News Articles

By MICHAEL JAMISON
of the Missoulian

KAILISPELL-"In this world," Benjamin Franklin once said, "nothing is certain but death and taxes." A third certainty might be added: Nowadays, both cost more.

Today, the average cost of a funeral is about $6,000 - unless you get to know Willy von Bracht before it's too late.

Von Bracht, a Kalispell nurse and teacher, has for years been helping people die with dignity, teaching them the sepulchral ropes and helping them build plain pine boxes.

"I offer an education," he said, "some lessons on how to die in a dignified way. As it turns out, the dignified way is also the cheapest way.

A do-it-yourself funeral, with one of von Bracht's handmade pine caskets as the centerpiece, can cost as little as a few hundred dollars. More importantly, von Bracht said, it can give survivors the peace of mind that comes from active involvement in the ceremony.

"When the funeral director tells you, 'Don't worry, we'll take care of everything,' well they're not doing you any favors," Von Bracht said. "in fact, they're doing a great disservice. They just send you home with nothing to do. "No vigil, no body to wash and dress and care for. The body's been taken away from the family by a total stranger, and what does the stranger do? He drains the blood and replaces it with poison. And where are you all this time? You're at home with nothing to do, no decisions to make, nothing to do but stare at the floor until it's time to eat ham and turkey."

According to von Bracht, survivors need to stay busy in the days following death, as the process and ceremony are vital parts of the healing.

"You should take care of as much of it as you can," he advised, right down to the digging of the grave. "Digging a grave is a real consciousness raiser. It's a valuable experience, and you'll get a lot more out of it than you expect."

His views on a dignified death and burial have led him to some strange places in the past 25 years, from the legislative halls of Helena to his own "shop of death," where he teaches people to craft simple and elegant pine boxes.

He has written a book, "Critical Choices," to help people prepare for death. He has even sent one of his handmade pine caskets to Johnny Carson, who is using it as a wine cabinet until it can be put to its ultimate use.

"He said he'd leave a couple of bottles in the casket to take along for the trip," von Bracht said with a smile.

Carson's casket was one of von Bracht's first, built in 1973. Since then he has built or helped build countless pine boxes, many of which are used as bookshelves, gun cabinets, coffee tables or other furniture until needed.

"Some people think that if you buy your casket early, you're going to die right away," said von Bracht, who built his own 24 years ago. "There's no secret why people are scared of caskets; they remind you of your own death. We're a superstitious society; don't let anybody tell you different."

But for von Bracht, an interest in preparing for death, life's ultimate certainty, is the most natural thing in the world. He first became interested in funerals and the way we die 25 years ago while working as a correspondent for the Missoulian. Part of his job was to collect the obituaries from the Polson mortuary.

"They were... well...I guess you'd say disrespectful," von Bracht said of the morticians. "You know, making jokes over the bodies, that sort of thing. These people aren't priests, that's for sure. They're businessmen, salesmen, and good ones at that."

The entire funeral process, in fact, is little more than a business transaction, von Bracht said, as evidenced by the funeral he attended where the priest gave a eulogy for the wrong man.

The more von Bracht learned about the funeral process in general and funeral homes in particular, the more he became certain that his death and burial weren't going to be left in the hands of a funeral home director.

But when he mentioned that he wanted to be buried in a simple pine box, unembalmed, in the woods, the mortician was quick to answer, "well, you're out of luck son."

"He said I had to be embalmed, couldn't be buried in a pine box, and had to go to the cemetery," von Bracht said. "Ask for anything else, and they'll tell you no every time."

Two years later, von Bracht worked successfully to strike a 1947 state regulation that required a licensed embalmer to prepare the body for transport. For years, that regulation had been interpreted to mean a body must be embalmed before burial.

Currently, von Bracht plans on getting his wish, in a pine box under a forest canopy, and anyone, he said, can do the same.

So why don't they? According to von Bracht, the time surrounding death is consumed by overwhelming emotions, not the least of which is guilt, If you know grandpa left you a $50,000 life insurance policy, 'he said, you, might feel guilty if you didn't send him off with a $10,000 funeral, complete with formaldehyde embalming and a hermetically sealed casket.

"The undertaker's best friend is the insurance man," von Bracht said, "And his second best friend is the doctor."

According to von Bracht, a 15 year veteran of nursing, 90 percent of the medical costs accrued over a lifetime come during the first and last six months of life. An average of $100,000 is spent between diagnosis of a terminal illness and the time of death.

"That's $1 million for every 10 people in this room," he said, turning in a sweeping gesture of the crowded lunch counter. That money, he said, could be better spent on providing socialized health care, something all other developed countries offer their citizenry.

According to von Bracht, an, overwhelming majority of people, when surveyed, say they would rather not be kept alive if in a permanent coma state or unable to function.

Some doctors, however, are loathe to tell patients of their options, von Bracht said, as the high costs of treating such lingering terminal illnesses are lining the pocket of private hospitals.

