Funerals Are Finding a Place in Cyberspace

The Internet has been touted as a tool to make life easier. Miles Weiss is hoping it will do the same for death.

Weiss is launching https://www.funeraltribute.com, a Web site where grieving families can post a range of information after the loved one’s death. The aim is to relieve mourning families of the task of fielding phone calls from friends and relatives who want to find out about the funeral arrangements and offer their condolences.

That’s a service that Weiss wishes were available Jan. 19, when his wife, Dianne, died unexpectedly as a result of complications from cosmetic surgery. He found himself trying to console his 17-year-old twins and 5-year-old son, while the phone seemed to ring off the hook.

“It was an awful nightmare,” said Weiss, of Parkland, Fla. “There was no one to get the information out there, to give directions.”

So he decided to put some of the information being requested by callers on the Web site he uses for his business, Sharp-Nework Inc., a food industry employment service. That became the inspiration for the new venture.

In addition to funeral time and place, the site will offer directions and online maps, photographs and places to buy flowers. Weiss also hopes to add links to charities for direct, online donations.

But Weiss wants the Web site to serve as more than an online notice board. The service also will provide a place for people to post tributes to the deceased--to celebrate the person’s life by sharing their memories and feelings.

With tributes staying on the site for 45 days, those who can’t get to the funeral will have a way to share their grief, Weiss said.

After the 45 days and for an extra fee, the tributes and memories can be bound into a hard copy and sent to the family.

Weiss plans to market the service to funeral homes. “Our plan is to act as an outsourcer for the funeral home,” Weiss said. “We’ll actually be putting money into their pockets. It will be cheaper than doing it themselves.”

Under his business plan, he will split the fee paid by the deceased’s family--estimated at about $200 to $250--with the funeral establishments handling the arrangements.

The idea of tapping into the Internet as a way to share grief is not new. Web sites offering tributes and condolences seemed as spontaneous as tears when Princess Diana died and TWA Flight 800 blew up and plunged into the Atlantic.

Others have tried to market online obituaries, but those in the so-called death-care field said the ventures floated off into cyberspace, a casualty of the notoriously computer-phobic industry, said Kelly Smith, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Assn., which has 15,000 members.

However, with Internet use exploding and some 30 million American households expected to be connected this year, that soon may change.

Bill Barrett, spokesman for Service Corp., the world’s largest funeral service organization, with about with 3,442 funeral homes, 433 cemeteries and 191 crematories, said his company is studying the possibility of online products.

“There’s a huge opportunity in the future for the use of the Internet,” he said.

“The biggest thing is to get the word out to people,” said Jack Springer, spokesman for the Cremation Assn. of North America, which represents 1,500 funeral homes and crematoriums.

“It’s a question of a new type of memorial that will slowly catch on.”