Funeral Director

I ran into Robert at a bar where we went to watch a mutual friend play music. I found out he’s the dad of one of my former students and our wives work together. I learned about his son’s success as a welder and Robert’s own past as a farmer, mechanic, tool tech, valet, collector and fixer of various vehicles. When he started talking about embalming people, I had to learn more.

Robert reflects about standing up for yourself at work, persevering, family encouragement, and making changes when you need to.

Discussion Questions:
What do you think would be difficult about working with the deceased?
What’s another job that was affected by COVID?
What do you think is the next big thing to affect our jobs and how can we prepare?What "trades' are you interested in? 

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Music by Brotheration Records

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Transcript

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Danny 1:25

I ran into Robert at a bar where we went to watch a mutual friend play music. I found out he's the dad of one of my former students, and our wives work together. I learned about his son's success as a welder and Robert's own past as a farmer, mechanic, tool tech, ball, collector, and fixer of various vehicles. But when he started talking about embalming people, I had to learn more. In this interview, Robert reflects about standing up for yourself at work, persevering, family encouragement, and the importance of making changes when you need to.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Before leaving high school, uh I had plans of working my dad's farm over here, but those were quickly changed. Graduated uh from Wachong Hills in 76, came out of that. Um, went to work at a local gas station, you know, pumping gas, doing some mechanic work. But I've always had mechanics in my background ever since I was tiny, because I had mini bikes and go-karts and things on the farm. But uh yeah, came out of high school, uh, went right into the work field at the gas station, and it was a twofold thing. I could work at the gas station, they had a lift in there, I could work on my car when I needed to. And so did that for a couple of years, and then a gentleman came in and he said, Hey, they're looking for a partsman, a parts man up at the local Chevrolet dealer, Chevy and Olds dealer up in Baskin Ridge, which is not there anymore. So I went up and I applied and they hired me. I was there for four years working in the parts department, uh, looking up parts, ordering parts, uh putting, restocking the shelves, helping the mechanics and things. And then a position opened up at another car dealership for a parts manager. And I had a background of four years of parts work, and I went there, interviewed, and they hired me. In 82, I believe, the year I got married. I had numerous parts manager jobs. Um it just so worked out that the next dealership recognized your strong points and whatever, and basically it was like the NFL football draft. They would they would come in and make an offer to you, and you would leave that dealership and go to the next one and work their parts department up. In the early 90s, no, I believe it was 91. I uh I was at the one dealership, and we had found out that the dealership owner was really not that all upfront guy. Kind of like taking our social security uh uh monies from our pay and not paying them into the state, uh taking our 401 retirement accounts and not investing them properly. He was investing them into his own house or being in all kinds of stuff. I came home from work and I said to my wife Lisa, I said, you know, I I just don't want to do this anymore. So she said, Well, go ahead, go, you know, you're still young enough, do something you've always wanted to do. And I looked at her and I said, I want to be a funeral director. And she gave me kind of the odd look. Uh I had worked part-time at the local funeral home in town here, um, parking cars because we had a valet service. When people came in for funerals, they would valet. Then I was helping him on a smaller scale with the day in, day out of things. And I said, I, you know, I'm gonna I I asked the boss there, the owner, I said, I'd like to, you know, get my life, my funeral director's license, which involved going back to college, which I had never been. I went down to Mercer County Community College down there in uh right off of Route 1. Uh, it was the only county college around that offered the funeral service program. And what it was, it was a two-year degree, an associate's degree in business management, and then a one-year mortuary degree, uh, where you just did the mortuary end of the business. We took the same courses the nurses took, except our patient's heart wasn't beating. So I was commuting three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and a half a day, Friday. And then on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the weekends, I would intern, because you had to serve a two-year internship at the funeral home. I would intern at the funeral home working there. Ended up getting my license in 94, 1994, I believe it was. And I worked at that funeral home uh up until 2001. And the owner came to me and he said, uh, I'm gonna retire. I want to, I'm I'm gonna get out. He was up in age. He said, Would you have any interest? And I said, Absolutely, it's uh in my own town. I've been here my whole life. My family's have been here 200 years, so it would make sense. Well, it wasn't a very good deal that he proposed. Uh, he wanted a lease, funeral home, and the property for 15 years with a buyout at the end. And I said, No, I I want to own it. Um, and he said, Well, owning's out of the question because it would hurt him too much in taxes, and it was a normal blah blah blah. Two weeks later, it was sold to somebody else. So I was just basically a social security number. So I left there and I went up to another funeral home and worked there for three years, and there was a lot of tension in the in the business there at that funeral home because of uh uh certain things. The son, he well, he'd just come out of prison in Texas and he thought he was my boss because he had the last name, and I said, No, you're really not my boss, because you can't even vote. Because I'm I I you know I I have no filter when it comes to that. So I left there. Left there after three years. That was in 2003, uh, 2003, 2004, and I went out on my own. And it's called a trade man. When you're in the funeral business, it used to be that people would trade their skills for other things. Um the local cabinet maker became the casket maker, okay, because he had the access to the to the wood and things, and he was a craftsman, and he could make caskets, and the name just stuck as a trademan. I was an independent. Uh I had basically between four and six different funeral homes that would call me at it, you know, at on an at-need basis. Um, they'd call at nine o'clock at night and say, Hey Robert, we just had a call come in. Uh, can you come in and tomorrow morning and do the embalming? Uh, we'll let you know when the arrangements are and come back and do the dressing and casting. And I enjoyed it. Uh God gave me brains and uh and uh skills with my hands, and I love doing it. Did that up until 2019 uh when COVID hit. Prior to that, it was kind of winding down. So I took a part-time job at the Wachong Home Depot. A friend of mine who I went to high school with worked there. He worked uh actually with the VA hospital, and he was retiring from the VA, and he worked at the Home Depot to get um some Social Security monies because they didn't take Social Security out on the on the uh the VA government job. So he was working there and he says, Hey, listen, they need a tool tech over in the tool rental department. Would you, you know, part-time? So I went over, I filled out or I went home, filled out the application online. They called me back within 12 minutes and said, Can you come in for an interview? And I came in. It so happened that it was right after I had a funeral the next day. So I went down there with a suit and tie on for an interview at the Home Depot, okay? And yeah, I mean, they hired me on the spot. I started and worked there, and then I asked if I could move into uh because after COVID, um, nobody needed to be embalmed anymore because of the restrictions that were put on you know public gatherings. So basically the funeral work uh dried up for me and I still keep my license. I still have it to this day. I renew it every year or every two years. The guys that do the big equipment outside in the parking lot came to me and they said, We know you're handy and stuff. We need a guy. It's a full-time work, 40 hours minimum of a week. That we give you a truck, we give you a credit card, we give you all the tools you need, you fuel, you take the truck home with you. We come under uh DOT Department of Transportation regulations. I have to have a physical every two years to make sure I'm DOT compliant. Uh we have electronic logbooks in the vehicles and cameras. They watch out the front and they watch you as a driver for safety reasons. And we do have the highest safety score of anybody around. They don't tolerate anything. They, if you deviate from where you're looking for more than four seconds, look down to the side in your mirrors, they probably think you're checking your cell phone, and they ping you. We call it getting pinged. It doesn't affect our pay or anything, but we get scores. I have been running 199s and 98s my whole time driving with them for the last it's been three years I've been on the road with them now.