"Where is it written that you have to die in a hospital with all those tubes?" he asked. "Where is it written that our bodies should be containers for five quarts of poison? Where is it written that a stranger should take away your loved ones and put them in a hermetically sealed coffin as part of a 'traditional funeral?' A traditional Montana funeral is a pine box in the back of a buckboard and a grave out on the plains or up in the woods. Too often it comes down to does Billy go to college or does grandpa have a $6,000 funeral."

In von Bracht's mind, the answer is simple, and grandpa's funeral will be a family affair.

And although the cost of the second of Benjamin Franklin's certainties, taxes, is bound to keep increasing, the price of death need not be much more than the cost of a pine box and two pennies for your eyes.

"If you do it the so-called modern way," he said, "you're cheating yourself out of more than money. You're cheating yourself out of an important slice of life.

April 1974


BACK TO THE TOMB
-Gerard Van Der Leun

The specter of change has begun to haunt one of the most solid of American industries, casket-making. The coffin establishment is being challenged by a group of young artisans that is taking the art back to basics of cost and design.

Until the late 1860's almost all burials in the U.S. employed either shrouds or "the basic British box." This coffin, made of plain oak, was tapered at the top and bottom and endowed with a minimum of ornament. In America, the Civil War accelerated public demand and the industry evolved while meeting the challenge. The trim, tapered shape of the coffin underwent a fairly rapid change and what emerged was a rounded rectangle.

This shape became the victim of stunted Corinthian columns applied to emphasize corners that had been smoothed out of existence. The interior was stuffed with tucked and pleated draperies surrounding innerspring mattresses and pillows.

Casket manufacturers, as many other industries in those days of unrestrained capitalism and economic boom, proliferated line after line of models whose designs were so saturated with neo-Classical and historic allusions that they became "traditional" at the moment of creation.

Today the design and aesthetic assumptions of the industry are essentially unchanged. Various applications of modern technology have merely perfected the product. The costs run from $200 to around $35,000. Caskets have become the backbone of an industry that grosses between $200 million and $300 million a year.

The major manufacturers are based almost entirely in the East. The largest of all is National Casket, located in Boston and reporting a gross business in fiscal 1972 of $24,442,000. National is fairly typical of the industry and was described by one of its executives as "the General Motors of casket companies, making everything from Chevrolets to Cadillacs."

National makes over sixty models in finely finished woods and metals. The form is the rounded rectangle with a gently domed lid.

National's Sarcophagus model, "for those who want the finest," sells for $35,000. The Sarcophagus is made of solid-cast, hand-rubbed bronze. Fit for kings and Pharaohs, it contains all the aesthetic flaws of the American casket and yet, through din of workmanship, material and understatement, transcends all of them. Like the Rolls Royce, it is very, very quiet. National sells four or five Sarcophagi each year.

The casket manufactured by the Rocky Mountain Casket Company of Whitefish, Montana is neither expensive nor pretentious. Its inspiration was a conversation that Ken Weber and Willy von Bracht had with some friends in the winter of 1971. At one point Weber mused, "I wonder what ever happened to the old pine box?" This generated amused speculation and then some rather solid ideas about starting a company to manufacture such a box.

Within six months, Gerry Gaiser, a cabinet-maker, made three prototypes. A small company was formed to produce the Rocky Mountain, dedicated to the concept that people "should not be made to feel cold or uncaring if they opt for economy and simplicity."

The casket is in the classic form, bereft of decoration and camouflage. It is handmade from Knotty pine or fir and comes sanded but unlined and unfinished. At the foot of the casket is a small ridge of wood that enables it to stand upright and slightly off the ground.

This wooded ridge is an essential part of the casket's design. Although Rocky Mountain makes only one model, it does provide an optional feature. The casket costs $125. For an extra $10.00 one can buy four shelves and two wine racks that fit into the interior.

Rocky Mountain's willingness to create a casket that has more than one function is the first major innovation in casket design for several hundred years.

Rocky Mountain's caskets have been used as wine closets, coffee tables, gun racks, stereo cabinets, hope chests, and, in one instance, as a phone booth. The unfinished caskets have been stained, painted with colors or murals, covered with fabrics and leatherwork and fitted with stained-glass windows.

The national response to the simple casket made by Rocky Mountain has created an increasing backlog on orders at the small shop in Whitefish. Willy von Bracht, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain group, has decided not to sell the caskets to stores of any kind since that would double the price. Von Bracht supplies the caskets by direct freight and frets over the freight charges, which may run as high as $45.

Rocky Mountain believes that "people deserve an alternative to the expensive ritual referred to as a funeral." Every casket comes with an informative book called A Manual of Simple Burial. The book contains advice on legal questions, the selection of memorial ceremonies, how to form a funeral society or cooperative and reflections on funeral rituals in the U.S. and their attendant expense.