By Truman Lewis
ConsumerAffairs.com
April 5, 2009
The bodies of veterans headed for burial at Arlington National Cemetery were often left to rot in unrefrigerated garages and hallways of a Northern Virginia funeral home operated by Houston-based Service Corporation International (SCI), the nation's largest chain of funeral homes, The Washington Post reported.
National Funeral Home in Falls Church, Va., acts as a regional clearing house for four other SCI-owned funeral homes in Virginia and Maryland. The facility is so overwhelmed that bodies brought there for embalming, cosmetic treatment and storage are often stacked and left in hallways, unrefrigerated storage rooms, a garage and other inappropriate storage areas, according to a former employee who complained to state officials and reporters.
Former trooper Steven Napper complained for months to his employers about conditions at the funeral home. He documented his complaints with photos and detailed notes, eventually turning to state authorities and the Post when SCI failed to act, the newspaper reports said.
Napper said that at times, as many as 200 leaking, decomposing corpses were left in makeshift quarters, an account substantiated by the son of a retired Army colonel who insisted on accompanying his deceased father's corpse to the funeral home.
Ronald Federici, 53, a child neuropsychologist, said he followed a removal van carrying his father's body and was surprised by the "horrific stench" of decomposition that wafted out from a garage door behind the funeral home.
"Bodies were lying buck naked all over the place. There was no dignity whatsoever. It was disgusting, degrading and humiliating," Federici told the Post.
The driver of the van Federici followed was Keith Stringfield, 36, a licensed funeral director. Stringfield told the Post he and other drivers were instructed to leave bodies in the garage if the coolers were full. Stringfield said he has spoken to state investigators about conditions at the facility.
"You don't leave a body uncovered. You don't let a body leak. You don't leave a body on a stretcher in the garage," Stringfield said in the Post report.
Arlington National Cemetery refuses to accept coffins for burial if they are emitting an odor or leaking fluids, but Napper said the funeral home got around the problem by covering bodies with an industrial-strength deodorant. What was happening "just wasn't right," said Napper, who has since found a job at a locally-owned funeral home.
A spokeswoman for the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors said the agency could not confirm that it was conducting an investigation and could not discuss specific allegations.
It would not be the first state investigation of the facility. In June 2008, it was cited for keeping inadequate records and an unsanitary preparation room, and for operating without a license or manager, according to the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers' Web site. The funeral home was fined $13,000 and placed on probation for three years.
An SCI spokesman said the company's policies call for the "highest standards and professional behavior" and "would not tolerate" the kind of behavior Napper and others described.
SCI
In a 2001 class action lawsuit in Florida, relatives of three people buried in Jewish cemeteries accused SCI of desecrating remains -- breaking open burial vaults and dumping the contents in the woods, crushing vaults to make room for others, mixing body parts from different individuals and digging up and reburying remains in locations other than the plots purchased.
The lawyer handling the case for the families, Neal Hirschfeld, said he had heard from hundreds of other families who were concerned about their deceased relatives' treatment in five South Florida cemeteries controlled by SCI.
"We've already heard from more than 500 other families who are wondering what might have happened to their loved ones," Mr. Hirschfeld told The New York Times. "It's hard to describe how painful and difficult it has been for families to hear that they scooped up remnants of people whose spaces they needed and tossed them in the woods."
In one case cited in the lawsuit, a former gravedigger at a West Palm Beach SCI cemetery said he had been told to dig up the grave of Hyman Cohen and to throw anything he dug up in the woods in back of the cemetery. Among the remains found in the woods have been bones, a burial shroud and a Star of David necklace. The plot was then used for the burial of Frances Gold, the gravedigger said.
The lawsuit was blamed for the apparent suicide of an SCI funeral home manager, Peter Hartmann, 45, found slumped over in his company-owned car in his parents' garage in December 2001. Hartmann's wife said he was distraught over the lawsuit and the alleged mishandling of remains by his employer.
Decreased competition
In 1999, SCI agreed to sell three of its Jewish funeral homes in New York City after the state attorney general charged that the company dominated the market for Jewish funeral services.
SCI had been acquiring independently owned Jewish funeral parlors in the city for nearly 30 years, and as competition has decreased because of its acquisitions, has been charging higher fees for services and caskets, then-attorney general Eliot Spitzer said.
"It's difficult enough to bury a loved one without having to pay unfairly high prices on top of it," Spitzer said.
Founded in 1962, SCI operates 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in 46 states, eight Canadian provinces and Pureto Rico. Its Web site boasts of "robust cash flows" that it says have enabled the company to provide "North America's finest death care services."