Danny 11:19

Wow, that sounds that sounds hard to keep up.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Well, yeah, I uh and I can yeah, I keep my scores up. I hey if the phone rings, I don't even look at it. I I wait till I get stopped when I'm in park, then I can answer it. But basically we go around, I have uh seven stores, and I go around and I'm in those stores well more than once every two weeks, but every two weeks we go completely through all the equipment that's outside and maintain it, you know, greasing all the things, uh doing the oil changes, the air filter changes, but then on top of that, we have our own training to do, and we have to inspect scissor lifts. Um, scissor lifts are the little blue, they'd say, genie on the side, and with all the Amazon warehouses going up, Home Depot probably that's their biggest part of their business, is um renting and delivering these scissor lifts to these um warehouses that are being built, and they have to be inspected, um, government inspected and certified and stamped, otherwise, OSHA gets involved. It can get pretty dicey. You know, you know, if somebody gets hurt on one of our scissor lifts and it's not properly inspected, so we got to keep up on that. And then on top of that, Mr. Jones comes in and he rents a machine and it goes down on them either through his uh mistake or through well, you know, something happens from our end. We have to go to the site where they're working on it or working with it and work on the unit there. If it's something we can do in the field, we do it on on the spot. Otherwise, we get it back onto a trailer and get it back to the store or down to our main shop, which is down in Hamilton, and we have a mechanic down there to work. It's it it really is a neat job.

