6600 grave errors? At Arlington National Cemetery?-yourfuneralguy

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A Democratic senator is claiming there may been as many as 6,600 grave errors at Arlington National Cemetery.  This a sad story for the United States of America.

As government investigation of the ANC cemetery continues there is less tolerance for excuses.

Snippet:

Under hostile questioning from senators, two former top officials of Arlington National Cemetery acknowledged Thursday that they had been aware of problems for years with unmarked and mismarked graves and mishandled remains.

Former superintendent John C. Metzler said he accepted “responsibility for all my actions and for all of my team’s actions.”

Metzler and former assistant superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, who answered some questions but took the Fifth Amendment on most, had been subpoenaed to appear at the hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Operations subcommittee.

via www.kansascity.com

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by YOUR Funeral Guy

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National Funeral Directors need to dump Charlie Rangel|YourFuneralGuy

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Funeral Directors and the National Funeral Directors Association(NFDA) needed to cut all ties with Charlie Rangel the Congressman who is facing ethics charges in the US  House of Representatives.

The ethics committe has publically read the charges against him and they are not pretty.

Funeral Directors have kept him in their pocket for years.

about Rangal’s political donations received from funeral directors, John Fitch the chief Lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) said of Charles Rangal:

“Charlie likes funeral directors, and funeral directors like Charlie,” said John Fitch, of the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA):

via www.yourfuneralguy.com

Funeral Industry| Funeral News| Funeral blog  by your funeral guy

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Matthews International Distributing Green Cremation USA-No Patent|YourFuneralGuy

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The Funeral Corporation  Matthews International, Inc is distributing their Green Cremation-alkaline hydrolysis machine called Bio Cremation without a Patent . BIO SAFE  Engineering who is also selling a machine, holds the appropriate process patent. CycledLIFE and Eco Green-Cremation System claim to have a patent pending for their low pressure green or bio cremation alkaline hydrolysis machine.

This was all revealed in comments at this blog

1. matthewscremation July 29, 2010 at 2:03 pm

   “Interestingly the claim to hold the patent for the process along with all the other companies making Alkaline Hydrolysis Machines.”

   We do? Please let me know where you see that. The BIO Cremation unit is actually the brain-child of Sandy Sullivan, founder and director of Resomation based out of Scotland. Matthews just purchased the rights to sell these units. The article is posted to the new website – direct link is http://bio.matthewscremation.com/Portals/0/Documents/FSI%2011-10-2008.pdf

   If there is any place that says otherwise, please let me know and I will investigate the matter and correct or clarify where necessary. I appreciate that you’ve brought this to our attention.

   Thank You!

2. 

   cycledlife July 29, 2010 at 3:45 pm

   “claim to hold the patent”

   Do you happen to list the patent number(s)? I’ve never seen one listed on the Matthews Cremation site or the Resomation(R)LTD site.

   As you know there is a patent on high temperature systems: United States Patent 7,183,453 Wilson , et al. February 27, 2007.

   The lead inventor on this patent is Joe Wilson, the inventor of the CycledBurial(TM) systems. After working on high-temperature systems for 15 years, he invented a much better and less costly alkaline hydrolysis system. The prior art of high-temperature systems is obsolete.

   CycledLife’s CycledBurial(TM) system is patent pending. As such, it not patented. If we were to claim that our process were patented, while it was merely patent pending, we would be liable for fraud.

   We have information on the high-temperature patent on our website at http://cycledlife.com/aboutus.aspx.

3. 

   yourfuneralguy July 30, 2010 at 8:49 am

   It appears that Matthews Cremation has purchased the distribution rights in the USA, Through Sandy Sullivan of The UK(Resomation LTD) He has not given a patent number for the the USA, so how can he or you distribute in the USA? Sullivan has made verbal claims to the Patent Rights. But the patent number in the USA is not stated so how can he or you do distribution In The United States happen without a patent? Sullivan does claim he has a patent but how can he distribute in the USA? Are you not operating under his Patent?

   Are you not operating this process in the USA under a Resomation LTD patent claim?

   In Fact the patents in the USA Has been given To BIO SAFE Engineering.

4. 

   matthewscremation July 30, 2010 at 10:27 am

   Patents protect inventors and give them exclusive rights to make, use, sell and/or import. If an inventor doesn’t patent an item, it doesn’t mean they can’t sell it. It just means that they aren’t protecting their intellectual property. Someone could swoop in, copy their design and sell it under their own name.

   Exclusive distribution rights and patents are two seperate animals. We are not using a design that has been patented by anyone else so Matthews has every right to distribute the BIO Cremator to the states that have passed legislation to approve the disposal method.

