Dale Sandige is planning his funeral, and the first name on the guest list is his own. Sandige, 76, is in perfect health, but he’ll soon play host at his own funeral dress rehearsal, aptly titled “I’m Not Dead Yet.” The party will feature solos of his memorial songs, a live cannon salute, belly dancers, a magician and a live jazz band.

Sandige is one of a new breed of future bucket kickers opting to plan their own funerals and doing so in extremely personalized ways. Valley residents are having their remains launched into outer space, exploded in fireworks and smelted into diamonds. The extreme examples are part of a wider trend taking death ceremonies away from the traditional hearse and mourning in black. In fact, the demand for funeral personalization could prove to be a nail in the coffin of traditional mortuaries.

“More and more people are venturing out of the funeral parlor,” says Celest Nichols, general manager of the Wrigley Mansion, which often serves as a mortuary alternative for Valley memorials. “Instead of just a funeral home and people crying, it’s more of a celebration, more music,” she says. Meat-packing heir Geordie Hormel’s memorial was the first at the Wrigley. Now about a dozen Valley families contact the Wrigley Mansion each year, searching for more personal memorials than one-size-fits-all mortuaries.

“It’s definitely happy celebrations,” Nichols says. “I don’t know why or what the reason is, but it’s no longer as solemn as it used to be. The market demand for alternative venues is unbelievable.”

My Funeral’s Gonna Be A Blast

When Valley resident Michael Keane, 58, was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, he chose to have his remains launched into orbit along with James Doohan, “Scottie” of Star Trek. In April, Memorial Space Flights launched Keane’s ashes from a New Mexico desert at a cost of about $12,500. Keane’s widow, Monica, rode a bus 90 minutes into the desert, where she and other grieving families cried, laughed and watched in awe as a rocket launched their loved ones’ remains into space.

“It was a very moving experience,” Monica says. “Everybody was very excited. This is something our loved ones wanted to do, and they were finally doing it. My grandkids can say ‘My grandpa’s up there. He’s safe.’”

Susan Schonfeld, publicist for Memorial Space Flights, says the company has seen incredible demand since its first launch 10 years ago. “We had about 27 folks on the first launch. Our most recent had 202. Our next will have about 300.”

When Schonfeld speaks of “folks,” she’s referring to seven grams of their ashes on board the space-bound rocket. “Demand is very, very high,” Schonfeld adds. “Funeral options have really increased, and unique options have become more mainstream. People have a fascination with space. Unfortunately not too many get to space in their lifetimes, so our service provides a fulfillment of a wish.”

Schonfeld says the company has put one “man” on the moon: a NASA engineer who never visited the moon in life was able to go in death. “He is actually on the south pole of the moon,” Schonfeld says. “Because we do expect the moon to be a very popular place, we’ve opened that up. We have a waiting list you wouldn’t believe.”

In Death, New Business is Born

Keane is just one of hundreds now opting for memorials reflective of their their individual flare for life, even in death. Companies like Memorial Space Flights are rising from the ashes across the country, driven ultimately by consumer demand. The common thread among the various operations is a disdain for the drudgery and trauma of traditional funerals.

“As I went to funerals, I was basically putting my friends in the back of an expensive station wagon,” says Al Skinner, founder of Biker Burials. Fed up with impersonal hearses, Skinner built a casket-carrying sidecar hearse that hooks to his motorcycle, an Anniversary Edition Road King Harley Davidson. He now works for hire, rumbling with deceased bikers to their final resting places.

Pyrotechnician Nick Drobnis was similarly driven by a disdain for traditional ceremonies. “After going to a handful of funerals, I thought, you know, funerals are the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s terrible that that’s my last image of people I cared about,” Drobnis says.

Now Drobnis’ memorial services offer arguably the most bang for the buck. As a fireworks professional, Drobnis has landed approval to scatter ashes in fireworks. His Angels Flight service charges $4,000 to launch about 200 ash-infused fireworks over the ocean.

“We opened our business, and the response has been phenomenal,” Drobnis says. “It’s that final image of your loved one that you keep for the rest of your life. What’s better than a beautiful firework over the ocean at night?”

Valley residents Jeff and Rachel Iles are among Drobnis’s many satisfied customers. The Ileses recently flew to California for a fireworks memorial service for Rachel’s mother.

While the Ileses watched their mother’s ashes scattered in fireworks over the Pacific, Scottsdale resident Bill Sefton, 56, was competing at WestWorld for the Arizona Horse Riding Association. As usual, Sefton wore a blue half-carat diamond on his left hand. Sefton’s diamond is made from the ashes of his daughter, Valerie, who died of Hodgkin’s disease at the age of 27.

Valerie was the first person in the world to be cremated into a diamond. Since then, diamond crematorium LifeGem has seen sales jump from $1 million to $7.5 million. Sefton and five other family members wear their family jewels every day.

Planning Ahead

Sitting in the Pink Pony restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale, Dale Sandige is arranging to interview belly dancers for his “I’m Not Dead Yet” party. Sandige first sat in this same restaurant 50 years ago. He was driving a 1953 Chevy sedan, and Scottsdale Road was the only paved street for miles. In the half-century since, Sandige has seen most his friends die, and says he’s attended enough boring, “cry-fest” funerals to have his fill.

“I want people talking and having fun,” Sandige says of his own memorial. “But let’s not rush it. People can get in a hurry, you know, when you start planning your funeral,” he jokes.

Though he’s in good health, Sandige has already drafted his full-page obituary, as well as the words for his headstone, both of which feature a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not article about his collection of functional cannons.

