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Article in the Seattle Times March 19, 2009

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Funeral industry feeling pinch of recession

Dave Eady, front, president of Olympic Motor Escort, Al Mitchell and Doug Morgan, outside St. James Cathedral, are ready to guide a funeral procession to a North Seattle cemetery. Eady says his business has fallen off in the past year.

The reputedly recession-proof funeral industry finds that increasingly money-conscious consumers are figuring out ways to save on the costs of honoring their loved ones.

By Marc Ramirez

Seattle Times staff reporter

ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES

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 in Tacoma 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 being held 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 caskets 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, Seattle representative for the Houston-based Service Corp. International, which owns and operates 20 local funeral homes and cemeteries, 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 Aberdeen's Fern Hill Cemetery 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."

Motorcades

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.

In Washington state, cremations outnumber burials 2-to-1, and the ratio is growing. "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 casket 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.

Cremation

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.

More than 90 percent of the co-op's clients, who pay a $25 lifetime membership, choose cremation. And the past two months, Rolfstad said, have brought a record number of services arranged through People's Memorial — 118 cases in December and 117 in January, compared to 77 and 97 a year ago.

And at Ballard's Wiggen & Sons, one of five funeral homes operated by Seattle's Bonney-Watson, Carol Sauers knows not everyone can afford full-service plans. Occasionally, she encourages money-conscious clients to consider a home memorial.

"I say, I know, it's a financial consideration, but at the same time, a life has been lived that needs to be celebrated," Sauers said.

"So I tell them the way we celebrated for my grandmother. She said, 'When I die, just have a party and have everybody bring food.' And that's exactly what we did. We honored her life and it didn't cost anything."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com