How women are changing the funeral industry

Inside Sutfin Funeral Chapel in Nichols, an essential oil diffuser fills the air with a subtle, fresh fragrance.

Along a side wall, several handmade quilts are draped over a rack, gifts from families served here.

And on a long table in the side meeting room, where a bay window lets the light in from this stretch of South Main Street in the small town of Nichols in Tioga County, funeral director Jody Cooley has set out a silver tray upon which she's placed several small bottles of water, hand sanitizer, a box of tissues and two clear dishes: one filled with miniature Hershey bars and the other with silver-foil-wrapped York peppermint patties.

Because it helps, she says.

Cooley's is a snapshot of the modern funeral home, where personal touches prevail over convention and where women have found a niche in a previously male-dominated field.

In the past 40 years, the number of funeral directors who are women in the United States has jumped from 5 percent to 43 percent, according to the New York State Funeral Directors Association. And 60 percent of today's mortuary science students are women, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

Back when Jody Cooley's mother, Carol Cooley, was leaving her nursing career to pursue funeral service in 1980 with her husband, David, she was one of about five women in her mortuary science class, she says. Even years later, it's not uncommon for a caller to be surprised to learn yes, they're already speaking to the owner when Carol Cooley answers the phone at MacPherson Funeral Home in Newark Valley.

"I do feel that as our society is aging that people are becoming more accepting of women in this field," said Natasha Kurowski, 46, a funeral director at Paul W. Harris Funeral Home in Irondequoit. She came to the field in 2003 after previously getting a degree in optical engineering technology and working at Xerox.

"I think that it may just be the natural progression of modern women integrating into fields that men have previously dominated in," she said. 

Breaking into a rooted industry 

As a 12-year-old growing up in Macedon, Wayne County, Paula Fuller, 44,  knew one thing for sure: She wanted to be a funeral director.

“I was curious about what happens after you die,” said the Albion, Orleans County, resident, who now has 24 years of funeral service under her belt as a funeral director at Christopher Mitchell and Merrill Grinnell Funeral Homes Inc. in Albion and Holley in Orleans County.

But it hasn’t been an easy road. During her college career, she was turned away from doing a 5-week practicum stint at the funeral home across the street from her childhood home because the management thought there “should be no need for females in funeral service,” said Fuller.

It’s possible that men who’ve called the shots in funeral service for decades could feel threatened by women rising to fill funeral director positions across the state, she said. But when she landed her current job in 1994, she was the second woman to be hired as a funeral director there, because the owner saw advantages in a diverse staff.

For Kurowski, she broke into the field based on her interest in the television show Six Feet Under. — "I thought to myself, 'I can do that,'" she said. She had only ever attended one funeral before she enrolled in mortuary school — that of her close friend who died at age 26. 

"I was just genuinely interested in the death care industry and wanted to learn all that I could to be able to help families at their time of need," she said. 

Other women have found it difficult to get a foothold in the industry if they don't come from a family line of funeral directors. 

Funeral director Maggie Palmer, of Ithaca's Herson Wagner Funeral Home grew up with "a lot of deaths in my family," she said, and decided she "wanted to be that person that helps guide people through that process."

The 30-year-old native of Red Creek — a village 70 miles north of Ithaca —  attended and graduated from the former Simmons Institute of Funeral Service in Syracuse — the school closed in 2013 — in 2007, despite dealing with criticism.

One funeral director advised Palmer, "women don't do this," and she was repeatedly told to get a different degree.

For the next five years, Palmer's fellow graduates entered their one-year residency programs and started their first directing jobs, while Palmer worked as an eye, tissue, and organ recovery specialist, facing the difficulties of entering what has traditionally been a family-owned industry — the National Funeral Directors Association says 86 percent of the funeral homes in the United States are privately owned — as an outsider.

"I faced pretty much nothing but challenges doing this," Palmer said. "It's really hard being a first generation to get your foot in the door."

Monica Usiak, a funeral director at J.F. Rice Funeral Home Inc. in Johnson City, was well aware of that. No members of her family had been in funeral service and, as a teenager, Usiak, 43, of Binghamton, said she couldn't bring herself to walk further than the foyer when her Chenango Forks High School health class took a field trip to a nearby funeral home.