Danny 13:09

Yeah, it sounds it sounds like uh uh a wide range of skills and and uh schedules.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

There's something new every day. My other thing is you know, home at home here after I get out of work. I just came in from outside. I picked up a used little Jeep Wrangler um that needs some work, and I got it very reasonable, and I'll I'll work on it at nights outside until the sunlight goes down. And we're gonna use that. We're probably gonna tow it behind the motorhome that I bought in March, which needed an engine rebuild on a diesel, and had friends come over and help with that. My son Jake, he had the friend who was a turbo diesel guy, and he helped immensely, got that running. We just went away this weekend. We went down to uh below Dover, Delaware, Frederica, to my daughter's uh in-law's house and stayed overnight down there. There's no place around for a bed and breakfast or a hotel, so I brought my hotel with. But say Lisa and I want to go traveling and we go down into the Smoky Mountains and find a nice campground down there and stay overnight, and we want to take a couple of tours or whatever, drive around with the Jeep. But you you never know where the road leads you. Um, you're too young to remember the TV show called Then Came Bronson. Um, it was about this guy who was on a motorcycle, he had a sleeping bag tied in the front over his headlight. I forget who the actor was, but he's at a stoplight and the guy pulls up next to him and started every show. Oh, what are you doing? He says, I'm taking a trip. Where are you going? He says, anywhere the road takes me. And that was that was the premise of the show. And then, you know, he would get in trouble along the way because he was a biker and this, that, and the other thing. But no, it's uh it's a fun way to travel. Um we've enjoyed it. But when you have a motorhome or a camper, you have to be an electrician, a carpenter, a plumber, a mechanic. You have to know it all because something's always gonna break down on the road. It always happens. Um going down to Delaware. I came through the toll booth at the Delaware Memorial Bridge after the bridge, and I didn't judge it enough, close enough, and I caught my right side outer mirror on the toll booth, and it broke it. And without that mirror, you're dead in the water because you can't see who's alongside of you and stuff. So uh it was like flipping around, and when I got the chance to see what was there, then I put on my blinker and pull over till I could get stopped on the side of the road. And I there's another TV show, MacGyver, where I put found a I found a uh elastic uh bungee cord in my camper um you know, outer uh carrying thing there, the compartment. I wrapped it all around the arm and around the head of the mirror, got it kind of and it worked. Go down to where we were going, and then all the way home, I had to order a new mirror head. That'll be here in a couple of days. And uh so you MacGyvered the thing. You uh make you like the Marines, you uh make do with what you got and overcome.

Danny 16:22

When you did uh when you did embalming, what was your like mentality to do a good job? Was it a similar like uh MacGyver kind of mentality or uh I mean there's different cases.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

You have your you know, your easy, they we call them an easy straight case. Uh you just you you pra it's practice over and over and over again um on each different body. And I was fortunate because my place where I interned at, he had the it's not the bid, but he had the contract with the VA hospital for all the uh veterans that were there that had no family. They were in the veterans hospital up in Lyons, they had nobody. So I had plenty of people to practice on, and we gave them a dignified funeral. We would ask for uh widows for their husbands old from you know, suits, and the contract was for, I think the government was paying my boss $600 to make the removal from the hospital, do the embalming, supply a casket, and then drive the remains with the casket down to the veteran's burial place down in Cream Ridge. Beautiful, beautiful place. And the boss would do that because he was a veteran himself. Yes, I mean, if it was someone I knew, I'm gonna strive to do my best. I always did my best job anyhow, but little tricks and things, not tricks, but skills you learn while doing the process uh helped immensely. Um, when they started getting into the tissue and long bone donation with like the tissue and sharing network, they would give you extra monies because it takes so much longer to prepare a body after the donation, and you need two people to do that job. You need um a person to help you. It doesn't have to be a licensed person, but you need somebody to help to help roll the body and and do things, lifting and things. The the hardest thing for me ever was a child, because uh, you know, up until teenage years, because I had kids that age to see that, then I would always call in, I'd say call in the reinforcements. It'd be another funeral director, and we would work together, you know, so it wasn't all on us, on one person. You know, you could talk while you're doing things, just to, you know, ease your mind a little bit when you're dealing with a you know a young person, that's hard. It's not a it's not a very rewarding dollar amount uh job, unless you're an owner of a funeral home, and that's usually typically family. But as a worker, I became a millionaire many times over. When after I was done, and I'm working the visitation, and the daughter would come up or whoever, and she would say, I just want to thank you for giving me my mom back to me. My and my grandma looks so good. Um, I hate it when they say that they look so good. No, they're dead. But to to take that harshness away of them being in a nursing home for 10 years and basically using up all their body storage and energy and wasting away to nothing, and then we have different feet uh different skills and different things to use to build out the facial features that doesn't make them look so gaunt. Just a lot of things. And I learned a lot. I mean, even as far as the business end of the uh the business, and when I made arrangements with people, and you know, you had to calculate everything out, and this is what you were gonna have to pay. Sometimes I would say to them, you know, I think you're kind of foolish to do this. Why don't you go with a lesser casket? Because I knew what their financial situation was, kind of. Um, I had the one boss that after I got done with arrangements, he I'd come out of the arrangement room and have all the paperwork. Why'd you take so long? What do you mean, why'd it take so long? Yeah, you were with them for like almost two hours. Well, you know what? I I gained I gained a respect of them. Come to find out we know somebody, we're probably related, and then he'd say, Well, what did you sell them? And I would say, I didn't sell them anything. I let them choose what they wanted. As far as a casket and if they needed a vault in the cemetery. The third question was, When are they gonna pay? That's all he was concerned about. When are they gonna pay? I couldn't, I that was the second job that uh I was there for three years. I couldn't I couldn't deal with that type of mentality.

