Supportive Senators & Moviestar Morticians | 4M #27

Welcome to the twenty-seventh edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

Major mortician movie in the making (a different kind of 4M)

In the last few months, our 4M has covered a (happily) surprising number of upcoming productions on the topic of deathcare. We believe it’s beyond time for you amazing folks to get the positive attention you deserve. Well, we’ve just heard that a major motion picture filming in New Orleans is going to tell the story of a deathcare hero from Mississippi.

“The Burial” will tell the true story of late Biloxi funeral home owner Jerry O’Keefe, who in the 90s “set out to save his family’s funeral business from a corporate behemoth, making the decision to sue one of his competitors over a handshake deal gone awry.” O’Keefe is played by Tommy Lee Jones, while Jamie Foxx both serves as co-producer and plays the “over-the-top” attorney for the “large Canadian funeral company.” (Spoiler alert: O’Keefe was awarded $500 million in the lawsuit.)

The film will be released by Amazon late this year or early in 2023.

Minnesota bill hopes to help with deathcare worker shortages

Deathcare professionals struggling with staffing in Minnesota have alerted their state representative of the issues — and he’s got their back. Rep. John Huot is sponsoring a bill that, if passed, would “allow unlicensed individuals operating under the supervision of a licensed mortician or funeral director” to perform removals. Supporting his effort is the fact that the restriction requiring licensed directors to transport or remove bodies was lifted temporarily during the COVID-19 state of emergency with no problems. 

Ohio bill won’t seek to settle deathcare feud

A bill that has passed the Ohio Senate seeks to make “over a dozen” changes to funeral and burial laws, including:

• Increasing fees to reactivate an embalmer’s or director’s license,
• Simplifying recordkeeping requirements when closing business or moving locations, and
• Establishing a process for families to collect money if a preneed customer doesn’t have the funeral at the preneed facility.

What’s NOT included in the bill, though, is a proposal to equalize the percentage of preneed funds held in trust required by both funeral homes and cemeteries. As of now, Ohio funeral homes are required to hold 90% in trust, but cemeteries only hold 30%. The trust issue was removed from the bill after no middle ground was found in negotiations among funeral home owners and cemeterians.

Criminal deceit over cremains

A daughter is suing a Queens, New York funeral home for giving her mother’s cremains to the deceased’s sister — who told the funeral home she was the daughter. The daughter says she became suspicious when no one from the funeral home called her about her mothers cremains, although she was the one who “was told ‘that only she would receive the death certificate and decedent’s ashes because she signed the contract.’” The daughter alleges that the funeral home should have checked the ID of the person to whom they gave the cremains.

ICYMI: Two American Idol contestants work in deathcare

American Idol contestants come from all over the country and from a variety of backgrounds, but when they work in funeral homes and sing on the side, it makes the news. According to ET Canada, Emily Faith and Donavan Diaz, who auditioned for Idol’s 20th season, work in funeral homes. Faith, 20, works in her family’s business and Diaz, also 20, is a funeral director and embalmer. 

Keeping up with the Bernards

If you’re keeping up with the ongoing drama of the Bernards, the Netflix funeral home family from Memphis, Tennessee, you’ll remember that they were facing civil lawsuits for allegedly mixing up the cremains of two family’s loved ones. Last week the attorney for R. Bernard Funeral Services announced that the funeral home was ordered to pay $7,475 in civil penalties and investigation costs to settle the claim. 

The State of Mississippi found R. Bernard’s guilty of unprofessional conduct “due to the metal tag used to identify bodies in the cremation process differing from the handwritten label.” The Bernards’ attorney said he understood the families’ concern, saying, “The concept of finding a name [other than that of the deceased, in the cremains container] was unprofessional…and that’s the basis in which the fine occurred not that those parties got the wrong cremations.”

FAKE NEWS!!!!!

Fake news, misinformation, opposing viewpoints, call it whatever you want- it’s everywhere! In fact, we’ve even heard people say, “live streaming funeral services is so difficult!”

Well well well, Get some mustard and a little bit of bread, cause that’s bologna!

MemoryShare makes it simple for your funeral home to live stream, save, and get the most out of every service. The app makes it super easy, and you can record your full service with the touch of a button. Also, by sharing these streams with your community, you showcase your excellent service and create name recognition with the viewers.

Two things funeral homes need in 2022 are visibility and increased call volume. MemoryShare provides both of these things as well as a team of REAL people you can talk to if you ever run into trouble.

Don’t believe the lies! Learn more about MemoryShare today!