The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Dresser asks when it’s OK to cut through a funeral procession.

George and Cassie Bailey live near Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens, where police officers and firefighters are often buried. Funerals for active-duty public safety deaths are often miles long, involving hundreds of vehicles. It can easily take well over two hours for the procession to clear any given point.

George Bailey requires dialysis; his kidneys don’t work. He gets treatment every week, and it’s a live-saving issue. If he doesn’t get the toxins cleaned out of his body properly, he’ll get sicker, and die. Several times in the past, the Baileys have been held up in their apartment complex by funeral processions. Even when they’ve left early, they’ve gotten caught at other intersections. On one occasion, when she explained the situation and asked a traffic officer if they could get through, he refused. On another, the desk officer told her anyone she asked would laugh at her.

A department spokesman was concerned over that response, and suggested the Baileys contact the precinct captain. Dresser closes with this comment:

It’s time for a wide-ranging - and respectful - discussion between local police chiefs and the public about how to continue these motorcades while preserving public health, safety and mobility. Because if the two goals can’t be reconciled, it’s time for a new tradition.

The comments following the article are interesting, and wide-ranging. Some are pro-police, and some are anti-police. Many are anti-funeral, or at least anti-procession. How about it? Is it time to re-think the idea of processions, especially in larger cities?

In this summary: a funeral home employee steals urns, then sells them for scrap; an SC funeral home recovers from an arson fire; and an NC funeral home has its license suspended.

They do in Port Huron, Michigan.

Some don’t in Florida, though.

An Oregon resident writes about rude drivers in a letter to the editor. Note that the drivers weren’t just being rude, they were in violation of several Oregon statues covering funeral processions. I’ve come to the realization that people are just ignorant of procession laws, since they vary so from state to state. What’s required in some states isn’t even mentioned in others; several states don’t recognize processions at all. Add in self-appointed legal experts, and things become even more murky.

Locally, a Delhi Township police officer was struck during a funeral procession in suburban Cincinnati. His injuries were not considered life-threatening. The driver apparently left the scene after the crash, but later returned.

Steven Keith, the 51-year-old funeral escort hit by a drunk driver on 3 April, has died.

Here’s his employer. You can send your condolences there.

Stuff like this still occasionally happens, even up here in Central Ohio. I think the coolest time I ever saw it happen was three or four years ago, when 2 young boys, maybe 11 or 12 years old, stopped what they were doing, stood to, and paid their respects to the procession. It wasn’t a nice neighborhood, either, which made it all the more poignant.

A funeral escort working Jackson County, Missouri was hit by a drunk driver April 3d. The escort suffered “life-threatening injuries” when a 20-year-old intoxicated male began passing the procession one car at a time, leapfrogging his way up. The escort, moving up to the front of the procession, was struck when the intoxicated driver swerved out to pass another car.

Up in Shorewood, IL (near Joliet), apparently people get pretty worked up over having to wait for funeral processions.

Clara Plut, 20, was recently stuck waiting for a funeral procession (for Troy Fire Protection District Chief Kerry Sheridan) to pass by. I’ve worked firefighter funerals before. They’re big. Think seventy-five cars easy, along with fire apparatus. Clara got perturbed about waiting, and texted a firefighter friend of hers, making what she thought was a joking comment about killing a firefighter.

Now, I don’t know if Clara really was that ticked off about waiting for the funeral. Nor do I know how well she knew the FF she was threatening. I DO know it was a pretty stupid move for her to make, and I think she’s learning that lesson as well. She’s lucky to just be facing a DC charge. These days, she could have been facing a terroristic threats charge, or telecommunications harassment, or both.

Come to work with me.

10:35 - Grove City
The funeral director just started the service with his usual comments about turning your cell phone down to vibrate, and using headlights & flashers on the way to the cemetery. He’ll repeat the light request after the service, but I’ll still have to remind someone. That’s life as a funeral escort.

I’ve been dong this for 6 1/2 years now, and over 3,500 funerals. It amazes me how many miles I’ve put in on a motorcycle: over 250,000 at last count, I think.

This is a fairly typical day; I have 2 services. One goes from Grove City to Sunset Cemetery at 10:30; the other is a downtown run from State Street to Green Lawn. Both will be down on surface streets, with no highway time. Many directors like to run on the highway, but I’d rather be on the surface. The directors don’t like the traffic lights, but I’d rather control traffic there than have someone weaving through the procession at 70 to our 40 or 45.