The table turned for her, she says, while watching her father go through the funeral process when her 101-year-old grandmother died.

Before she began pursuing a new career in funeral service — she'd spent the previous decade in banking — Usiak sought advice from local funeral directors. They didn't hold back.

"They told me it's going to be tough," she said.

For Tonya Williams, it was "a long haul" to her current position, now transitioning from that of a general manager to a pre-planning adviser at Wm. R. Chase & Son Funeral Home in Port Dickinson, Broome County.

Williams, 40, says she's been "on-call" since she was 15. Prior to the 13 years she's spent at Wm. R. Chase & Son, she was helping out at Savage Funeral Service in Binghamton as a teenager.

But after the Vestal native graduated from Simmons in the mid-1990s, no one seemed to be hiring, she said, and the petite Williams felt the weight of those critics who told her she wasn't strong enough for the physical demands of the job, like removals.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36.5 percent of adults in the United States are obese and, since the late 1980s, over-sized caskets have been made available to accommodate decedents weighing 600-800 pounds.

Whether a descendant of a line of funeral directors, like Kyla Barber DeBlock, whose family has operated a funeral home in Johnson City since 1930, or a first generation funeral director like Jody Ann Foster, who works at Olthof Funeral Home Inc. on Pennsylvania Avenue in Elmira, the job of a funeral director is demanding.

An average funeral home handles 113 calls per year with three full-time and four part-time employees, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

It's a large industry — total revenue in 2012 was $16,323 million — operated by small firms with small staffs, who juggle the ever-present responsibility of being "on call."

What's a holiday?

An extra pair of dress pants and a dark blazer hang in the passenger side window of Jennifer (Meagher) Sullivan's black SUV. There's an extra pair of shoes — maybe her favorite black Nine West pumps — in there, too, just in case.

And if the sound of church bells erupts from this funeral director's cell phone while she's out to dinner with friends, she drops everything, makes her excuses, and heads for the car. She has to go.

As funeral director at Thomas J. Shea Funeral Home, Inc. on Robinson Street in Binghamton, also Sullivan's childhood home, there are no days off.

Her long list of responsibilities includes what you'd expect, like death certificates, removals and service planning, as well as a few you might not, like yard work, washing cars and directing traffic.

Sullivan can spend the weekend in Forest Lake, Pennsylvania, but only if that cell phone signal booster she installed is working properly so she can receive calls.

And, like many brides, Sullivan took family photos outside her childhood home on her big day in November 2017, but the situation was unique: she had to first confirm the funeral service scheduled for that day was taking place elsewhere before her photographer could snap a photo of her in her white gown, standing beside her father on the front sidewalk.

"You learn to just drop (everything) and 'let's go,'" she said.

That and a great deal of patience are things she picked up from watching her father, Michael Meagher, through the years. Meagher has worked at the family's funeral home — formerly owned by Sullivan's great uncle and the original home of her great-grandparents — since Sullivan and her two siblings were children.

Back then, their chores included cleaning the house and washing cars between calling hours. During a service, the three Meagher children would peer out the upstairs window, waiting to see the line of sleek black vehicles pull away from their white house, the signal the service had ended and they could resume making noise. 

Sullivan says her family took one vacation a year, a road trip to the beach in the funeral home's Cadillac.

Now leading the charge at the funeral home, Sullivan and her fellow funeral directors juggle the same demands.

Like holidays, which, if you ask Palmer, don't really exist in their job.

"What's a holiday?" she said.

Kyla Barber DeBlock hosts Thanksgiving every year, but there's always uncertainty as to whether Barber DeBlock will actually be there. One call and she's gone, leaving dinner to the rest of her family.

On Christmas morning, she and her fellow director at Johnson City's Barber Memorial Home, Tim Maus, have worked out a system: he'll cover for her in the morning, particularly during the two-hour window from 6:30-8:30 a.m. when her five-year-old son and four-year-old daughter are up and ready to open presents.

It's a system that's been a part of Barber DeBlock's life since she was a child, when her father, Ken Barber, would have to leave wherever he was to answer a call for the funeral home on Main Street.

