Cemetery Has 2-for-1 Deals, Egg Hunts, Fernando the Llama : Illinois Undertaker Takes a Lively Approach to Death

The heat was brutal by the time 77-year-old Joe Stanton hit the cemetery drive, raced past Marshall and Edith Zook--may they rest in peace--trotted by Fernando the Llama’s stall, slipped by some skittish deer and peacocks and puffed toward the eternal flame at the finish line of the annual “Heaven Can Wait” 10k run.

“They told me if I get buried this week I get a 20% discount,” said Stanton, sweat drenching his official race T-shirt, with the picture of a winged running shoe poking through a pearly gate. He was only partly joking.

Larry Anspach, the 36-year-old race promoter, offers everything from 2-for-1 sales to Easter egg hunts and estate planning lectures at his Cedar Park Cemetery and Funeral Home, a resting place just south of Chicago that makes Forest Lawn look like . . . well, like a cemetery.

Waterfalls, Squawking Macaws

“One call solves it all” is the slogan of the 100-acre park, which has 31,000 graves and room for another 50,000 or so. There is a chapel with fruit-bearing tropical shrubs, an electrically powered waterfall and a squawking macaw in the mortuary lobby, herds of wandering animals, a horse named Elegant Sam that leads the funeral processions and, of course, Fernando the Llama, who is on hand strictly for petting purposes.

Customers with a penchant for planning can buy their plots and ceremonies years ahead of time, or arrange to have their remains blasted into space (“The ultimate undisturbed rest,” according to brochures) when such a service becomes available.

In an industry long somber and hidebound, Anspach comes on with all the subtlety of a whoopee cushion.

“Our first concern is for the living--we can’t do anything more for the deceased,” he says.

Anspach has vowed that he will try anything at least once. There was the time, for example, when he ran a discount campaign modeled on one he had seen at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store. He filled his office with balloons and then let customers pop one. Inside were coupons ranging from $25 to $100 off per headstone.

Balloon Deal a Bust

A variation of that deal, however, flopped. He stuffed cards good for a 2-for-1 grave purchase deal into 1,000 helium balloons and then released them into the air. Unfortunately, the prevailing winds blew the promotion over nearby Lake Michigan.

“Larry is making a sincere attempt to demystify an industry which few people care to know about,” said Stephen L. Morgan, executive vice president of the 2,500-member American Cemetery Assn. “ . . . Any number of cemeteries are doing some of the things that Larry does, but I don’t know of anyone who puts it all together like Larry does.”

Some people, of course, are mortified by Anspach’s lively approach to death.

“I come a hundred miles to visit a damn grave and you have a damn running match,” growled one furious mourner who showed up just before race time the other day. As loudspeakers blared the theme from “Chariots of Fire,” the man stomped past the cordon of ropes and orange traffic pylons marked “funeral” that lined part of the race route.

Anspach’s most serious opposition is from the Illinois Funeral Director’s Assn., which has been engaged in a battle with him since 1983 when, following a practice long in place in California and many other states, he became Illinois’ first cemetery operator to open a mortuary on the premises.

Undertaker Sues Group

The morticians’ group tried to block some of Anspach’s innovations and was sued by the showman undertaker for $25 million. The suit, in which Anspach has been joined by a handful of other cemetery owners, is pending in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Robert Ninker, executive director of the Illinois Funeral Director’s Assn., dismissed Anspach as a “clown” who thrives on stunt-generated publicity. “If you guys keep giving him the press, he’ll keep doing it,” Ninker said. “He’s on an ego trip.”

Ninker also suggested that Anspach had used his notoriety to jack up the value of the 63-year-old family-run business before selling it to an Indianapolis-based cemetery and mortuary chain last December. Anspach denied the charge, noting that the chain not only kept him as manager at Cedar Park but consults him on promotions for some of its other facilities.

He certainly has a wide repertoire of gimmicks to impart. In addition to the Cedar Park Easter egg hunt, there’s a pumpkin hunt and decorating contest for children at Halloween and a Christmas Santa Claus who lures youngsters by the thousands. For adults, there are photography and ice sculpture contests as well as classes in photography, landscaping and estate planning. Women’s groups or school classes come by two or three times a week for guided tram tours.

The cemetery also hosts an occasional wedding. One unfortunate fellow went from groom to tomb in six months, getting married in the Cedar Park gazebo and then being buried nearby after suffering a heart attack not long after.

Pays for Officers’ Funerals

Anspach pays funeral costs for policemen and firemen killed in the line of duty as well as for victims of drunk drivers. At one time he also provided free interment for gunshot victims, but put an end to the offer after discovering that nearby Chicago provided too many takers.

If anything, he seems proudest of the deer, ducks, swans, peacocks and even an old turkey that roam the grounds freely, blocked from escaping into the surrounding neighborhoods only by a cattle guard that crosses the cemetery’s front gate. He also hand-feeds Charlie, the mortuary macaw, and has taught the bird tricks to distract funeral-goers from their grief. Charlie’s favorite, however, is lying on his back and playing dead. So far, the bird’s vocabulary is limited but, Anspach says: “We’re afraid someday during a service he’s going to say something like ‘Sam was a good man.’ ”

Anspach’s best-known promotion is the 10k run, which has attracted hundreds and sometimes thousands of Chicago-area runners since the first race seven years ago.

This year’s participants seemed more taken aback by the near-100-degree heat than the surroundings. Tim Warneke, 25, a hospital therapist who won the race, said he was a little startled, but also thrilled, when three deer scooted across his path during the contest.

“It’s a great idea to open up the place and come here for life instead of death and negative things,” Warneke said. “That last mile, though, I started to think they might as well just bury me here.”