San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘The last responders’ also feeling the stress
Funeral home business surges during grim times
When Robert “Dick” Tips’ great-grandfather bought land on the South Side that would become Texas’ first perpetual care cemetery, he also bought a family Bible.
In it, Will H. Chambers wrote words of wisdom to his wife, for whom he bought the land as a wedding gift in 1907.
His jottings include observations on how to get through tough times, including the annus
horribilis of 1918, when the Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and more than 880 in San Antonio.
He wrote:
Unvarnish the layers of complacency and prepare yourself for a formidable adversary.
We find ourself in troubling and difficult times where we are saddened to avoid public spaces.
Most have retired to their quarters and the streets are empty, rightfully so.
As we dig each grave by hand we pray for our fellow man.
Fast forward 102 years. Tips and his wife, Kristin, who own Mission Park Funeral Chapels, Cemeteries & Crematories, an end-of-life empire that sprang from that one plot of land, have used Chambers’ words to help them navigate a 21st-century pandemic.
“His No. 1 advice was, ‘Be prepared,’” said
Dick, who is chairman and CEO of the company, which includes nine funeral homes and three more under construction. “So that’s what we did.”
As the coronavirus pandemic grinds on, funeral homes are having to deal with an influx of corpses and distraught families trying to properly grieve for loved ones in the time of COVID-19.
Some funeral home directors say their business has doubled and even tripled, especially in the past two weeks.
“Last Monday, we had 30 families here throughout the day, for funerals, cremations, to set up future funerals,” said Guadalupe Delgado, who has owned Delgado Funeral Home on the West Side for 25 years. “It’s been extremely stressful, but we’re getting through it.”
Tony Hendricks, chief operating officer of Lewis Funeral Home, the city’s oldest African American funeral home, said his staff handled the burial of San Antonio’s first COVID fatality in March, an 84-year-old Black woman. After that, there were one or two.
“But now we’re getting four or five (COVID deaths) in one week, and they’re still coming,” he said
In March, as the Tipses watched the coronavirus chaos unfolding in New York — swamped funeral homes, overflowing morgues, bodies illegally stacked in U-Hauls — they began building a $500,000 cooler facility that could store up to 500 bodies.
They questioned the wisdom of the project — surely their existing copious capacity could handle the viral dead.
“We were hoping we’d never have to use it,” Kristin, the president and funeral director, said Wednesday. “We turned it on this week.”
With the COVID-19 death toll mounting every day — 176 people in Bexar County since June 1 — some funeral directors worry the tidal wave that paralyzed the industry in New York City, where almost 23,000 have died
In any case, the virus already has changed the face of grief for many in San Antonio.
Initially, some families decided to put off funerals, hoping to wait until a time of lessened social restrictions, so more could come together safely to celebrate the life of the deceased. One funeral director said many families are reversing course on that, given the second surge of the virus and the unknown future.
The idealized way most people hope to say goodbye — holding a loved one’s hand as they gently slip away — generally is out for those whose relatives die of COVID. Most families don’t get to see or talk to their stricken loved ones in the hospital, except via a video screen.
Some mortuaries aren’t even conducting funerals anymore, given the contagiousness of the virus even on cadavers. They offer to quickly bury or cremate them, Delgado said.
Bexar County has acquired two refrigerated trucks, each with room for 24 to 36 bodies, officials at the Metropolitan Health District said. Three more were on the way, a bleak convoy in dark times
The trucks will accommodate an overflow of deceased virus victims at area hospitals, when their morgues are maxed out, and a backlog of bodies at funeral homes, as a wave of families seek help and some delay the final salute.
“This is a morbid topic, and not one we enjoy talking about,” said Mario Martinez, assistant director of Metro Health. “But it underscores the severity of COVID-19 in our community.”
The ‘sky is not falling’
The Tipses said that, unlike what happened in New York, their funeral chapels and cemeteries have not been overwhelmed, perhaps owing to the size of their network.
They haven’t had to turn anyone away, even as the number of families seeking services has doubled since April.
“We don’t want to give the impression that the sky is falling,” Dick said. “Things are just a little bit different.”
But adjustments have been necessary. Funeral home chapels fall under the same state regulations as houses of worship, which means there’s no strict limit on how many mourners can attend a service as long as physical distancing is observed.
Members of the same household may sit together but must stay at least 6 feet apart from other families and must leave every other row empty. Kristin said most families have chosen to limit the number of guests at visitations, rosaries and funerals to 10, in accordance with city-county restrictions on social gatherings.
“It’s a hard decision, to pick which 10 people to invite, but most families are being very careful and understanding,” she said.
Like other funeral homes in San Antonio, Mission Park has created alternatives to in-person funerals, such as drive-thru visitations, livestreamed funeral services and video obituaries. Funeral arrangements now can be made virtually or over the telephone.
They created a drive-in theater option at Mission Park Funeral Chapels South on Southeast Military Drive, where mourners can observe a livestreamed funeral in the chapel on an outdoor digital screen while in their cars.
“We had more than 200 cars at one service,” Dick said. “We have parking lot monitors, who make sure people stay in their vehicles.”
They have plans to install 10 more of the 25-by-15-foot screens at their other funeral chapels.
The Tipses said it’s not unusual for business to increase in the summer, when more people die from heat-related causes. COVID has complicated the situation, with some people avoiding seeking medical help for fear of the virus, until it’s too late, Kristin said.
The Tipses said they will offer rented space in their new cooler to funeral homes, hospitals, nursing homes and other groups if the need arises.
