In tough times, 2nd look at burials for poor

[April 27, 2009]  EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) -- The slender figure of Guy Finch, zipped up in a body bag after the 83-year-old died alone in his Minneapolis apartment, was brought to funeral director Todd Maisch one Saturday last month.

As part of a program that arranges burial for those who die poor, Maisch bathed Finch's body, dressed it in donated khaki slacks, white dress shirt and plaid sports coat, and placed it in a simple wooden casket. Two days later, he rode with the casket on its 12-mile journey to a cemetery, then helped carry it to a waiting grave.

For many years, funeral directors across Minnesota have buried people with no known relatives, like Finch, while also working with families who can't afford funeral expenses for a loved one. But now state lawmakers are looking at replacing burial with cheaper cremation, a switch that the Association of Minnesota Counties estimates could save counties up to $2 million a year.

"Just because of how the world has changed, burials have changed," said Jim Mulder, the association's executive director. Minnesota's law providing traditional burials for the indigent existed long before cremation became widely accepted, he said.

"The use of crematoriums has increased tremendously. This will put us more in tune with the fundamental mores that we all have in dealing with death," Mulder said.

Nationwide, cremation is used in a little more than a third of all deaths, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. The rate has been growing since the 1960s, and in Minnesota it's slightly higher at 42 percent.

Most states still have laws that instruct counties to provide traditional burials for indigents when no family members can be found, said Jerry Sullivan, international delegate to the Cremation Association of North America.

Cremation advocates and county officials in several states have pushed to make cremation possible in those cases, but lawmakers have been reluctant to make the change -- despite the fact that cremation has become more accepted, he said.

"Their thought is that there's no recourse once someone is cremated," Sullivan said.

Sullivan has helped push to change Illinois' law to be more like California's, where counties have more freedom. In Los Angeles County alone, officials have cremated thousands of unclaimed bodies over the years.

"When you look at it from a financial standpoint where you can use money for other areas, it's logical," Sullivan said.

The proposal Minnesota lawmakers are considering would allow families who raise a moral or religious objection to cremation to request a traditional burial. But for people with no family to speak for them, a county could choose cremation to save money.

The full Senate approved the bill this month and it is awaiting action in the House.

The savings for cremation can vary, but Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the funeral directors association, said the average cost of a simple cremation with no visitation or funeral is $1,792, while a simple burial costs $2,323 plus whatever the cemetery charges for its services.

The Minnesota proposal doesn't specify what counties are to do with any unclaimed ashes.

In Hennepin County, which covers Minneapolis and several large suburbs, $1.2 million went toward funeral assistance for people in need last year. In Ramsey County, the home of St. Paul, the county spent $376,000 during the same period. Officials in that county said cremation is already used in more than half the cases, depending on a family's preference. In the vast majority of the cases in both counties, family members are involved in the process.

Minnesota isn't the only state that's looked this year at cremation as a money-saver.

Legislation in Kentucky would have allowed the state's most populous county to cremate unclaimed bodies, but the Senate voted that bill down last month. Funeral directors opposed the change in Kentucky, and some in Minnesota have their doubts about the proposal in St. Paul.

"I would feel very uncomfortable with it," said Ken Peterson, president of the Minnesota Funeral Directors Association.

Even in cases where family can't be found at the time, a relative could show up later objecting to cremation, Peterson said.

"If you don't know what they wanted and you bury the person, you can always disinter. If you cremate you can't re-create the body to bury it," he said.

That possibility is also a concern for the investigators in medical examiner's offices who try to find family members.

"Our staff really makes a huge effort to notify next of kin," said Don Gorrie, chief investigator for the Ramsey County medical examiner's office. "I don't want to put the county in the position where someone says, 'This is not what we wanted.'"

Finch was found dead in his northeast Minneapolis apartment from what the medical examiner said were natural causes. He wound up at Albin Chapel in Eden Prairie after spending three weeks in the Hennepin County morgue while authorities searched fruitlessly for family members.

He was laid to rest on a mild spring day, leaving Maisch feeling like he had helped someone. If the law changes, Maisch said he just hopes those who can't afford funerals will still be shown some dignity.

"I was one of the only people that saw him before he was buried. I treated him with respect," he said. "He was important, too, and deserves the respect that everybody else does."

[Associated Press; By ELIZABETH DUNBAR]

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