The Way They Were : Videotape tributes at the funerals of departed loved ones keep memories of happier times alive.

Arthur (Bud) Brown was 79 years old when he died, but Florence Brown remembers her husband as a younger man--not the man who lay in the casket but the one in the videotape playing on a TV screen behind it.

There he was, flanked by three friends as he sat proudly in the 1929 Chevy roadster he used to court his wife. Cut to a 1952 photo, the Browns at a party thrown by merchants on Garland Avenue. In one from the mid-1970s, Brown is at the wheel of the motor home that took the couple on scenic vacations.

The six-minute video played at Brown’s funeral in July interspersed family snapshots with stills of majestic Northwest sunsets, lakes and mountains, all to the tune of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” his favorite gospel song.

“We thought it was wonderful,” said Florence Brown. “So many of the people that were there that I have seen and talked to since couldn’t just get over the beauty of the whole thing. I had several say it was so beautiful that they almost clapped for approval. They just thought it added a lot to the funeral.”

Inspired by JFK Tribute

The “Tribute” video is the brainchild of Merrill Womach, founder and president of National Music Service, a Spokane company that has been providing recorded music and sound systems to funeral homes and mausoleums since 1958.

“I first thought about it when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I looked at all the things that were done for him, and rightfully so,” Womach said.

“And I thought to myself, ‘Why can’t a tribute be paid to us normal peons rather than just reserved for heads of state? Do not our families love us as much as JFK was loved?’ I think everybody who’s lived deserves a memorialization or a tribute paid to their life, no matter whether they were a president or a king or a brick layer or a garbage collector.”

The idea got sidetracked until Womach’s mother died 3 1/2 years ago. He remembered seeing her in a nursing home in her last three months, haggard and weakened from several strokes. Every time he thought of his mother, it was this somber scene. Then last year, he gathered some old family album pictures of her cheerful, spirited and smiling. The pictures were reproduced onto videotape.

“Now when I think of my mother, you know what comes to my mind? Instantly it’s that picture on the video.”

Several thousand Tribute videos have been sold in 17 states, most through funeral homes, since they were introduced in April. The videos, which can be played on a standard VHS recorder, cost an average $100 to $125. The music comes from National Music’s 2,500-title library and is recorded with the company’s proprietary process.

Acquaintances of actress Amanda Blake--Miss Kitty in the TV series “Gunsmoke”--bought a Tribute video that was played on a huge TV monitor at her Aug. 24 memorial service in Sacramento.

Will Double Staff

“What we’re trying to do is to celebrate the life of the individual. We resurrect a memory,” said Womach, who almost died in a Thanksgiving, 1961, plane crash and has had a Tribute produced of himself.

Partly because of the soaring demand for its videos, National Music plans to double its staff of 100 next year.

“It’s a very meaningful way to express a person’s life and how he lived it,” said Larry Rayburn, a funeral director at Riplinger Funeral Home, where Tribute tapes have been played at about 15 funerals, including Brown’s.

“I personally think funeral services are something people do not like to go to,” Rayburn said. “This is a way . . . to notice that a death has occurred but also to celebrate a person’s life.”

In Warren, Mich., the family of a 5-year-old girl killed in a car accident ordered a Tribute video after her funeral. Don Temrowski, director of D. S. Temrowski Funeral Home, said the death was especially traumatic because the girl died in her stepfather’s arms and her body was grossly disfigured.

After viewing the videotape, the girl’s mother remarked, “My baby will live on continually,” Temrowski said.

Cathy Robertson of Sandpoint, Ida., who works in a funeral home, ordered a video of her parents, who died within three months of each other.

“It has been five years since they passed away and it’s almost like having them back for those few minutes,” she wrote to Womach. “I have watched my 11-year-old daughter watch it over and over.

“What a beautiful and lasting remembrance to pass on to the grandchildren, especially the younger one when the memories are starting to fade. Yes, we have picture albums, but there is something very different about the video.”