On Career Day, Kids Dig Mortuary Talk

There was an open casket in the classroom. There was a hearse on the front lawn. And it wasn’t Halloween.

It was Career Day at Fitz Intermediate School in Santa Ana. Sure, there were the obligatory doctor, police officer, politician’s aide and banker. There were also Lila Areval from McDougal Family Mortuary and Vic Larsen from Westminster Memorial Park and Mortuary. The casket and the hearse are the tools of their trade.

“For my job, you need a lot of patience,” Areval told the 7th- and 8th- graders Thursday.

Areval and Larsen came dressed for business. They looked like, well, undertakers. Areval wore a black pantsuit. Larsen, a former elementary school principal in Cypress, wore a dark blue pinstriped suit.

They spoke in soothing tones that wouldn’t wake the dead--who, by the way, are always “the deceased.”

The kids’ questions were less about how much you can make in the funeral business than about things you want to know if you’ve seen too many horror films.

Q: Do they ever come back alive?

A: Not yet.

Q: Has a grieving family member ever tried to commit suicide in front of the body?

A: No.

Q: Do you take out their blood?

A: Yes, we take it out of their arteries and fill them with formaldehyde.

Q: If the head is lost, what do you do?

A: Have a closed-casket service.

Q: Has the casket ever flipped over when you were trying to put it in the grave?

A: No.

Q: When you’re making a hole, do you find things inside, like dead animals?

A: Not so far.

Assistant principal Denise Clynes said school officials weren’t worried their charges might have nightmares. (Though watching another career day speaker, the guy from the Santa Ana Zoo, eat animal poo-poo that later turned out to be raisins might cause a few bad dreams--or indigestion.)

The hearse certainly attracted attention, and a couple of neighbors called the school wondering what was going on.

After listening to Areval and Larsen, some kids thought it might be interesting to work for a mortuary. “It would be cool,” said Araceli Navarro.

Most kids, though, had the same reaction as Lester Calero. “It’s too spooky,” he said.

He wants a nice easy job. He wants to be a professional football player.