There's that one Christmas she always heard about, too, the first her parents shared together after they were married. Barber was called out for five deaths that day.

"There's no such thing as planning," Kyla said. "You make it work. You figure it out."

'It's their worst day'

Ask a funeral director why they do their job and it's not often spoken of as their career, but their vocation.

"All in all I absolutely love helping people on the worst day of their lives," said Fuller of Albion. "The best reward is them giving you a hug and saying 'Thank you, you’ve made a hard time less difficult.'"

Part of being there for the families they serve is being available whenever they might be needed, said Fuller. She and three other funeral directors rotate weekends on call for removals, but she'll always be on call for specific families she connects with for pre-death and funeral meetings, she said. 

"We’re not a 9 to 5 job — we’re on call 24/7," she said.  

Sometimes that means Kurowski has to get out of bed, brush the snow off the car and go out on a call at 3 a.m. It could mean leaving the grocery store in the middle of a shopping trip. Even when a flood devastates the Southern Tier, closing all major roads and leaving the open ones nearly impassable, Jody Cooley still finds a way to drive from Nichols to Newark Valley to respond to a house call.

Because it's their job, yes, but they're compelled to do it.

In a small community like Albion, Fuller may see the same family come in for the death of a grandparent and then eventually a parent. 

"They may be specifically asking for you, or calling you on your cell phone saying, 'My mom just passed away, can you please help me?'" she said. 

When Jolan Marchese's father died, she didn't know what to do. He'd been living in Pennsylvania, she in Johnson City, and this was the first time the 47-year-old had been faced with the death of a family member.

Then her friend Monica Usiak called.

"I don’t know what I would’ve done without her," Marchese said. "I felt like I’d died inside and she kind of kept me going."

Usiak coordinated Marchese's father's cremation and lined up veterans' honors at the funeral. She called every day to check in and brought all the paperwork to Marchese's house on one dark winter day, where they spent hours going through a checklist Usiak had drawn up to make sure everything from the photos to the flowers was in order for the funeral service.

A daughter planning a funeral for the first time, Marchese never felt overwhelmed.

"She made it so very easy," she said. "I never at any moment felt like she didn't understand (what I was going through).

An advantage of being a woman in the funeral industry is the perception that women bring a kinder, softer spirit to the job. 

"I had somebody come in and specifically want to sit down with me because they thought that I was caring," said Fuller. Also, she handles the cosmetics and hair-styling at her funeral homes, making sure those who've died look natural and at their best for funerals and other events. 

There are those families who take a question to one of the male funeral directors at Thomas J. Shea Funeral Home, Inc. but seek out Sullivan for a hug.

And those who don't live nearby, but who make a point to stop by and visit with Barber DeBlock when they're passing through Johnson City.

"People feel the ability to just sit and spill," Barber DeBlock said. "As a woman, I feel like we’re ingrained with compassion. We’re just more emotional."

As Foster points out, "no family is the same," and while there are some who find her care more nurturing than her male counterparts, there are others whom Palmer says are "old school" and expect their funeral director to be a man.

Sisters Penny Pendlebury, 69, of Johnson City, and Nancy Chier, 68, of Binghamton, whose father died in 2015, said there were some instances when the planning process benefited from working with a woman.

"I think maybe it made it a little bit easier to talk to her and say certain things, like a woman-to-woman conversation," said Pendlebury.

In a letter Carol Visscher wrote thanking Jody Cooley for her assistance following the death of a family member, she said, "You run more than just a business. You're the heart and soul of us all."

Changing industry 

There's no cookie cutter shape for funerals anymore.

The rate of cremation has surpassed that of burial — 50.2 percent of Americans chose cremation in 2016, up from 48.5 percent in 2015, while 43.5 percent opted for burial, down from 45.4 percent in 2015 — and many families now choose to view a prepared, not embalmed, body as part of a service before cremation.

On Jan. 17, 2017, legislation went into effect allowing funeral directors to provide food and beverages at the funeral home, prompting a renovated basement at Wm. R. Chase & Son Funeral Home, where Williams now has cloth-covered tables arranged, a kitchen set-up and accessible bathroom.