Danny 21:04

Uh it just Yeah, that you know that's time. That's yeah, if it's already tough, um, you know, heavy emotional labor for the job, yeah, then that's having the boss uh down your down your throat also. His son too much.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

His son that had just gotten out of prison for aggravated a soul with a deadly weapon, he had put a gun to his ex-wife's head and didn't kill her, but that was down in Texas. Down in Texas, they don't mess around. And he got seven years, the father got him out in five years, and I had to work with this knucklehead for two years, and it was like walking on an eggshell every day. I just couldn't do it. I was not, I couldn't do it. Yeah, you know, I let I'm like a duck, I let a lot of water run off my back, but that no, that was just too much. Um, but anyhow, no, I I learned a lot at that job too. Um, my best funeral with them was the man who was the CEO of Feder's Air Conditioning Corporation. He came over here from Italy as a teenager. He swept the floors at the Fetters Air Conditioning Plant, an Italian immigrant, and worked his way up. And he designed in the late 40s, early 50s as a worker, he designed the window unit air conditioner. Everybody could have air conditioning in their apartment building or in their house by him designing that small air conditioner that Fetters had to go in the window. He ended up becoming the CEO. I believe his children, the two boys are now CEOs of Fetters, but they've been brought up by a I think by a Chinese company. But we had a funeral for him that was unequaled. I mean, they had stopped by the funeral home. They had lived up in the Far Hills area, and the two sons stopped by. I was outside polishing the brass uh railings, and I'm in like casual clothes, not in the dress clothes or anything. Hey, you know, how you doing? Can I can we ask you a few questions? I said, absolutely. Come on. I said, Pardon the way I'm dressed, I'm you know doing the brass here on the on the railings. Come on inside. And we went inside and they looked around and gathered a little bit. You can't ask why, when, where, what, how. And they uh they said, Oh, you know, it's it's for our dad. He they didn't I didn't know who they were. I can't ask them. We'll be in touch, they said, and they left. Didn't even think anything about it about three weeks later. Weeks later, they they called, and the father had had died, and they wanted to have the funeral with us because I took the time to say, Hey, how you doing? Come on inside, you know, we'll chat, uh, whatever. It turned out to be phenomenal. I mean, there were uh six limousine, three flower cars, a solid mahogany casket, which is the best of the best. Then they needed some extra prayer cards, and the boss says, Well, you got to charge them $200 more for more prayer cars, you know, little cards you get. I said, What are you kidding me? The guy, the guy just spent $40,000 on a funeral. You're gonna charge him $200? That was it. I had walked. I was I was done. Yeah, I I can't deal with that.

