Mortuaries Cash In on Discount Fervor : Death: Less costly funeral services are finding wide appeal.

You can’t cheat death, but you can get a discount.

That’s the message from a small but growing number of cut-rate funeral homes whose low-cost offerings include a ride to the cemetery in a van instead of a hearse, burial in a $275 cardboard casket and cremation with a $25 urn.

“We focus on their needs, not material needs,” said Stephen R. Lohrmann, 35, who recently opened Cremation and Funeral Alternatives (CAFA) in a gray-shingled house east of Towson.

The funeral home, which doubles as Lohrmann’s home, has two viewing rooms that can hold about 40 people.

“It’s a myth you have to spend a lot of money,” Lohrmann said. “There should be more emphasis on bereavement.”

The move toward discount funerals is accelerating in the United States, industry spokesmen say. “It’s something that hasn’t taken off before. We’re seeing more of it in the ‘90s,” said Laura Glawe, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Assn.

“People are becoming better consumers all the way around,” said Melanie Wilhelm Wagoner, proprietor of Advent Memorial Services in Annapolis. She formerly owned a traditional funeral home, but opened a new one in an economical business park last year when she realized the industry was heading toward smaller, lower-cost operations.

Veteran funeral director Ed Sagel saw a need, too. He started his business, Ed Sagel Funeral Direction, in a shopping center a year ago after reading about affordable funeral alternatives in a magazine.

“The typical funeral home dictates what kind of funeral service you can have,” he said. “It’s either their way or the highway.”

The owners of discount funeral businesses are quick to argue that their lower prices do not diminish the dignity of death. They say they’re simply providing the bereaved with cost-cutting options.

George F. Miller, 61, found Lohrmann’s funeral ad in the phone book after his wife, Jane, died in February at age 72. “It had a warmth,” he said.

Miller said he chose cremation because he is “open to new ideas.” The $763 cost also was a factor. “It was so reasonable you couldn’t argue with it.”

Nationally, the average cost of a funeral is $4,077, which includes a casket but not cemetery expenses, according to Glawe of the National Funeral Directors Assn.