In a survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association in 2017, 39.5 percent of the population felt it was very important to have religion incorporated into a funeral service, a decrease from 49.5 percent in 2012 and an all-time low.

That's prompted the use of non-clergy celebrants (including funeral directors) and a fluid idea of funeral service venue. Memorial services may be held inside the funeral home, in an outdoor setting or a space significant to the deceased.

It's also encouraged funeral directors to get creative and bring personal touches to a modern funeral service. Usiak has used a dump truck hearse for a construction worker's funeral, Williams has had a popcorn machine set up during calling hours and passed out recipe cards instead of prayer cards, and Jody Cooley has transported a casket in a funeral procession in a vintage Ford pickup.

"It really tells the story of someone’s life," Cooley said.

Today there are four New York facilities with mortuary science programs: American Academy McAllister Institute, Hudson Valley Community College, Nassau Community College and Canton State University of New York. 

Erica Lamb, whose husband, Ryan Lamb, is a funeral director at MacPherson Funeral Home, is currently attending American Academy McAllister Institute online to earn her funeral director's license.

She wants to pursue this line of work to help people "to know you really care about them," she said. "It is one of the hardest times of their lives."

KSULLIVAN@Pressconnects.com

STADDEO@Gannett.com

Meet the Directors 

Kyla Barber DeBlock

• Funeral Home: Barber Memorial Home, 428 Main St., Johnson City
• Age: 37
• Town of Residence: Vestal
• Education: Binghamton University, Business of Science; American Academy McAllister Institute; Vestal High School
• Years in Funeral Service: 4

Carol Cooley

• Funeral Home: MacPherson Funeral Home, 5 Whig St., Newark Valley
• Age: Not available
• Town of Residence: Newark Valley
• Education: Simmons Institute of Mortuary Science, Cochran School of Nursing at St. John's Riverside Hospital 
• Years in Funeral Service: 38

Jody Cooley

Funeral Home: Sutfin Funeral Chapel, 273 Main St., Nichols 

• Age: Not available
• Town of Residence: Nichols
• Education: Simmons Institute of Mortuary Science, Tompkins County Community College, Newark Valley High School
• Years in Funeral Service: 28

Jody Ann Foster

• Funeral Home: Olthof Funeral Home Inc., 1050 Pennsylvania Ave., Elmira
• Age: 27
• Town of Residence: Elmira
• Education: Simmons Institute of Funeral Service
• Years in Funeral Service: 4

Paula Fuller 

• Funeral home: Christopher Mitchell and Merrill Grinnell Funeral Homes Inc., Albion and Holley 
• Age: 44
• Town of Residence: Albion 
• Education: State University College of Technology at Canton, associate degree in Mortuary Science
• Years in funeral service: 24

Natasha Kurowski 

• Funeral home: Paul W. Harris Funeral Home, 570 Kings Highway S, Irondequoit 
• Age: 46
• Town of residence: Webster
• Education: Simmons Institute of Funeral Service
• Years in funeral service: 15

Maggie Palmer

• Funeral Home: Herson Wagner Funeral Home, 110 S Geneva St., Ithaca
• Age: 30
• Town of Residence: Newfield
• Education: Simmons Institute of Funeral Service
• Years in Funeral Service: 11

Jennifer (Meagher) Sullivan

• Funeral Home: Thomas J. Shea Funeral Home Inc., 137 Robinson St., Binghamton
• Age: 43
• Town of Residence: Binghamton
• Education: Mortuary science degree from American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service, associate's degree in accounting from Johnson & Wales University
• Years in Funeral Service: 9

Monica Usiak 

• Funeral Home: J.F. Rice Funeral Home Inc., 150 Main St., Johnson City
• Age: 43
• Town of Residence: Binghamton
• Education: Simmons Institute of Funeral Service, Chenango Forks High School
• Years in Funeral Service: 12

Tonya Williams

• Funeral Home: Wm. R. Chase & Son Funeral Home, 737 Chenango St., Port Dickinson
• Age: 40
• Town of Residence: Chenango Bridge
• Education: Simmons Institute of Funeral Service, SUNY Broome Community College, Vestal High School
• Years in Funeral Service: 23