Satisfaction in serving those in grief
Mortuary students say their work isn't macabre, it's rewarding
By Robert Carroll, Globe Correspondent | May 4, 2006
Set
back in an industrial park within earshot of Route 1 traffic, the
two-story brick box in Norwood offers little clue to what lies within.
Only small white letters on a windowless black front door tell a
visitor that this is a place where death defines the mission.
Inside are antique embalming tables, centuries-old wooden caskets -- and instruction in the fine art of embalming.
Funeral
Institute of the Northeast Mortuary College is one of only two mortuary
schools in the state, and one of just 54 in the United States. While
each spring other area colleges turn out the doctors, lawyers, and
teachers of the future, FINE graduates nearly 60 of tomorrow's licensed
funeral directors. Tuition is $30,000 a year and courses range from
basic business practices to grief psychology, restorative art to body
preservation.
Former high school chemistry teacher
Laurence Magner deftly guides students through the embalming process.
In his 12-desk classroom, just down the hall from the funeral museum
room, Magner, 60, stresses the need to read each body correctly. ''They
need to know how to handle a body if it's fat, skinny, young or old,"
he says. ''Every body decomposes at a different rate. You want to do
your best to preserve it for viewing."
Students must learn
this chemistry in order to become licensed directors, he said. And each
year thousands do. According to the US Department of Labor, in 2004
there were approximately 30,000 licensed funeral directors earning
annual salaries of $26,000 to $85,000, depending on experience. That
year, just over 31,000 funeral homes were in business coast to coast.
At
FINE, cofounders Louis Misantone and Lyn Prendergast oversee a faculty
of 18. Misantone and Prendergast, who are married, opened the institute
in Westwood 10 years ago, with their friends Bill and Joanne Sperr.
That first semester saw a class of seven students. In 2004 they moved
the school to its current 15-room site at 150 Kerry Place in Norwood.
''It's come a long way," said the gregarious Misantone. ''We knew there was a need and we filled it."
While
some may think morticians dress only in black to match a gloomy
personality, nothing, according to one FINE graduate, could be further
from the truth.
''When I was a kid I delivered flowers for
a florist in my town," said Glenn Burlamachi, who five years ago left
his lucrative position as co-owner of an electrical contractor business
to attend FINE in pursuit of a ''life-long dream" of being a funeral
director. ''My favorite deliveries were always to funeral homes. I
can't explain it. There was always an allure there. I always wanted to
know what went on inside a funeral home."
Upon graduating
from FINE a year ago at age 40, he purchased the MacRae-Tunnicliffe
Funeral Home in Concord. ''Now I look forward to work every day. It's
not depressing," he said. ''What we do is very important and very
rewarding."
''People come in our front door at the lowest
point in their lives," he said. ''Death brings out the function and
dysfunction in every family. My job is to make a tough process easier
for the family. If I've done that then I've done my job. I've never
been so satisfied."
In order to graduate, students must
help local funeral directors through at least 10 funerals. The students
assist with the embalming, work with grieving families and even make
sure the casket and flowers are perfectly positioned.
''We don't send you out until you are
prepared to handle everything there is to handle in a funeral," said
Prendergast, proudly pointing out that in 2004 over 95 percent of the
FINE students passed the National Board Examination. ''It takes a
special person to comprehend all that there is in this field."
It
is also a job that many seek, according to Rockland funeral home owner
Bob Biggins, who is the president of the National Funeral Directors
Association, based in Wisconsin. ''Enrollment at mortuary colleges is
strong," he said. ''Many people see becoming a funeral director as a
second career."
FINE's students come from all walks of
life to learn the skills of embalming, restoring the body to its
pre-death form, and the art of reconstructing a face.
That
topic is taught in a brightly lit white room near the back of the
school, where students are given a photograph, a large ball of wax on a
stand, and carving utensils. Misantone said this process is critical
for directors who will inevitably have to work on a body damaged by
disease or trauma.
The teaching also reveals a quirk of human nature.
''What
we've found is that no matter how many times the student looks at the
picture they tend to make the wax in their own image," Misantone said.
''You can figure why. Whose face have we seen more than our own?"
Prendergast,
like her staff and the students, is fully aware of the stigma carried
by funeral directors. Too often, she said, the public looks at them as
morose people.
''Most are very happy people," she says, ''with personalities and normal lives."
Like
Lynn Roberts Reed, who one night a week drives nearly four hours from
her home 60 miles north of Portland, Maine, to Norwood to attend
classes. The 44-year-old funeral home owner is within a semester of
earning an associate's degree in mortuary science.
''I
grew up in a family that ran a funeral business," she said. ''That
doesn't mean I was different. Like all my friends, I hated horror
movies and thought Dracula slept in every coffin. But once it's all
explained to you, you understand that death is part of life."
''We're
not these moody and spooky people. We're real people with a passion for
making it easier on those going through the worst time in their lives.
It's so rewarding to help someone out when they need it
most."
© Copyright
2006 The New York Times Company
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