The dangers of embalming
Helen Loring Dear of Porter Loring Mortuaries, founded in 1918, doesn’t want to talk about the refrigerated truck she rented to serve as a makeshift morgue. She wants to respect the “dignity and privacy” of the families who seek services at Porter Loring.
Dear, the great-granddaughter of Porter Loring Sr., said a truck arrived a few months ago for the McCullough Avenue funeral home as they were expecting the worst from the virus. She ended up returning it, but recently rented it again. Dear declined to say how much it’s being used.
But she is forthcoming about the changes she’s had to make at the funeral home near downtown. (There’s a second Porter Loring Mortuary on the far North Side.) The chapel can hold 300 but now is limited to gatherings of 50, with mandatory physical distancing. The smaller chapel that seats 80 is now limited to 20 mourners.
Funeral arrangements now can be made via Zoom or phone. Services can be livestreamed or recorded from the funeral home or from churches or cemeteries. Everyone entering or leaving the mortuary is screened, including at a kiosk where temperatures can be checked.
“The biggest challenge for us is just keeping up with the state and local restrictions and regulations, making sure we’re abiding by all of them and relaying them to the families we’re assisting,” she said.
Family members who couldn’t be there when their loved one died, because of visiting restrictions at the hospital or nursing home, can see them one last time, Dear said.
“They can have an open casket, if they wish,” she said. “We are placing what we call a veil over the casket, to prevent anyone from touching” the deceased.
For an open casket, the body must be embalmed, a process that comes with its own set of dangers for coronavirus victims.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines for the procedure, although the World Health Organization has recommended against embalming COVID-19-infected corpses.
During embalming, a cadaver can expel aerosol droplets and other fluids that contain the stilllive virus.
To mitigate the risk, Dear’s staff waits 72 hours before embalming a confirmed or suspected victim of the coronavirus.
Staff members wear additional protective gear. The same applies when employees are sent to retrieve a body infected with the virus from a hospital or nursing home.
Dear said that as important as it is to say goodbye to a loved one, memorializing the person’s life with friends and family is equally meaningful — a ritual the virus has truncated.
Intimate encounters with hugs, tears and reminiscences are not possible now. Instead, a small circle of mourners wear
masks, keep their distance from one another and wash their hands.
Closure may be hard to come by.
Porter Loring has offered ways to help the healing process, and not just through livestreamed services or COVID-19 Zoom support groups. Mourners can send short video memorials viewable only by family members. They can sign an online guestbook.
“You can send photos and a voice message to a family via our website,” Dear said. “We will then place them in the chapel during the service.”
‘The last responders’
Hendricks of Lewis Funeral Home — established in 1909 — said the East Side institution has had enough refrigerated space in its morgue to accommodate the COVID-19 dead so far. But he’s nervous about what could happen if the surge in infections and deaths doesn’t abate.
“I foresee having to get a (refrigerated) truck, yes,” he said. “I see what has happened at other funeral homes across the nation, in New York and New Jersey, and I hope it doesn’t get that way here.”
Hendricks said the embalming staff now treats every cadaver as if it was infected with the virus, using heightened precautions, because “you never know.”
“Someone who died in a car wreck might have COVID but was never tested for it,” he said. “The death certificate could say ‘blunt force trauma’ but that person could have been infected. This is like AIDS but scarier, because there are just so many unknowns with the virus. And its airborne, living on surfaces. It’s just a very scary situation.”
Hendricks said he hasn’t had to hire more staff. He’s able to handle the increase with his 15 fulltime and 25 part-time employees.
In many Black communities, the neighborhood funeral home is something of an iconic presence, which is true of the 111-yearold Lewis Funeral Home. It may be especially hard-hit by the virus because, while Black people comprise 8.6 percent of Bexar County’s population, they represent 11 percent of all COVID-19-related deaths to date, Metro Health records show.
People of color are dying at higher rates from the virus in part because of underlying health conditions — diabetes, lung ailments, high blood pressure. Those conditions themselves often are the outgrowth of historical inequality and poverty, experts say.
Hendricks said that at first, families were “disgruntled” when told of limits on the number of mourners who could gather in the 250-seat chapel or when the home discontinued its limousine service for funeral processions.
“Now, everyone is seeing the impact, so they’re pretty much OK with livestreamed services, with gatherings limited to around 10 people,” he said. “Everyone’s seeing these numbers going up, so families aren’t questioning anymore.”
Delgado, of Delgado Funeral Home, said the “drastic” increase in his business may mean other mortuaries have been unable or unwilling to deal with potentially contagious corpses.
“At this point, a lot of the smaller funeral homes are no longer accepting (those who’ve died from COVID) for viewing and funeral services,” he said. “They will only do direct graveside burial or cremations. People want to see their loved ones one last time, so they’re coming to us.”
He puts a glass shield over the casket during services to prevent transmission, he said.
Delgado’s funeral home has five full-time staff members and two chapels that seat 300 and 80, respectively — he’s allowing only 25 people in each now.
He said business has been so frantic that he’s building a walk-in cooler to store up to 15 bodies. It should be ready in two weeks, he said.
Delgado’s existing coolers can handle four bodies, which used to be enough. Not anymore.
Hendricks, at Lewis Funeral Home, has watched as the nation focused its attention on first responders — the nurses, doctors and emergency medical workers on the front lines of the pandemic.
“Well, those of us in the funeral business are last responders,” he said. “And we’re just trying to stay safe while we meet the needs of our families. Those who don’t think we matter are in for a rude awakening.”