5. 

   yourfuneralguy July 30, 2010 at 10:50 am

   “If an inventor doesn’t patent an item, it doesn’t mean they can’t sell it. It just means that they aren’t protecting their intellectual property. Someone could swoop in, copy their design and sell it under their own name.”

   The Wilson Patent is a process patent. You cannot just sell a funeral director a machine. Sullivan and Matthews will be making the funeral director liable(as well as themselves) for using the Machine This is subjecting the FD to unneeded liability, and/or a use fee. THIS WILL INCREASE CONSUMER COST! Tweaking the Machine does not get you out of the process patent.

   It appears that you have admitting to distributing the machine without a patent.

   Funeral Industry, Funeral News, Funerall Blog by Your Funeral Guy

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Matthews International Bio cremation Website Revealed-YourFuneralGuy

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Matthews  International has revealed a bio cremation Website or a website explaining it’s version of Green Cremation, alkaline hydrolysis.

UPDATE: July 30th, 2010, Matthews Cremation has admitted to distributing their machine without a proper patent. Although the other three distributors have patents or patents pending for their respective processes. Sandy Sullivan has made some references to a patent but evidently he does not have one

Interestingly the claim to hold the patent for the process along with all the other companies making Alkaline Hydrolysis Machines.

Our BIO Cremation website just went live last night. We hope it will help to dispell some of the myths surrounding the alkaline hydrolysis process and accelerate state legislation. Please check out http://www.biocremation.info

I heartily concur in regards to the statement above – until someone creates a way to have the body disappear into a cloud of marshmallow-scented sparkles, the decompsition process is going to be icky at best – no matter how you do it. Best thing anyone can do is pick a method that uses least amount of resources, doesn’t harm the earth and also gives survivors the opportunity to create the closure they need.

via yourfuneralguy.wordpress.com

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

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Folks with Preneed Policies at NPS Funeral Home lose all?|YourFuneralGuy

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Folks with Preneed policies at the National Prearranged Services Funeral Home in Missouri may have lost it all. It is a fact that  all the monies in prepaid funerals at Washington Forever Funeral Home in Missouri are gone.  There is the possiblity that some customers of Washington Forever Funeral Home may get some credits from two area Kansas City Funeral Homes Charter Funerals and Speaks Legacy Chapels, but the details are a bit vague.

It was stated by the Missouri Attorney General that folks who bought a preneed policy at the Independence, Missouri Funeral Home will have to get their funeral somewhere else. The total estimates in the NPS Preneed  Funeral Scams are between 600 Million and   1 billion dollars. This is significant enough warning  for anyone not to put their funeral cost money into a prepaid funeral

The Missouri attorney general’s office Tuesday issued recommendations for those who purchased prepaid funeral plans from a now-closed Independence funeral home.

Consumers who purchased a plan from Mount Washington Forever Funeral Home will need to make new arrangements at another funeral home, according to the office.

Last week, two Kansas City area funeral homes firms, Charter Funerals and Speaks Family Legacy Chapels, offered to issue possible credits to those customers.

Anyone still paying on such plans purchased through Mount Washington Forever, the attorney general release said, “should stop making payments.”

via www.kansascity.com

Funeral Industry|Funeral News Funeral Blog by Your  Funeral Guy

Chicago-Skokie SCI Cemetery Flag, Memorial Mess-Your Funeral Guy

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Service Corporation International has a created another graveside flap, this time it is not just over grave momentos but flying flags, at a war hero’s grave. A new Manager came to Memorial Park  Cemetery in December 2009 and has told the mother and father to take (at least one of the )flags at the site down.

Skokie, Ill. – The father of a soldier from Skokie has made a deal with a cemetery that will allow him to continue to fly an American flag over his son’s grave.

Last week, Memorial Park in Skokie told Elie Bitton that he had to remove the ten foot flag poles that bookended the monument to his son Albert Bitton, or the cemetery would do it for him.

Army Corporal Bitton was killed by a roadside bomb in 2008, and for the past two and a half years the poles have flown an American flag and an MIA/POW flag on either side of the black granite headstone.

His father visits the grave three times a day, and there has never been a problem until last week when the cemetery’s new manager Ron Graeff told him the flags and the flowers around the grave site would have to go because they didn’t conform to the rules and regulations.

Graeff had only been in charge since December 2009, so he could not say why no one told Bitton the flag poles were too tall when he put them in. The cemetery’s regulations do not permit any memorials taller than four feet.

