Desperate for closure, Joe wanted to buy a casket, fill it with his mother’s clothing and bury it. Nesbitt advised him against it. “It’s not real,” she told him. “You need to do something that will live on.” With her help, they settled on having a service with only a framed photo of their mother. Then, in her memory, Green’s children planted a cherry tree on the grounds of her church.
It may be weeks-or months-before the bodies of many victims of the terrorist attacks are recovered, if they are recovered at all. Despite this, funeral preparations are already well underway. Casket companies have begun shifting inventories toward New York City, and the state has initiated a survey of all available cemetery space. And a growing number of families are deciding to hold memorial services even when a body has not yet been recovered. Many New York City funeral directors say that although they’ll be busy, they won’t be completely overwhelmed; there are more than 500 funeral homes in the city’s five boroughs. Still, they are preparing for enormous crowds and steadying themselves to deal with families facing unexpected, tragic deaths.
The latest count lists 6,333 people missing in the World Trade Center disaster, and hopes of finding miracle survivors are rapidly fading. So far, 253 people are confirmed dead. Of the bodies recovered from the rubble, 183 have been identified. The vast majority of recovered remains are body parts, which are not included in the official count. The forensics lab of the New York City Chief Medical Examiner’s office is running DNA tests to help identify the fragments, and many families are waiting for those test results before they proceed with a burial. The results could trickle out slowly over the next few months, easing the immediate strain on the funeral industry.
But some funeral homes are already feeling the burden. The Frank E. Campbell home in Manhattan pulled in 20 workers from facilities in other states this week, nearly doubling its staff. “We had over 3,000 people visit the home between Tuesday night and Wednesday for one visitation,” says general manager Kevin Mack. A funeral service for Fire Department Chaplain Mychal Judge packed the 3,300 seats of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and overflow guests had to watch a simulcast on videoscreens outside the building.
From a financial perspective, the funeral industry stands to profit from the tragedy. Average costs for a funeral service in New York City range from $6,000 to $13,000, and the enormous crowds at some funerals will likely drive these numbers even higher. But most funeral homes say that money is the last thing on anyone’s mind. “People made the comment, ‘Oh, you’re going to be so busy!’” says Edith Churchman, of the James E. Churchman Jr. funeral home in Newark, N.J. “But we don’t want to be busy in this way.” The Frank E. Campbell funeral home is continuing its policy of providing free funerals for public servants who die in the line of duty, even though the sheer number of officers and firemen killed in the attack could make it an expensive proposition.
Funeral planning has been complicated by the fact that these deaths were unexpected. “When the phone rings, and there’s been a bombing in the trade center, no one is prepared,” says James Nolan Jr., who runs the Nolan & Taylor-Howe funeral home in Northport, N.Y. Robert Gallagher, vice president of the Martin A. Gleason funeral home, agrees. “A lot of people are caught without a cemetery plot,” says Gallagher. “They’re in their 30s and 40s, too young to have even thought about it.” Untimely deaths mean that families may require additional counseling and support from funeral directors, as well.
Cemeteries also expect increased business, but the pace, so far, has been slow. Kevin Boyd, president of Ferncliff Cemetery Association in Westchester County, N.Y., says he initially worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle the demand. “We figured that we had enough staff to do 15 outdoor funerals in a day,” he said. But the problem hasn’t been too many bodies, but too few. Many families will be left with just a slip of paper confirming a DNA match. Others will have nothing but a death certificate, issued for victims whose remains are never found. To that end, Boyd says he hopes to discourage people from buying space when there is no need to buy space. One option is a memorial wall remembrance, a bronze marker that is affixed to a wall. “There’s nothing behind it but you could put flowers there and sit in quiet contemplation,” he says.
As Wanda Green’s children discovered, hosting a memorial service without a body requires unusual solutions from funeral directors. “Without tangible reality of death, something in your heart does not make you want to believe,” says John Carmon, president of the National Funeral Directors Association. “Your heart tells you, ‘Maybe he went out for a cup of coffee and maybe he just got lost’.” In upcoming weeks, funeral homes may be inundated with such situations. In place of caskets, many families may simply set up memory tables, photo collages and other memorabilia. Still, it helps that in recent years, funeral etiquette has loosened up, and funeral directors are more accustomed to hosting nontraditional memorial services. “We used to think of funerals as just tending to the dead, says Vincent O’Conner of the Dennis O’Conner funeral home in Rockaway, N.Y. “Now we see them as an opportunity to celebrate the person’s life.”
The Nolan & Taylor-Howe home hosted one such memorial this week for professional basketball player Daniel Trant, a World Trade Center victim. Although his remains have yet to be recovered, Trant’s family felt ready hold a memorial. In lieu of a casket, they brought 16 or 17 of Trant’s basketballs, a slew of trophies and a photo collage to the funeral home. During the two hours of informal talks at the ceremony, the speakers passed a basketball between them.
In the face of the mass tragedy, funeral directors are also trying to approach the deaths one at a time. “People who don’t know someone are collectively moved by the tragedy,” says O’Conner. “But to these people, it’s about the fact that their mom hasn’t come home or their child hasn’t come home.”
And even though death is their business, the scope of the tragedy has had a sobering effect on funeral-home employees. “We all feel a sense of community, so we all feel a sense of loss,” adds O’Conner. “We’re tired, but we’re not nearly as tired as those who suffered the losses.”