Danny 24:05

It was it it was your non-greedy mentality that probably um convinced them to come to this business. So can't nickel and dime them after that.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

But uh, I mean, for any student that's thinking about going into the funeral business, it it is unbelievable. Um a good friend of mine, um, her daughter went into the army and she became a funeral director for the army, and now she's with forensic um embalming with the army, and she was in uh Dover Air Force Base. That's where all the veterans, when they're injured overseas or wherever, they all come into the Dover Air Force Base down in Dover, Delaware, and they have an embalming facility down there. Those guys are the best. There is no doubt they they train and train and train. But she was she did that um and she's she has her funeral director's license. She's hoping to take over her uncle's funeral home. But uh she wanted to bring me down there um to show me the facility. I mean, it it like I say, it's a very rewarding career. It makes you a millionaire in your heart, but not so much in your wallet, but that's okay, unless you unless you want to work like some of these trademark or get a good job in the in the funeral home.

Danny 25:27

So when you s when you say trademan, you were not just doing one part of it, right? You had some your customer interaction, you had um Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

You you as a funeral director in New Jersey, your license to do everything. It used to be two separate licenses. It was a license as a funeral director and a license for an embalmer. And then they brought them together, and it's a practitioner of mortuary science. So we learn everything from interacting with the person, uh doing the embalming, doing the dressing and layout, cosmetology. Um inadvertently, you're gonna have an intern that uh shaves the beard off of someone uh during the embalming process, and the family wanted it left on. And so you have to make a beard. Wow. Um, a traumatic accident, they lost an ear, lost an eye on a motorcycle accident. I mean, I've had some doozies. One was a motorcycle accident where the guy was with his friend and he got hit head on with a tractor trailer. The friend saw this man die right in front of him. He was uh he came to the visit, took us 12 hours to do a full full embalming and restoration, and he came to the funeral home, and the owner of the funeral home said, Come on inside. He says, No, I can't. I I saw him as he died. She says, No, you have to come in and and and see this. You need it for yourself, you need to see what was what we can do. He went inside and he stood at the casket, and he was a Harley biker, and he looked at the boss or the owner of the funeral home, who was a woman, and he turned to her and he says, You guys are fucking amazing, just like that. And he was all good with it. It was it was it it it took didn't take the grief away, but it took he was getting uh we'll call it.

Danny 27:32

Yes, um closure and and seeing other people respect your loved ones um i is is a really nice feeling.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Jake's girlfriend's aunt passed away last year, or it's not going on, and she asked me to handle it. So I I have access to the funeral home up in Mendham. He lets me use his paperwork and everything. So we did the funeral for her, and everybody was just amazed. It was great.

Danny 27:58

You mentioned um performing services for people you know, um, like maybe Jake's girlfriend's aunt or or others. Have you have you performed um services for for loved ones or friends?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

My uncle Paul, who everybody thinks uh he could have been my real father because we're so much alike. My Aunt Teresa asked me if I if I would do this, would I mind? I said, nope, I have no problem. I think I'm a partial schizophrenic. I can go in and separate. You know what I mean? I can go in and say, oh yeah, yeah, this is my aunt, this is my uncle, it's whatever. I did my grandmother's um makeup. Um my niece helped me with my dad's cosmetics when he died in 2001. But uh I can go in and say, okay, now I've got a job to do.

Danny 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

And I can separate myself. I'll grieve later. Or even um Jake's uh grandmother, my wife's mother and father. I drove down to Virginia to get my father-in-law in a removal vehicle because that's where he died down there. Uh had to have a funeral home down there, uh, do the preparation work so I could come across the state lines. And there's people I can count on in funeral homes. Um, like when my mother-in-law died, um, and my dad called my friend who I worked with up in Succasuna. He came right down, he took care of the body, he did the embalming. I didn't have to do that. Everybody thought I got in the funeral business um to see my mother-in-law naked, but I didn't. Um I had somebody else do that. Anything that a person needs to do to work with their hands and their brain. I mean, I love the idea that they're really pushing the trade schools now. Um a welder, a person who's a welder doesn't need a college education. He could become a welder and he can make a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year as a welder.

Danny 30:00

Yeah, it's satisfying work, constructing things, building things, fixing things, the precision.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

You know, that's we we just don't need we don't need people telling all the kids in school, no, you've got to do this, you gotta become an accountant, you gotta become a lawyer. Yeah, you gotta you gotta choose what you want to do, and if it doesn't work out, choose something else.

Danny 30:22

Yeah, you gotta you know, roll with the punches and and uh be flexible. What kind of person do you think makes a good um funeral director?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

I used to refer to myself as the ultimate public servant. They always say a policeman's a public servant. No, I'm the ultimate public servant. I get called out two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, have to go take grandma from a house to the funeral home, come back home, get a couple hours' sleep, go back in to work, make arrangements with the family, do the embalming if they just so choose. It it takes a person who's very personable, I think, but I think everything can be learned, even if you're not. I don't think uh you know, Tanny, I see these girls, these goth girls. I I I I just don't get it. With the black lipstick, the black hair, the black makeup around the eyes, they look like Morticia Adams. I I just can't see them in the funeral business. I really don't. Because I think I if I was a family member, I'd get scared when I see them.

