Assurance. In a word, that’s what brought me to a place I never expected to be, to a room with a window. My view, at Solie Funeral Home &Crematory in Everett, was of the cremation unit.
I came to ask a question: How can people know they are receiving their loved ones’ cremated remains?
How can they be certain that urns don’t contain cement powder and dirt, which is what investigators say happened in the ghastly Tri-State Crematory case in Georgia. There, operator Ray Brent Marsh is suspected of discarding at least 339 bodies he was paid to cremate. He faces multiple counts of theft by deception.
Assurance is what I found as I stood staring at the shiny metal equipment and talking with Solie co-owner Mark Lorentzen and managing director Mark Huntsman.
"In our profession, it is an honor to serve families. We have families ourselves," said Huntsman, a quiet man who runs Solie’s crematory on Colby Avenue.
For families in Washington, there is "absolutely no doubt," Lorentzen said. "We have an identification system. We have a process that stays with the remains all the way through."
At Solie, the system involves two numbers, first a file number and then, once a death certificate and authorizations are obtained, an assigned cremation number. "That stays with them," said Huntsman, describing a metal tag returned to the family inside the urn.
Installed in June, the Solie crematory is the newest of three facilities in Snohomish County. It has a small viewing room, from which a family may see the body of their loved one being placed in the cremation unit.
The others, according to Marie Sullivan of the state Department of Licensing, are Cypress Lawn Crematory on Everett Mall Way and Purdy &Walters with Cassidy on Pacific Avenue in Everett.
Other funeral homes contract with crematories outside the county, Lorentzen said, as do businesses offering cremation services such as American Memorial or the Neptune Society.
"It’s highly unlikely something like what happened in Georgia would happen here," Sullivan said. "The industry is so well regulated. We require that all crematories be licensed and all personnel be trained. In the Georgia case, for some reason, they were exempt from licensing because they only dealt with funeral homes and didn’t have public interaction. We don’t care.
"The University of Washington has a crematory for cadavers, and they have a license. There’s quite a bit of state regulation about how to deal with human remains, and it’s very specific," Sullivan added.
The state does annual inspections at random, Sullivan said. "We’re looking for practices and procedures, and looking to see that log books are accurate."
In Huntsman’s meticulous office, a logbook was open next to the crematory controls. I didn’t look at names, times or specifics, but was reassured that someone does.
Calling the Georgia case "bizarre," Lorentzen said, "I have no idea what this guy was thinking."
Huntsman, shaking his head, said, "It’s just deceit and fraud."
There have been cases of impropriety in the state, including a Spokane incident in the 1980s. "A funeral home had bodies that should have been in refrigeration," Sullivan said. "It wasn’t cremating them at a fast enough rate. They should have moved them to other facilities."
That resulted in the current regulations, imposed in 1985, she said.
Cremation, costing $395 to $1,500, according to Sullivan, is a growing trend. Statewide, 28 percent of families chose cremation for their loved ones in 1980. By 2000, that had increased to 57 percent. At Solie, Lorentzen said the increase is due to burial costs.
At the Everett office of the California-based Neptune Society, manager and funeral director Leone Lewis said cultural changes, land use issues and our mobile society are also factors. "Cremated remains are portable," she said.
With a master’s degree in social work, Lewis is well versed in bereavement rituals.
Early on, when people began turning away from traditional funerals, many wanted no frills, she said. "They left the ritual out. I think that’s a mistake. As human beings, ritual is how we move through life passages, weddings, births, deaths."
Ritual is personal. For some, the best goodbye is to scatter ashes in a national park. For others, it’s a church service or graveside ceremony. Whatever the choice, ritual has meaning.
It’s the desecration of those goodbyes that makes what happened in Georgia so horrific.
"This is an abomination, to have people go through this grief and to have to experience that all over again," Lewis said. "There is pain when someone makes an honest mistake, even a typo on a death certificate. This is deliberate deception.
"It’s such a violation of trust, I can’t for the life of me understand somebody who could do that."
Not here, though. Rest assured.
Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.
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