“After two and a half years, you’re gonna tell me what to do, the flag is down or not. He’s an anti-American, it’s an anti-American, because if it was really an American he would never said that,” an outraged Elie Bitton told Fox Chicago News at the cemetery.

via chicagopressrelease.com

After 2.5  years and telling the family to take the graves down? The world’s largest funeral corporation continued inconsistent enforcement of their  cemetery policies. The Illinois Cemetery Oversight Act will not be much help this matter, although the family has contacted the Department Of Veterans Affairs. Service Corporation International, NYSE:SCI is known by some as big death and the evil funeral empire.

This story was featured on July 28th 2010, on the Fox News Channel Americas News room. Death care Scandals at SCI Have become quite common over the past Several Years.

Funeral industry, Funeral News, Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

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Funeral Industry Decline-Independents-Your Funeral Guy

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The American Funeral Industry profits have been cut in half over the last 20 years, this is a steep log term industry decline.

We are 10 years into the 21st Century and many funeral homes are just moving into effective websites and social media strategies. The rise of cremation and the current economic enviroment is accelerating the decline.

The decline in the funeral industry has been coming for quite a while and it has provided a great opportunity for folks to save on funeral cost.

The Federated Funeral Directors of America, an accounting firm for independently owned funeral homes, found that in the past 20 years, its clients’ profit margins have been cut nearly in half. Yet the $11 billion funeral industry, dominated by family owned & operated funeral homes, commanding 89% of the death care market, has been slow to make the necessary adjustments in order to meet consumer demand and the growing popularity of non-traditional services. Not at all surprising that  it has almost become a cliche that “the funeral industry is the last industry to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.”

via mylifeindeath.com

Funeral Industry|funeral news|funeral blog by your funeral guy



Bill Murray, Robert Duvall, Funeral Movie “Get Low”|YourFuneralGuy

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This week the long awaited funeral movie “Get Low ” with Bill Murray and Robert Duvall will be in the theaters. This is a movie about a man in the 1930’s who attended his own Funeral.

This movie will surprise some because it is a bit of a comedy and more of a thriller. The movie will educate many about the Funeral Process and about funerals in general. It is about staging one’s own mock funeral.

His new film, “Get Low,” opening Friday, stars Robert Duvall as an old hermit who wants to have his funeral service while he’s alive, so he can hear what people have to say.

The still-luminous Sissy Spacek is a woman from Duvall’s past; Murray is the slightly slick undertaker who puts the whole thing together.

It was, obviously, one of those rare scripts that actually got to Murray and that he liked well enough to sign up for. The famously no-fuss star even bought his own plane ticket to the shoot, arriving in rural Georgia sans entourage. (“He doesn’t even have any people,” I overhear someone marveling later, after the premiere.)

To Hollywood types, this is enough to mark Murray as a grade-A eccentric. To Murray — who lives quietly in upstate New York — it’s the only way to stay normal.

via www.nj.com

Funeral industry| funeral news funeral blog by Your Funeral Guy,

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Senate Hearings on Arlington National Cemetery this week-yourfuneralguy

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Arlington National Cemetery investigation is to continue this week.The problem of losing track of over 200 graves will  be addressed. Management at the cemetery dropped the ball in not setting up a digital record system to keep track of graves.

“Senators will hear testimony from Army officials next week in the ongoing controversy over the troubling mismanagement allegations at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on Contract Oversight will address the findings of a months-long Army investigation, which revealed a “dysfunctional” management system, flawed recordkeeping and more than 200 mismarked graves at the military burial site.

via thehill.com“-

Funeral industry|Funeral News| Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

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Tombstone Recession-YourFuneralGuy

The expert agrees that that the rise of cremation has instituted a Funeral Industry decline and and a tombstone recession. People are buying less burial plots and fewer gravestones. Folks trying to sell their own burial spaces  are having a hard time doing just that!

It is no secret that the economy has hurt funeral homes and cemeteries and caused people to turn to cremation.

This is  not good news for the traditional Funeral. It is good news for those folks that offer cremation services and sell cremation goods and services.

After advertising the space for a year,the Lemons have attracted no buyers.

“We’re not trying to get rich,” said Clinton Lemons, 82. “We’re just trying to get rid of the lots. It’s kind of like trying to sell a home.”

The demand for cemetery plots and mausoleums is lower than it has been in years and it’s a buyer’s market, says Robert Fells, attorney for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association in Sterling, Va. The group represents more than 7,400 cemeteries, funeral homes, crematoriums and other death care service providers in the USA.

Though no industrywide statistics are available about the glut of cemetery plots, Fells says there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence.

“People are buying less burial property,” he said. “There’s a growing surplus.”

via www.usatoday.com

Funeral Industry | Funeral  News|Funeral Blog Funeral News by Your Funeral Guy