Danny 31:23

Yeah, you you don't want you don't want the your uh client to turn out looking maybe like a goth girl.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Um yeah, unless they were a goth girl uh in their own but I think anybody that is uh well-rounded, um is you you have to learn to listen.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

And you have to be a referee. Because if you get two family members that disagree, oh my god, it can be a disaster, either in a church, at the funeral home. I've seen they didn't have time to put the boxing gloves on, so they went raw fists. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Danny 32:03

Is it mostly a Christian thing? Or do other religions do this?

SPEAKER_01 32:09

The Muslim faith, it's typically uh the eldest son that will start the retort, the cremation process at the crematory. Uh they do have a they'll do a visitation, but then they all go to the crematory, and the eldest son will start the cremation process. Very rare do they get buried in the earth uh or in a mausoleum, you know, put in a mausoleum, a crypt, but it's it's probably 90% cremation. And uh I know Jewish, uh the strict Jewish, you know, can't do anything on a Saturday, so it has to be a Sunday. You know, specific cemeteries, it depends how uh devoted you are. I mean, as as far as however your religion dict dictates. But the days of earth burial, not too many people are doing it anymore. They'll still do, they'll still do a visitation. I mean, when I first started, it was not uncommon to have two days of the body at the funeral home for people to come through and pay their respects, and then a big Catholic mass, and then a procession to the big cemetery. No, that's all gone. Money is the prices of funerals, an average price, I think today is about $24,000, $25,000. That's a lot of money.

Danny 33:34

That's like it's a lot, and people may not have it laying around, you know, if especially if the death was like unexpected.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

And then uh then they started funeral homes started taking credit cards. People didn't want to put this on their credit card, but you know what? Funeral home's a business. He's got to get paid. He's got to pay his employees, he's got his insurance to pay, he's got cars to pay for, he's got merchandise to pay for. That's why they teach you the business end of the deal at college.

Danny 34:00

Did the uh equipment or technology, or even maybe like the style, uh, change during your career?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

No. It's the same. It's a company called Portaboy makes an embalming machine. Basically, it's just a two and a half gallon water tank that you mix the formaldehyde solution or glutaraldehyde solution, um, and then has a little pump in it that you can set pressures and rate of flow. You set the pressure between three and five pounds, just like your heart does, and the rate of flow is about 14, 14, 16 ounces a minute, and you inject that into the arteries and the veins. That machine has been the same since I'd say the 1940s. And everybody thinks when a hair funeral, that's no, it's not just the embalming is only two and a half hours of a whole 24 hour, 24 man hours of funeral work. But it is the most important because that's the first thing people see and remember, they don't come in the funeral home and say, Oh my god, you got some nice drapes in here and the carpeting looks good. No, they're gonna they're gonna walk over to the casket and they're gonna kneel down and say, Wow, yeah, he looks good, but they forgot to trim his nostril hairs. Big, a big important thing. Trim those, the yeah, trim those nasal hairs and clean the fingernails underneath the fingernail beds and things. Uh, because that's what they see. They're they're sitting right there where the hands are crossed.

Danny 35:36

Uh certain parts uh or f features like wrinkles or scars or whatever that uh a family wants you to keep, they they especially uh like requested or you notice in photos that that you should um keep those things rather than covering them up?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Oh sure, sure. They'll bring a they'll bring a recent well, we asked them for a recent photo of grandma or whatever to see how the hair's gonna get done by the by the hairdresser. But um, yeah, if they've got, and now I just if they have a special preference and they, you know, dad had a scar on his left cheek from World War II, and we would like, you know, don't cover that up, make sure that's visible, because he was very proud of that scar that he got. Well, you know, we leave that. But now there's a new thing that if the deceased had a favorite tattoo that the family liked, there's a a way that we can take that skin with that tattoo and put it through a little process and preserve it for them, and they can put it on their wall as like a photo. Really? Oh wow. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you could you could Google search, uh, watch an embalming, and you'll s they'll they'll blank out the deceased face, but they'll show how an embalming process is done. Three steps of disinfection. Uh, topical, what's on your top of your skin, internal, which is the gluteraldehyde formula going in and disinfecting the inside of the body through the veins and arteries, and then the third topical again to protect the people that are coming for a visitation. That's your main objective for embalming is to protect the people that are there visiting. You don't want them to get any transmittable diseases because they inevitably love to kiss the dead person. They love to grab, you know, Uncle Johnny's hand and you know stroke his face, um, just to make sure that he's dead, you know, that uh he's down to 72 degrees room temperature, not at 98.6. I mean I and I'm candid. Uh that's uh that's another way. That's how I get through it too. Um I make light of the situation, but not in front of a family.

