She Hopes to Undertake Her Own Home
Last week, Tracy Claudio graduated from the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. She’s one step closer to fulfilling a decade-long goal: becoming a funeral director and embalmer.
“I’m generally a very upbeat person, and that’s why people find it hard to believe when I tell them I’m a mortician,” Claudio said.
“But I look at it like, I’m helping people heal. Everyone has to deal with death. I’m helping them through this difficult time.”
Originally from Boston, Claudio, 28, first received exposure to the funeral trade in high school, when she worked as a hairstylist for a local funeral parlor. She liked the work, and wanted to one day become a funeral director. After taking classes at a Boston mortuary academy, Claudio served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy, and also cared for elderly patients as a certified nurse’s assistant.
She graduated at the top of her class in mortuary school, where she was also class president.
Now, however, she must complete an apprenticeship at a funeral home before she can become a full-fledged funeral director. And she’s entering an industry that’s in great flux.
For the last 10 years, large funeral service corporations have been gobbling up independent funeral homes, inflating funeral service prices to cover mounting debt and launching aggressive marketing campaigns that, for the most part, have repelled consumers and strained the industry’s already fragile reputation, according to the Director, the official publication of the National Funeral Directors Assn.
Meanwhile, funeral merchandise discounters, low-cost funeral service companies and online casket and urn retailers have entered the industry, to vie for business with traditional funeral homes.
Baby boomers, who are showing distinct preferences for nontraditional ceremonies and “express funerals” (industry slang for ceremony-less cremations) are hurting funeral homes’ bottom lines, too, since caskets (which generally are sold at a 200% to 250% markup) account for nearly 50% of funeral service charges, and viewing room and chapel fees total about 18% of the total.
These factors have caused many in the industry to broaden their offerings to the public to stay afloat.
A growing number are offering personalized services (such as New Orleans jazz funerals), “theme” wakes, bereavement counseling, family archiving and even memorial Web sites.
Adding to the industry’s turbulence is a dire employee shortage that will become more evident over the next few years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employed mortuary workers, whose average age is 55, are starting to retire. And enrollment in the nation’s 52 mortuary programs has declined. Meanwhile, industry profit margins, which have been falling for two decades, now hover at about 10%, and median compensation for funeral directors--about $35,000 annually--remains less than enticing.
“If [those entering the profession] think they will make a lot of money in this field, they are sadly mistaken,” said David Walkinshaw, owner of Arlington, Mass.-based Saville & Grannan and a spokesman for the NFDA. “You don’t get rich in the funeral business.”
For guidance about her career, Claudio consulted Thomas Lynch, a well-known Milford, Mich.-based funeral director, and the author of “The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade” (Penguin, 1998) and “Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000). Other industry professionals offered Claudio tips, too.
“I really want to get my license as fast as I can,” Claudio said. “I want to start my own business but realize I need to develop a reputation.”
She said she was considering finding a partner for her first venture. She added that she intends to move back East, where the cremation rate is lower, and larger percentages of families opt for formal funeral services.
“Destination” states with highly mobile populations, including Florida, Hawaii, Nevada and the West Coast states, have the highest cremation rates in the country--more than twice the national average of about 21%.
Lynch and Claudio discussed the industry’s challenges.
Lynch reassured her that, despite the challenges, there will be plenty of opportunities for her to succeed as a funeral director.
“You’ll have no trouble finding work,” Lynch said. “There’s a great demand for funeral directors right now.”
But Walkinshaw suggested that newly graduated funeral directors like Claudio take business courses and, when ready, draft “strong business plans” before they consider running funeral homes, which can cost $500,000 to $1 million, prices untenable for most industry newcomers.
Lisa Baue, a funeral director for 22 years, and the owner of four funeral homes in St. Louis, said that new funeral directors like Claudio should work for several years as funeral home employees, and observe the businesses, before trying to operate their own facilities.
“There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” she said. “But realistically, get some management experience first. Because if you’re looking for financing, the lending institutions are going to look for that experience. Get the wherewithal and the knowledge.”
Claudio and others new to the field also should seek mentors, funeral directors with decades of experience, who can answer their questions and advise them about industry trends and prospective career paths, said NFDA President John Carmon, a Hartford, Conn.-based funeral director with 30 years experience. They also should keep up-to-date with industry knowledge and trends through continuing education, Lynch said.
And Claudio’s move East may not shield her from the changes in the industry. Experts warned that she will have to accept the fact that, there, too, cremation eventually may become prevalent.
“It’s not a phenomenon that you can go somewhere and run away from,” Carmon said. “All the statistics indicate that.”
Her goal, then, will be to alert families that, even if they opt for cremation, they can hold services for deceased loved ones, said Lynch.
A growing number of women--many of whom are embarking on second or third careers--are, like Claudio, perceiving funeral directing as a way to serve others while engaging in entrepreneurship, Carmon said.
Experts say that bereaved families are welcoming women’s presence at the mortuaries. Some families are specifically requesting female funeral directors to console them and handle their loved ones’ services after what Baue calls “special death” situations: homicides, suicides and infant deaths.
Added Lynch: “I think women can do not only as good a job as men, but have abilities that men have to work at to get by. There are no so-called glass ceilings here.”
During his session with Claudio, Lynch discussed the professional lifestyle that Claudio was about to take on.
Funeral directors work long, unpredictable hours, and are frequently called upon to console grieving individuals who have suffered losses of loved ones.
“It’s about always being available, having every intimacy interrupted by a death in someone else’s family,” Lynch said.
“The attrition rate in our business is high. There may be times when you wish you might be other places than on the way to a hospital or to family’s home.”
Claudio’s duties will be many. She’ll transport deceased from their deathbeds to the mortuary, offer emotional support to the grieving, prepare bodies in accordance with survivors’ wishes and the law, arrange funeral ceremonies, and help family members with death certificate filings and legal paperwork.
She’ll need to have composure, tact, excellent communication skills, and “an ability to help people create meaningful experiences at this worst moment in their lives. To provide order for them in chaos,” Carmon said.
What will make the job worthwhile will be the expressions of gratitude from the families whom she’ll assist, Lynch said.
Claudio must take care of herself emotionally and physically, for her work will be extremely stressful, funeral industry experts agreed.
“To do this day in, day out, requires special skill sets,” Carmon said.
“You certainly learn you’ve got to have balance in your life. There aren’t many professions that can take as much out of you.”
“Everyone comes out of school with big dreams,” Baue said. “Be patient. Make sure you find a [work] environment that matches your needs. Make sure you find a home that’s suitable to work for.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Time for a Change
* Name: Tracy Claudio
* Occupation: Recent mortuary academy graduate
* Desired occupation: Funeral director/embalmer
* Quote: “I am very happy with the field I chose because I can be of such help to the families who need me. I am just your ordinary young woman, not at all weird or strange, as most people think of people in this business.”
Meet the Coach
Thomas Lynch is a Milford, Mich.-based funeral director and author of “The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade” (Penguin, 1998), which won an American Book Award and was nominated for a National Book Award; and “Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000).
