IDCM is now providing this service about 230 times a year ˆ handling more than three times as many deaths as does York's Funeral Chapel.
Morrell York is definitely on to something ˆ and he's not the only one. In the past five years, changes have been coming quickly to Maine's staid funeral industry. Older, established homes, like Portland's Hay & Peabody, which was once among the biggest funeral homes in all of New England, have shut down. Many of the large corporations that expanded like crazy in the 80s and 90s ˆ like Service Corp. International, the Houston-based owners of Hay & Peabody, as well as 16 of Maine's 155 other homes ˆ have gone out of business or sold many of their holdings. (Though SCI is consolidating, it's still the largest funeral provider in the world.)
In their wake, a handful of death care businesses have opened that, like Independent Death Care of Maine, offer alternatives to traditional funerals. They've set up shop around southern and central Maine, tending to operate out of much simpler places than the attractive older buildings in which Maine funeral homes are usually housed. Some are even storefronts in shopping plazas. Like IDCM, most emphasize affordability, simplicity, preplanning and a willingness to do the unusual, and among them cremation is the norm.
Auburn-based Funeral Alternatives is just such a place. The business was founded in 2002 by Chuck Kincer, who also runs a traditional funeral home, Kincer Funeral Home, in Richmond, from which he was able to watch trends developing. Unlike so many in the industry, he didn't grow up in the business, but came to it after college. (Kincer's brother, Kenneth, did get into the industry himself about four years ago.)
"The funeral home business is very nepotistic ˆ families pass homes on from one member to the next," Kincer says. "Sometimes working that way you can lose focus on what consumers are looking for. Looking from the outside in, I could see that a simple cremation service was what people would want."
Apparently they did. Within three years, Funeral Alternatives had facilities in Yarmouth, to cover Cumberland County and southern Maine; and in Augusta, to offer options to residents of central Maine; as well as its home base in the Lewiston-Auburn area. And things are going well enough that Kincer says expansion is under consideration.
Frozen ground
Cremation has exploded in popularity across the country in the past decade. A recent survey, "2005 Wirthlin Report: A Study of American Attitudes Toward Ritualization and Memorialization," conducted by Rochester, N.Y.-based Wirthlin Worldwide on behalf of the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, showed that, given the choice, nearly half (47%) of the people questioned would elect to be cremated. That's up from 32% in 1990 and roughly three percent in the early 60s. The actual cremation rate nationwide is 27.8%, according to the National Funeral Home Directors Association, up 20 percent from 1996. New England states tend to be ahead of the curve.
"The cremation rate is definitely growing across the country," says Mark Musgrove, a funeral home owner in Eugene, Ore., and the past president of the National Funeral Directors Association, based in Wisconsin. The trend is driven by things like dwindling cemetery space, increased mobility ˆ people move more now than they once did ˆ and affordability. "The Northeast, the Northwest and the West Coast tend to have the highest rates in the country," he says. "That's because our families tend to be less traditional than in the Southeast and the Midwest. That's just America."
In Maine, cremation has become particularly popular. "There were only two cremation services in the state of Maine in the mid-90s," says Funeral Alternatives' Kincer. "And now there are at least 15 out there. There's a good possibility that this year, for the first time in Maine's history, the cremation rate will come to over 50%." Kincer attributes this trend to a variety of factors, the first being that in the cold Northeast we can't bury our dead for many months out of the year due to frozen ground. Another is that Mainers tend to be less bound by religious traditions than people are in places like the Southeast. But, primarily, it comes down to per capita income. "Mostly, in Maine," Kincer says, "it's an affordability issue."
Like Independent Death Care of Maine, Funeral Alternatives offers direct cremation for about $1,000. "That's opposed to a national chain funeral in Maine, which could be upwards of $3,000," says Kincer. "And that's a bare bones funeral with no hearse, no limo, no flower cars. It can be almost double that." Internment costs about $75-$150 for cremated bodies. "If you have a traditional burial, that can be another $700-$800, depending on the cemetery. That varies by city, too. Portland will be more expensive."
But it isn't just the people with limited resources who are turning to cremation. "The demographics that I've found are that folks are often highly educated; they come really from both ends of the spectrum," says Kincer. "It seems as though the middle class are the ones who are really traditional at this point." Morrell York has noticed the same phenomenon. "The people we serve in Falmouth and Cumberland Foresides, certainly money is no problem," he says. "They're looking for simplicity."
The rise of cremation has prompted many of the transformations the industry has undergone in recent years. "This has been a fundamental change," says Musgrove, of the National Funeral Directors Association. "It's really as large a change as has happened to the funeral business in decades." He thinks cremation had something to do with the crash of the large corporate ownership of funeral homes. The huge conglomerates, which seemed poised to take over everything in the mid-90s, have been divesting like crazy in the past five years. "You'll see more local and regional ownership now. That's because of the cremation rate," he says. "The profit margin is different when people select cremation rather than a traditional funeral."
Independent homes often have an easier time adjusting to those smaller profit margins than do the large corporations. "A lot of independents live on the premises, they're a family operation, maybe a husband and wife, and they can take the profits that are there at the end of the day." Corporations, beholden to stock markets and shareholders, can't abide those margins.
Getting personal
Two of the other hot trends in the funeral business ˆ personalization and pre-planning ˆ can also be partially attributed to cremation. Once someone decides to take a step away from tradition, they have to think about the other options. The Wirthlin study showed that 72% of people surveyed felt it would be better to prearrange their own service. Another study by the National Funeral Directors Association had similar findings, with 75% of respondents interested in pre-planning. Sixty-two percent wanted to customize or personalize their memorial, and only 13% were interested in a traditional funeral.
If cremation is one driving force, the other is the baby boom generation, which is beginning to bury its parents on a large scale and occasionally its own members. "We are dealing so much with the baby boomers," says Morrell York. "They want to do things their way."
George Clarke, executive director of Deerfield, Ill.-based Selected Independent Funeral Homes, which represents some 1,450 homes across North America, agrees. "The baby boomers have been accustomed to personalizing all aspects of their lives, from their homes to their automobiles to their vacations. So when it comes to services for their loved ones, they want to personalize those as well," he says. "What they're looking for is meaning."
"I tell every family, 'You get one shot at this, make it as personal as you can,'" says York. "They're getting away from organs, chimes and hymns, and bringing in photos and quilts. They're making some beautiful decisions, as far as I'm concerned." (See "Death takes a holiday," this page.)
None of this is good news for traditional funeral homes. "I don't see families going back to traditional funerals as we know it," says Morrell York. "I've had people that have spent thousands and thousands for a service ˆ when their emotions are dictating what they're purchasing ˆ come back to me and say, 'Maybe we didn't really need all this.'"
This sort of reaction will have the old-fashioned funeral home owners looking over their shoulders, according to Chuck Kincer. "It will become more and more difficult for traditional funeral homes," he says, "especially the smaller operators. I never fault funeral homes for the money they charge. There is an astounding overhead. But if you don't diversify, some day down the road you could be in trouble."
George Clark of Selected Independent Funeral Homes thinks that most funeral homes will be able to adapt. "Certainly there have been alternative providers that have entered the marketplace, but the funeral homes that have been in the business for generations are able to meet the needs of the baby boomer generation," he says. "I don't think it's all or nothing."
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