Funeral Industry News, Information, and Trends

People are starting to talk about the experience they had working with certain funeral homes by commenting on their (the funeral homes) Facebook wall. What is the next step for the funeral director who is running the site when this occurs? It isn't that hard, respond with a simple thank you!! A thank you goes along way in today's society. Many people have forgotten about their manners and rarely say thank you. We need to start doing it!!!

Below is a short (1 min 20 sec) video clip from Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is Co-founder of Vayner Media, among other things, and consults daily with fortune 500 brands on how to engage in social media to build their brand. This video is about saying thank you. Good stuff...watch it!!

Read more: Use Your Manners: Say Please and Thank You

Death, state Rep. Carolyn Laine, said Tuesday is frightening.

"We are always afraid of the unknown," she told fellow lawmakers. But the fear -- and the law -- should not prevent families from "reclaiming" the care of their dead loved ones, she said.

Laine, DFL-Columbia Heights, is sponsoring a bill that would allow families to wash, dress and transport their dead, keep them on dry ice for several days and to host larger viewings than permitted by current law.

The measure, which has a bipartisan group of 22 co-sponsors, passed the House Health Care and Human Services Policy Tuesday on a voice vote. It next moves on to the full House.

The law now requires bodies to be quickly embalmed or cremated after death and limits who can view unembalmed bodies.

Read more: Bill: Allow Families to Care For Their Own Dead?

I have already started to assemble a photo gallery for those of you who can't make it to the show. I am planning to continually update the galley as the week progresses. Checkout some of the pictures I have already taken below.

FYI: If you have any requests for pictures of a certain booth, please leave them in the comments section below and I will do my best to post them!!

Read more: 2010 ICCFA Photo Gallery - Updated!!!

A year ago, most public “death care” companies were reporting mysterious drops in the number of funerals they were performing, but now things have improved and some are seeing growth close to long-term trends.

And all of the companies in the funeral industry are looking forward to the next few decades, when business should be brisk as baby boomers come to the end of their run.

The hardest-hit company last year was Service Corporation International, (SCI-N8.550.080.94%) the biggest death care company on the continent, with more than 1,600 funeral homes and cemeteries in the United States and Canada. In the first quarter of 2009 it experienced an 11-per-cent downturn in the number of funerals it performed. While the quarter-to-quarter decline was only 3.6 per cent by the fourth quarter, the company conducted 6.7 per cent fewer funerals in all of 2009 than it did in 2008.

Read more: SCI Hires Outside Company To Figureout Why Death Numbers Are Down

The court also accepted two other cases on Monday, one testing whether vaccine makers are immune from lawsuits under state law and another that challenges government background checks on federal contractors as an invasion of privacy. The cases are likely to be heard in the fall.

The funeral case, Snyder v. Phelps, tests the limits of First Amendment protection for demonstrators who aim obnoxious and hurtful speech at the most sympathetic of victims. It centers on the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., founded in 1955. Most of the church's 70-odd members are children, grandchildren or in-laws of its founder and sole pastor, Fred W. Phelps Sr., according to a lower court opinion.

The Westboro Church searches the Internet for notices of military funerals it can picket to get attention for its message of hostility to homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church, and its claim that battlefield casualties represent divine retribution for what it views as America's sins.

Read more: Supreme Court Wades Into Funeral Protests