We’ve got 18 cars lined up, which is pretty average. Add in the hearse and lead car, which this funeral home always uses, and we have 20. It’s an easy route. Grove City is not busy, at least where we’re going, and the rest of the route is very quiet: Broadway to Southwest; turn left. Southwest to Big Run. Turn left, then a quick right to Holt. Holt to Alkire and left, all the way down to Galloway Road. Right on Galloway to West Broad, and a left turn into the cemetery.

The only place I’ll have any concerns on this one are turning from Broadway to Southwest, and from Galloway to West Broad. Broadway & Southwest is a 5×4 intersection, with a lot of truck traffic southbound on Broadway to Southwest. But most of the truckers who come through there drive that a lot, and know to watch for and yield to processions. Galloway to West Broad is a bit more difficult; the speed limit on W Broad is 45, and if we have a red light, traffic just doesn’t want to yield to us.

It’s in the low 30s today, so I’ve got most of my heavy winter gear on. We’ve got a lot of leeway in our winter uniforms. The company provides a First Gear Kilimanjaro 2 armored jacket, which is great. Very warm and dry. It includes a liner, but in the 3 years we’ve had them, it’s only been cold enough for me to use that liner twice, and that was in the low single digits and negative singles. We also get Carhartt Extreme coveralls, which keep us pretty toasty. In warmer weather, I’ll wear my regular uniform, with long johns and a sweatshirt layered under. But once it gets down in the low 30s and lower, I need to pay more attention to wind chill. It may be 30, but when you factor in a 50-60 MPH wind chill, I’m looking at 5 - 10 degrees felt temperature.

12:55 - State Street
We started dismissing the first service at 11:16 with “You Raise Me Up.” It took about half an hour to get everyone passed by the casket and into their cars. We ended up leaving around 11:47. It took us not quite half an hour to go just under 15 miles. Pretty average run. No cut-ins that I was aware of, and with only 21 cars total, it was easy for me to monitor the whole procession.

This run will be a little more complicated. The distance will be shorter - perhaps 5 miles - but it’s downtown streets, so it’s going to be busier. State Street to Grant and turn right to Rich; Rich to 3rd and turn left. 3rd to Whittier and right, then left on High to Greenlawn Avenue, and straight into the cemetery. The downtown turns will be busy, and it’s a little harder to control traffic. The airhorn tends to echo, and so it’s harder for people to figure out exactly where I am. But on overcast days like this, the lights tend to show up better.

This service turned out be much shorter than my first; we started dismissing at 13:21, and were ready to leave at 13:33. We could have left perhaps two or three minutes sooner, but the keys to the hearse went missing, keeping us from loading the body until they were found. The layout of this particular 19th-century funeral home forces them to park the hearse so that it blocks the doors to the chapel. At the end of the service, they pull the coach up 15 feet or so and load.

The intersection that makes this trip interesting is at 3d & Fulton, which has a red-light camera. The arrangement we have with Columbus Police is that if we enter the camera intersection on a green light, and it changes to red, we have to alert them to the time it happened, and the number of cars that went through. That way, when they process the photos and tape, they’ll know to not ticket the procession cars that may have been caught on tape. Other than that intersection, and some final construction work on the Greenlawn bridge, we had no real issues. It took us about 15 minutes to go just about 3.5 miles with 14 cars.

Just another day at the office.

A co-worker radioed me with this story.

Seems that he was blocking traffic at the bottom of an off-ramp, as his 35-car procession was coming off the freeway. He was blocking both lanes with his motorcycle when a lady pulled up on his left side and asked if he was OK.

He responded in the affirmative, and thanked her for her concern. Then she asked him why he was sitting in the middle of the road. She was apparently oblivious to the flashing red and yellow lights on the back and sides of his motorcycle, as well as the procession passing by 20 yards or so down the road. My colleague pointed the procession out to her, and she responded with something to the effect of “Oh, that’s what those things are.”

Sigh.

Today, that same co-worker was on an off-ramp when he managed to ride through a large spill of concrete that had apparently spilled from a truck. Not his day, I guess.

Also today, I was headed south on the same street involved in my previous story, blocking traffic for the procession to move through, when a white four-door sedan with out-of-state plates zipped past me on the right, then turned down a side street. There wasn’t much I could do except blow my whistle in frustration.

About five blocks later, I pulled up to a light just as a white four-door sedan with out-of-state plates arrived at the side street. I realized it was the same car. He started to pull out, and I blew the whistle and raised my hand to a “stop” signal. I pointed to him, and made the stop signal again, just so he was clear. He unbuckled his seat belt and stuck his head out of the sun roof to ask me, “Is that illegal or something?”

I replied, “As a matter of fact, it is. Check out ORC section 4511.451 if you’re curious, and have a nice day.” He looked perturbed as he sat back down. Oh well.