Sandige is among thousands of Valley seniors pre-planning their memorials. Craig Hansen, owner of Hansen Mortuaries, says his six Valley locations now see more clients for pre-planning than for actual burials.

Lynn Isenberg has also seen the increase in pre-planned, personal memorials first hand. “One client wants a disco party on the top of a mountain and wants everyone to come dressed in disco clothes,” Isenberg says of a healthy client who’s now pre-planning her memorial.

As a professional funeral planner, Isenberg makes her living planning tasteful memorials for the dying. “In the interview we require the client to think about what they want,” Isenberg says. “How can we make this personalized and celebratory? What’s right for them?”

Isenberg’s advice has ranged from simple suggestions, like distributing auction paddles at an auctioneer’s funeral, to Hollywood-style memorial videos at a cost of $75,000.

“The trend is to shake the perception from mourning a death to celebrating a life,” Isenberg says. “It’s just a shift from the way it’s always been before. These folks have a different way of approaching life and death.”

A Dying Industry

Naturally, there’s a killing to be made in the dying business. Last year, about two million Americans died, leaving a profitable dirge of nearly $13.5 billion. As such, traditional mortuaries see this new breed of entrepreneurs not only as acting in bad taste, but bad for business.

For more than 50 years mortuaries have enjoyed a cultural monopoly on the only commodity as certain as taxes. Now the gap between stodgy mortuaries and creative memorials is growing.

While space launches represent the more progressive, if not fringe, end of the memorial game, Ron Hast, owner of 14 mortuaries and publisher of Mortuary Management, represents the more conservative end of the spectrum.

Hast speaks for the old guard of the funeral business. In 1962, he carried Marilyn Monroe’s casket. In the 45 years since, little has changed in the way Hast runs funerals.

Asked to describe the trend of personalized memorials, Hast tells only of the standard picture board. “The memory board,” he says with dramatic pause, emphasizing the words “memory” and “board.” “The memory board is a board of pictures from the person’s life. We see these (dramatic pause) memory boards becoming very popular across the country.”

The fact that Hast publishes the industry’s leading journal and is getting excited about 3x5s pinned to a flannel background may be a clue into how wide the gap between consumer demand and business as usual has become.

Hast’s concept of unique may be tame, but he does say personalization is “really at the cutting edge of funeral services.”

Clint Mytch, the 26-year-old CEO of a company that offers Major League Baseball caskets, agrees, sort of. “Cutting edge within the funeral industry is a relative term,” Mytch says. “The industry is very slow to change.”

His company, Eternal Image, offers caskets and urns from four major brands: Major League Baseball, Precious Moments, the Vatican and, increasingly popular among pet owners, the American Kennel Club. At $699, the branded urns don’t quite cost an arm and a leg. Branded caskets cost $3,500.

“My original idea was a classic Corvette or Mustang casket,” says Mytch, a Detroit native. “Our response has been great. The simple attraction to our product is that there hasn’t been much personalized or customized,” Mytch says. “We’ve taken an everyday brand that people know, and we’ve brought it to an industry that hasn’t done that. Our motto is to celebrate the life, not the death. Our products help people do that.”

Pressed about his own eventual funeral, the young CEO says, “I haven’t even thought about that. Of what we offer now, I’d probably choose a casket and probably the Detroit Tigers.”

The Middle Man

Wearing thick Prada glasses and a tailored pinstripe suit, Craig Hansen is not the chubby Munster one might picture of a boy who grew up in a mortuary. He speaks tenderly, the way you’d want someone to if you were selecting a burial plot and coffin.

Hansen, owner of the Valley’s Hansen Mortuaries, is a man with feet on both sides of a splitting fault line in the funeral business. He says the divide between ultra-traditional mortuaries and fringe death celebrations is vast and spreading.

Hansen was probably teething when Ron Hast was carrying Marilyn Monroe’s casket, and the generational difference shows. Where the old guard sees personalization as photos on an easel, Hansen sees it as DVDs, music and personal artifacts. At recent memorials Hansen has distributed everything from lottery tickets and golf tees to Matchbox cars and tennis balls.

Hansen says a fast food mentality about funerals is basically the culprit behind stodgier funeral parlors. “Some of them just do the same ole because it’s easier. It’s not as much work.”

A Deal to Die For

Back at the Pink Pony, Dale Sandige says thinking ahead is ultimately what drives him to pre-plan his memorial service. “When my dad died, he had planned everything. All we had to do was show up,” Sandige says.

Sandige adds that pre-planning saves money. His offspring won’t be charmed into any mortuary rip-offs because he’s already bought everything from his cemetery plot to his cremation, and yes, he wants both.

“It costs $350 to be cremated. Don’t let anyone charge you more,” Sandige says. Mortuary salesmen, he adds, can be tricky. “This guy tried to sell me a bronze case for my bones after cremation. He said it would last longer. I said, ‘This plastic one will last longer than you, buddy.’ Eternal is their selling word, eternal this, eternal that.”

With this, Sandige asks his friend Ina, a middle-aged “four-octave singer” to bless us with a preview of his memorial songs. In the middle of the Pink Pony and with the confidence of a Broadway starlet, Ina belts out “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Coming of the Glory of the Lord” and continues on singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Sandige smiles, content. His other song of choice is “When the Saints Come Marching In.” “I want ‘up’ songs,” Sandige says. “No Wagner. That stuff will drag you into the ground.” n

www.hansenmortuary.com
www.wrigleymansionclub.com
www.memorialspaceflights.com
www.lifegem.com
www.angels-flight.net
www.eternalimage.net