Modesto Body Bag Firms Are Busy

Justin Turrentine is doing sobering work these days--pounding rivets to secure straps on body bags that could very well be headed toward the Persian Gulf soon.

“I’ve got eight months till I turn 18,” said Turrentine, an employee of California Professional Manufacturing, a maker of supplies for coroners, hospitals and law enforcement agencies in Modesto. “I hope it’s over by then. I kind of wish it hadn’t come this far.”

By “it,” of course, Turrentine was referring to war in the Persian Gulf, which began Wednesday with a U.S.-led air attack on Iraq and Kuwait. A junior at Davis High School, Turrentine is too young to have memories of the Vietnam War, when “body bag” became the favored term for the pouches used to store the remains of U.S. soldiers.

The sad fact is that the Defense Department began stocking up on the heavy-duty vinyl sacks weeks before any shots were fired or bombs dropped. Oddly, two of the small number of body bag manufacturers in the United States happen to be housed in Modesto, a farming town east of San Francisco in the Central Valley.

Across town, California Professional Manufacturing’s larger rival, Central Valley Professional Service, has begun producing bags around the clock to fill a Defense Department order for about 20,000 bags. A contract was signed on Jan. 4, but General Manager Bob Ward said negotiations with the Defense Department began just before Christmas. So far, 6,000 have been trucked to a military depot in nearby Lathrop.

“We have no idea where these bags are going,” said Ward, a former deputy coroner in Stanislaus County who served as a medic in World War II and Korea. He acknowledged, however, that a logical assumption would be that the bags are intended for the Persian Gulf.

The Defense Department contract is by far the biggest order that Central Valley Professional Service has ever had, Ward said. Last year, the company sold about 45,000 pouches to mortuaries, firefighters, medical examiners, coroners, hospitals and companies and communities preparing for disasters. An order for 1,000 is normally viewed as quite large.

“My partner (owner Lee Vaughn, who fought in Vietnam) and I do this with mixed emotions,” Ward said. “Certainly, it’s nice to have this kind of business. But we could survive without it. Like I told the government, pray you don’t have to use them. . . . I’d rather buy them back than use them for our boys.”