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Showing posts with label funerals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funerals. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Friday, January 16, 2015
New Year's Resolution: Prepare For End-of-Life Issues !!
Chestnut Hill Local, Thursday, January 15, 2015, Page 20:
New Year’s Resolution: prepare for end-of-life issues
Local author Jeanne C. Hoff is an expert in end-of-life planning.
by Len Lear
With the onset of the new year, it is inevitable that many people will make new year’s resolutions to lose weight, start working out, stop smoking, etc. but I doubt if many people will resolve to make plans to deal with end-of-life issues, even though all of us will have to confront those issues sooner or later.
Jeanne Hoff knows this as well as anyone. Hoff, 73 (“You know that CoCo Chanel says to never trust a woman who tells you her real age,” she said), lives in Valley Forge with her husband, Bill, and two cats, both adopted from a no-kill shelter. She is the author of the book, “Between Now and Then: A Common-Sense End-of-Life Planning Guide for Baby Boomers (and the rest of us),” published in 2013 after more than 12 years of effort. Although she is not a lawyer or financial planner, she compiled many of the things she learned from the experts into her reader-friendly book.
The book has generated an outpouring of rave reviews. For example, Stephen H. Frishberg, an estate tax attorney for almost 40 years, said, “I found Jeanne’s book a wonderful primer for one’s life. It is informative, entertaining and most of all, gently directs the reader to consider serious alternatives that we all need to address but are reluctant to do so. A worthwhile read.”
Barbara M. Christy, a retired professional librarian for the Library of Congress, has written, “As someone who has already had to face many landmarks and landscapes of aging, I look back and wish this book had been there to guide me.”
Hoff recently conducted a five-part series (based on the book chapters) at the William Jeanes Library in Lafayette Hill as well as book-signing/meet-the-author events at the Radnor Memorial Library, the Lower Providence Township Library and Harleysville Book Store. She also participated in the recent “Sandwich Generation Series” hosted at several Eastern Montgomery County synagogues.
“Unfortunately,” she confessed, “several events never happened because NO ONE (her emphasis) signed up. People tell me they don’t want to talk about end-of-life topics. I was recently told that I should use a bait-and-switch tactic to reel them in.”
Hoff is a writer with an associates’ degree from business school and many years of working with and learning from highly successful people in business, finance and the law. She has been a paralegal, business founder/owner/operator (Blue Gardenia Flowers), a cemetery sales counselor and an artist.
The name of this book came out of a conversation Hoff had years ago with a man who said that he wasn’t afraid of dying; he was afraid of what might happen between now and then. “In retrospect,” said Hoff, “I see that his words were to become the title of this book and one of the sources of my inquiry into the question, ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life between now and then?’
“When I tell people I have written a book about end-of-life planning, I often get the same reaction: ‘Don’t you think that’s a pretty morbid subject?’ They are referring to the fact that end-of-life planning sounds like it is about funerals and death. Well, yes, end-of-life planning does include those things but also much more. It also includes important legal, financial, medical and personal decisions that some people would prefer to ignore indefinitely … until later, whenever that is.
“After people hear my perspective of the importance of planning, most people generally, even if reluctantly, agree that end-of-life planning makes perfect sense. It was an entirely new concept for them to consider. Baby Boomers, in particular, have an admirable, forever-young philosophy of life that has served them well up to now; however, if they continue to make the choice to ignore the various aspects of retirement and aging, there will be problems ahead. I want them to at least be prepared for the potential consequences of their choice to ignore end-of-life planning and do their best to make wise choices and avoid problems.”
Hoff’s book is divided into five major chapters: legal; financial; funeral and burial; record-keeping; and personal.
Each chapter addresses the question, “What do you plan to do with the rest of your life between now and then?”
The book is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, eBay, BuyBooksOnTheWeb.com or from the author at mgkgne@comcast.net
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Have You Seen Best Funeral Ever Reality Show? Are You Kidding Me?!!!!
Annette John-Hall: Series is trifling with life's final dignity
RON TARVER / Staff Photographer
Gregory T. Burrell, in the casket room of Terry Funeral Home, is outraged by the "Best Funeral Ever" show.
Amid such breakout hits as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the most enlightening (in a Neanderthal kind of way) Pete Rose: Hits and Mrs. comes TLC's new reality show, Best Funeral Ever.
Brace yourselves. The accommodating staff at Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas says it will do anything to honor a family's request for a funeral. "You may be in a casket, but it can still be faaan-tas-tic," intones the show's DJ, I mean, narrator, doing his best Barry White impersonation.
That alone should have prepared us. But I don't think anybody was ready, say, for the funeral of Willie McCoy, who sang the Chili's baby back ribs jingle. His services were held in the Party Barn, a cafeteria-like barbecue joint, and featured squealing pigs - as props? honorary pallbearers? - a finger-lickin' good barbecue sauce fountain, and a casket shaped like an oil drum smoker grill.
Let me pause here for a breath of fresh air before diving back into the stench of, no, not funerals, but reality shows in general and those featuring African Americans in particular.
From the News Desk
No doubt you've read my rants about the cultural dangers of programs such as Love & Hip Hop, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and theBasketball Wives franchises. Not only do they showcase the worst in human behavior, they also perpetuate the very worst stereotypes about African Americans, all the more fueled by our willingness to watch them.
I meant to ignore Best Funeral Ever, hoping it would die a slow death. That is, until Gregory T. Burrell, owner of Terry Funeral Home in Philadelphia and president of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, wrote to say that Best Funeral Ever, and its ridiculous depiction of a dignified industry, is not OK.
Sacred vs. slapstick
"We had to get ahead of this," explains Burrell, whose group is the world's largest and oldest association for African American funeral professionals. "We can't let one person compromise the integrity of the entire industry."
Burrell issued a statement on behalf of the NFDMA voicing its outrage atBest Funeral Ever and "our sincere apology to those persons who are experiencing the loss of a loved one and were subject to the airing of the show."
Black funeral directors are "really, really struggling to maintain a professional image," Burrell says. "There are a lot of people who have worked extremely hard to get to where they are, only to have their images tarnished by a reality show."
Since the dawn of freedom, the funeral business has been a source of thriving entrepreneurship among African Americans in Philadelphia. Discrimination forced blacks to learn how to bury their own. And as far back as the 18th century, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones' Free African Society provided burial services for black and white victims of the yellow fever epidemic.
Burrell purchased Terry Funeral Home from original owner Paul Terry in 2000. In December, Terry will celebrate its 75th anniversary. It has provided services for such local luminaries as Paul Robeson; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first African American woman to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania School of Law; civil-rights stalwart C. DeLores Tucker; City Councilman Lucien Blackwell; and others.
You can understand why Burrell is incensed about the slapstick nature ofBest Funeral Ever. Interestingly enough, John Beckwith, the Dallas funeral director featured on the show, is a member of the NFDMA and a friend of Burrell's. He told Burrell a reality show was in the works. Burrell, however, says he was blindsided by its sheer outrageousness.
Sure, Burrell wants to give his customers the most personalized of service. But family wishes or no, "our responsibility as professionals is to understand how far we're willing to go," he says. "Funerals should be dignified, sacred, and professional."
Contact Annette John-Hall at 215-854-4986, Ajohnhall@phillynews.com or on Twitter @Annettejh.
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