Danny 37:51

Sure. No, yeah, you gotta um uh treat yourself right and make sure, yeah, make sure you're uh able to continue. You know, it's a marathon type job, it's not like a a race type job. Absolutely. Can you describe a moment in your career? I and you you you did describe a few already, but um, can you maybe what which one stands out as a moment where you felt like the deepest sense of purpose or or satisfaction in your work?

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Um well, I as I said, that one the motorcycle accident for that one gentleman, uh, when the lady came to me and said, Thank you for giving me my mom, my mom back because she had wasted away to nothing. And like I said, I mean, just just those little uh and when a thank you note came back to the funeral home from the family. There again, it didn't put any more money in my pocket, but it really made me feel really good. I mean, yes, the main objective is to make money, but there's sometimes it's not all about the money. It really isn't. You get that thank you, or you know, um, you did such a great job. Uh, you can come back to the repast with us at the uh, you know, the local restaurant and stuff. We'll buy you lunch. Yeah, we always tried to get invited for that. We knew we were doing good when you got invited back for that. My friend up in Sakasana, I had just gotten licensed. I I I mean, probably two weeks. They had just mailed me my license, and he calls me up and he says, Hey, I got a big favor to ask. Can you take a funeral over to uh Ocean View Cemetery in Staten Island for me? He says, I can't go. You you know, you'll the guy will drive the hearse, you'll have the procession behind you, and you'd say a few words at the graveside, because you have to be a minister too, or a rabbi, or whatever, um, and do prayers at the graveside or whatever you have to do. You you do what you do, and then and there again, it's like MacGyver, you or a Marine, you overcome and you know, do it. So we get out to Staten Island and we get up to the cemetery there, and everybody gets out of their cars and they bring the casket over, and I was gonna be minister, you know, Pastor Robert, and said a few words and read a few scriptures and did whatever. And this little lady comes walking up to me after I dismissed everybody. You got to be a great public speaker, too. That's it, because sometimes you can get a crowd of four people, or you can get a crowd of 40 or 400 people. So you gotta be a good public speaker and project. So the little lady comes walking up and she says, That was very nice, what you said for my friend. And she goes, Do you live around here? I said, No, I'm from New Jersey. I said, but I used to come over here uh with my wife to visit her grandparents over on Gansvoort Boulevard. She goes, uh, Gansvoort Boulevard, she said, I had friends that lived on Gansvoort Boulevard. Who did you go see? I said, Well, it was Amil and Esther Rodberg. It was my wife's grandparents. She looks at me and she says, Robert. And I said, Yes. She goes, You don't remember me, do you? No. She was at my wedding in 1982, the little lady I was talking to. Okay, she was good friends with my wife's grandparents. The lady that we were burying was at my wedding also.

Danny 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Yeah. What a small world. I mean, and another time it happened that I up in Marstown had a funeral. They always say the six degrees of separation, uh, a funeral up in Marstown, and the guy came over and said, Thank you so much. He said, You from this area? I said, No, I live over in Myersville, Gillette. He says, I had a friend that lived over there. We were, he says, What's your last name? I said, Keelblock. And he goes, Carl Keelblock? I said, No, that's my cousin. He says, We were both actors during the first year of college or right out of high school, up at Wild West City, up on 206. They were dressed up as cowboys and did the cowboy show up there. And there again, six degrees of separation out of nowhere's. This guy was friends with my cousin. That's then it makes you feel better, and they they feel better that they know somebody. You know, there was an old saying that our instructor told us. He says, not too many people want to do it, but it's better to know me and not need me than to need me and not know me. That's where I've been my whole life. Now I gotta just have the doctor take care of me so I can keep on going.

Danny 42:31

Robert, I really enjoyed speaking with you. I learned so much. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Okay, thank you, Danny.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

I'll talk to you later.