Several years ago, when I was training a co-worker, we got caught up in an interesting situation. We knew through some connections that the sheriff’s office was planning on arresting, or at least detaining, the brother of the deceased person we were escorting.

The sheriff’s office asked us to take a particular route, so they could run a traffic stop on the limo where the brother was riding. We declined to take that route, due to safety considerations (they wanted to do a felony traffic stop in the middle of a 4-lane freeway), but gave them a safer, lower-traffic route.

The SO also made contact with the funeral home, had plain-clothes deputies in the service at the funeral home, and driving in the procession. It was all done very carefully, and as respectfully as possible. In the end, deputies waited until after the graveside service was completed, and surrounded their target with several deputies, and he was taken into custody very quietly.

Contrast that with what happened Nov. 15th in Wilmington, North Carolina. New Hanover County Sheriff’s deputies had a warrant to serve, on the son of the deceased. The plain-clothes deputies decided to execute that arrest warrant at the end of the funeral, as the son was loading his father’s casket into the hearse.

In the ensuing pandemonium, the son, Gladwyn Taft Russ III, was Tased, and his sister alleges that deputies pointed their weapons at nearby family members and threatened to shoot them.

Russ had previously agreed to surrender on a variety of charges, but had failed to do so on at least 2 occasions, so deputies felt the funeral was the best time to take him into custody.

Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Ed McMahon apologized for his agency’s part in the way things turned out, saying, “It was never my intention to create any more problems for the family, and I am truly sorry and apologize for that. I feel like we should have waited till after the cemetery.”

Actually, Grady Hunter put every nail in his coffin. He built it himself - and won a blue ribbon at the North Carolina State Fair for his woodworking skill.

Hunter, 75, was a bricklayer until his joints wore out. Then he became a homebuilder. He says he’s never lived in a house he didn’t build, and he didn’t want to be laid to rest in someone else’s work, either.

He used walnut for the box, and trimmed it in hard-rock maple and Brazilian Cherry. I saw that done a few times locally. I know there are some Amish craftsmen in the area who can make one pretty quickly; a friend of mine did that for her husband.

I think this is a pretty neat idea, myself, especially when he did it partially out of consideration for his kids. Not having to pick out the casket is good. Being able to say your dad built his own casket is even better.

The Cornelius, North Carolina Planning Board wants a funeral home to build a buffer behind their proposed building, so traffic on nearby I-70 won’t see the back of the building. Here’s what’s there now, if Google Street View has the address right:

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The planning board doesn’t want signage that’s viewable from the freeway, either, nor do they want drivers to be able to see the hearses parked there.

The funeral home is wanting to renovate a 30-year-old structure that’s currently not in use, and provide a few more jobs, and a valuable service to the community, and all vice chairman John Hettwer can come up with is

“I’m disappointed that we’ll be left with a less-than-desirable structure many years into the future.”

How disappointing. It’s a funeral home. Death is a fact of life. Why try to hide the facility? That only adds to the stigma surrounding funeral homes. This brings to mind the Gladstone quote:

Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.

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.

• Cheryl Runner Kittle has pleaded guilty to embezzling over $35,000 from pre-need contracts held by an Elkins, WV funeral home. She’s agreed to restitution, but further sentencing awaits.
• The Suburban Journals in Town and Country, MO has a nice piece talking about the effects of weather on funerals. Here in Central Ohio, we won’t run in a Level 3 Snow Emergency, and usually discourage running in Level 2. During the snowstorm 2 weeks ago, something like 15 funerals were canceled due to the weather.
• A 32-year-old soldier based in Colorado has been charged with charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle and driving left of center out of a crash involving a funeral procession in Ash, NC. David Deming had just graduated from sniper school at Fort Bragg and was driving home to Colorado when, as he was passing a funeral procession, he looked down to pick up a soft drink and swerved left of center. His truck struck two limousines and another vehicle, killing 9-year-old Cheyenne Thomas and injuring 13 others.
• Mourners in Gastonia, NC were shocked to see two cars staged for a funeral procession erupt in flames, just before the procession departed. One car belonged to the officiating pastor, but police think the fires were covering up evidence of theft from both cars. A man was seen running from the scene and getting into a car driven by a woman, but police have no further information.
• A Gwinnett County, GA funeral home is pursuing civil charges against someone who opened a functioning crematory retort, recorded over 30 seconds of video of the burning body, and posted the video to YouTube. Police say there’s no statute against posting the video, but I suspect the people recording the video were trespassing in the funeral home when they entered the crematory room. Such areas are typically marked as restricted areas, or at least located out of the main public areas, making it unlikely someone just “happened” to walk in to the room. For that matter, many newer retorts use automated doors of some sort, making it difficult to just throw the door open.

See you next week.