Journal of the Funeral Profession
Issue 32 Available Now
Our June issue is out now! Read about Louisiana lady, Anna Wilbert Breaux, a 5th generation funeral director with a passion for saltwater fishing that provides leadership for a historic business with a service mark that dates back to 1850. Up next, Hart's Mortuary opened in 1899 by a founder that proved innovative from the beginning and they continue that tradition now in multiple locations....
People, Places, Passions
Anna Wilbert Breaux
Fifth-generation Funeral Director Anna Wilbert Breaux has spent her life learning the funeral profession. As a youngster, her first classes were held around the dinner table when relatives came for Sunday dinner. The building previously housing the funeral home...
Funetorium | All Things Funereal
Attila Bethlenfalvy stands out in a crowd of funeral directors. With his gauged ears, shaven head and bushy, peppered beard, Bethlenfalvy doesn’t look the part, and he’s not a funeral director, though he arguably knows more about funerary antiques and ephemera than...
Author-Undertaker | Todd Harra
“It’s such an honor to be able to walk with people during their time of need,” said Todd Harra, vice president of McCrery & Harra Funeral Homes and Crematory in Wilmington, Delaware. “But I never pictured myself doing this.” Harra has deep roots in the profession,...
Thomas Lynch | Bringing the Living & the Dead Closer
Thomas Lynch is a man who needs no introduction. He’s well known—even famous, though he’d certainly argue that—in undertaking, poetic, and literary circles. Lynch won the American Book Award in 1998 for his breakout collection of essays, The Undertaking: Life Studies...
The Standard Cremation & Funeral Center | Anderson, South Carolina
All funeral directors have experienced “the call.” One presumption might define it as a specific experience that attracted an individual to serve in our sacred profession. However, another interpretation of the call, which is germane to this story, stems from the...
“Being There” | Robert Clint Walker
The alarm of the cellphone balanced on the dash rouses Clint Walker from an uncomfortable sleep. Brushing away empty coffee cups and food wrappers, Clint unfolds himself out of the pickup truck and zips his camouflage jacket against the icy wind blowing across the...
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Funereal Fridays
The Charleston Nine
Southern Mourning | from Southern Calls Issue 16, September 2017 (Opening Image: June 22, 2007 – Charleston 9 Firefighters ServicePresident, Mike McDaniel,1999-00 (head), President Thomas E. Baker II, 2007-08 (foot) Photographer – We are very appreciative to SCFDA...
Man O’ War’s Funeral
Southern Mourning | from Southern Calls Issue 9, September 2015 (Opening Image: As visitors look on, legendary thoroughbred Man O’ War lies in state in a casket lined with his racing colors at owner Samuel Riddle’s Faraway Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, Nov. 3, 1947....
The Art of Undertaking
Here are three powerful images that I believe capture the essence of our beloved Profession - Mike Squires ABOVE: The Recessional | Mac Brown, Photography “Red clay fills the hole left in our hearts. Only flowers remain as guardians of the grave, until they too wither...
Check back frequently for new Funereal Fridays!
Recent Stories
COVID-19 in Rural Alabama
Everything’s changed. We’re now living in a world we didn’t expect a month ago, a week ago, or even yesterday. It’s a world of constant flux with changing mandates and directives coming from the state and federal level. And yes, it’s a world of fear. Masks and gloves...
Kobe Bean Bryant | Obsequies
AUGUST 23, 1978 – JANUARY 26, 2020 Only two months ago the news shocked the world, Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter crash… those headlines, the outpouring of grief and the images from memorials have now been thickly veiled by the coronavirus that has taken...
Billy Graham | Funeral & Eulogies
Leading up to the day of the funeral, feelings of anxiety and uncertainty abounded. Although receiving media passes for the visitation had been fairly streamlined and straightforward, obtaining credentials to attend the private funeral service was a highly-...
Remembering Jacquelyn Taylor
In a career that came full-circle, the enduring and steadfast funeral service advocate was excited about the opportunity to continue her life’s work. But on August 10, 2018 Jacquelyn Taylor was diagnosed with breast cancer and on September 4, 2019 the cancer returned...
Additional Recent Stories articles can be found in our archives.
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Events
Learn more about some of the top upcoming events in the funeral profession, or book Mike Squires, Editor/Publisher of Southern Calls, for an upcoming speaking engagement.
From the Past
A Florida Undertaker’s Family Museum | Volume 11, March 2016
Take a step back in the life of an undertaker when you walk into Tommy Begg’s Funeral Museum in Madison, Florida. Visit the original coffin shop with boxes of original ornaments and hardware, his restored 1918 Dodge hearse, the first motorized hearse in Florida, and...
Presidential Passings | Eisenhower
The Solemn Journey to AbileneA Look Back at the Eisenhower Funeral Train By Bob Boetticher, Sr. Chairman, National Museum of Funeral History The first of an 8-Part Series focused on the History of Presidential Funeral Trains On March 28, 1969, the world learned that...
Sunnyside Magazine, January 1900
This is "The Sunnyside," a magazine for the funeral industry, dated January 1st, 1900. It contains fabulous old ads for hearses, caskets, embalming fluid, etc. from advertisers such as National Casket, John Marsellus Mfg. Co., Champion Chemical Co. and many others....
NFDA State Association Officers from 1900
Here's an interesting look back at the 1900 National Funeral Directors' Association roster of officers from the state associations. This comes from a point in history when there were only 45 states in the United States, and we were just 35 years removed from the Civil...
An industry with rich history, see more relics and stories from the past here.
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![President William McKinley Death Mask
Less than 30 hours after McKinley died, sculptor Edward Pausch made a plaster mold of his face for use in creating later sculptures of the president. The mold itself was destroyed, but the death mask made from it was given by the sculptor to the Smithsonian two months later. The mask was described, rather creepily, in the “Evening Star”: “The head is slightly inclined forward, as if reposing upon a pillow. Framing the face and forehead, but exposing part of the throat, is the cast of a molded drapery. . . . The left ear is entirely exposed, but only the lobe of the right ear is visible. A number of the dead President’s own hairs adhere to the right temple of the cast. One of his eyelashes rests upon the right cheek. . . . [T]he cheeks, more sunken than in life, but less so than during the lying-in state in the rotunda of the Capitol, bear the saddest reminder of the nation’s tragedy and the hellish accomplishment of anarchy.”
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Photo](https://4aq4xhjbx1h42gden3l4c4mp-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
