Virus claims Black morticians, leaving holes in communities

When the last mourners departed and funeral director Shawn Troy was left among the headstones, he wept alone. For five decades, the closing words at countless funerals in this town of 4,400 had been delivered by his father, William Penn Troy Sr. Now the elder Troy was gone, one of many Black morticians claimed by a pandemic that has taken an outsized toll on African Americans, after months of burying its victims.

And as Shawn Troy stepped forward to speak in place of a man well known beyond his trade -- for his work in county politics and advocacy of its Black citizens -- the emptiness felt overwhelming. Not just his family, but his community, had lost an anchor. "I walked over to his grave and I could hear him talking to me," Shawn Troy said, his own voice breaking as he recalled kneeling beside the plot last September, on a low rise near two palmetto trees. "And he said, 'You got it. You can do it. This is what you were built for.' He passed the baton on to me, so I've got to get running."

He is hardly alone. Since the start of the pandemic, about 130 Black morticians have died from COVID-19, according to the association that represents them.

Deaths of funeral workers are not closely tracked. But the National Funeral Directors Association, which represents the broader industry, said it has not seen a corresponding rise in COVID deaths among its members. The deaths of Black morticians are particularly notable because of the prominent role they have long played in many communities. Often admired for their success in business, a number have been elected to political office, served as local power brokers, and helped fund civil rights efforts.

At the same time, the "homegoing" services they arrange have frequently served as communal touchstones, events as much about life as death, that draw mourners together with pageantry, preaching and song.

Black funerals are "more celebration, and that's no disrespect to my colleagues across the country. We're more, I should say, intimate," said Hari P. Close, president of the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association and the operator of a Baltimore funeral home. The association represents Black morticians. When the pandemic hit, the very closeness and celebration that distinguish

Black funerals put morticians at risk, Close said.

Their deaths have left some successors struggling to fill their role. "It has really had an impact ... particularly in African American funeral homes," he said.

The deaths have come despite concerted efforts by morticians to protect themselves from the virus and limits imposed on the size and scope of burial gatherings to keep it from spreading. "This year was unlike any other year I've ever lived through in the funeral service," said Edith Churchman, the fourth-generation owner of a mortuary in Newark, N.J. that serves a largely Black clientele.

Dealing with an onslaught of COVID deaths, at first with limited personal protective equipment, and later with shortages of caskets and prepared burial plots, put pressure on funeral directors that far exceeded the demands at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, she said. "We were getting bombarded with COVID bodies," said Dr. Mary Gaffney, who stepped in to run her brother, Jeremiah's, funeral home in Inwood, New York after he died of the virus last May.

At least 95,000 Black Americans have died of COVID, according to an AP analysis of data from the National Center for Health

Statistics, perishing at the highest rate of any racial group in the U.S. Adjusting the figures to account for age differences shows that Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are two to three times more likely to die of the virus than white people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Of course ... you feared for your own safety," Churchman said. "You're kind of dangling on that precipice, saying what if?" In Mississippi, Luzern "Sonny" Dillon and employees at his two funeral homes worked for months to fulfill COVID safety protocols, restricting gatherings. But Dillon, a widely known former councilman, continued his routine of spending time in the community, engaging people in conversation.

"People would be like, 'You know, Mr. Sonny,' and they'd just begin to talk and share things with him. It was just like a given," his wife, Georgia Dillon, said. In one of those conversations, early this year, a restaurant manager confided to Dillon that he'd lost three family members to COVID in a matter of weeks. The mortician extended his condolences, reassuring the man that, contrary to what some people said, the pandemic was very real. Those words proved