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ICFA Past President John Llewellyn, CCE, president and CEO of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries, Glendale, California, left, welcomes His Holiness the Dalai Lama, right, and Lama Gyatso to the cemetery in 2001. The Dalai Lama was there to bless a three-dimensional mandala, a Tibetan sculpture intended to promote nonviolence.
Author John Llewellyn
Talks About
"Saying Goodbye Your Way:
Planning or Buying a Funeral or Cremation for Yourself or Someone You Love"
Editor's note: Click here for a review of "Saying Goodbye Your Way." Click here to enter the ICFA Online Store and buy a copy of the book.
You've been active in the ICFA, but tell us about your experience in the industry.
I've been with Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries for over 30 years and have been CEO since 1988. But, in a sense, I guess I've been in the industry all my life. My great-uncle Hubert Eaton began selling cemetery property preneed in 1912. He opened the first cemetery/mortuary combination in 1933. My father succeeded him as CEO in 1966. So my family has deep roots in both the cemetery and funeral sides of the industry. I've been president of the Interment Association of California as well as the ICFA.
Forest Lawn now has five cemetery/mortuary combination operations conducting about 11,000 interments and 8,000 funeral services a year. Despite our large size, we face the same challenges with changing consumer preferences and perceptions as do all ICFA members. We've found that consumer satisfaction tends to go hand-in-hand with the quality of information they receive about available options.
Who is the target audience for this book?
"Saying Goodbye Your Way" was written for consumers. It's about helping consumers celebrate the end of life for themselves or someone they love in a way that is meaningful for them. By providing detailed information about options for Ceremonies and how they may be personalized, "Saying Goodbye Your Way" puts them in control of their cremation and funeral arrangements, whether it is a simple service or a traditional funeral ritual.
The information about prearrangement options and discussion of factors to consider when buying ahead of time allow consumers to make informed decisions. The book shows consumers how to say goodbye their way, whether they are planning for the future, contemplating an imminent death or dealing with a death that has just occurred.
The book's subtitle is "Planning or Buying a Funeral or Cremation for Yourself or Someone You Love." This seems to put "funeral" and "cremation" in an either/or position, which some funeral professionals would disagree with. Why was it worded that way?
In the book, I try to approach the subject from the consumer's point of view rather than using the language that funeral professionals might use. While a funeral director might correctly point out that cremation is only a process and doesn't mean there can't be a service, consumers do use the term in a much more all-encompassing sense.
In consumers' minds, cremation has evolved from being shorthand for a practical disposition to being an alternative to a funeral, even though it may have some sort of Ceremony or ritual included in it. There is some evidence that cremation consumers fear that they'll be treated as second-class customers when they go to a traditional mortuary.
I noticed that you don't use the term "death care" in the book. Is there a reason for that?
Consumers don't use the term "death care." Personally, I think it is a terrible term. "Death care" is a term the investment community latched onto, because it gave them an easy label to categorize the publicly traded firms.
How do you think consumers view the industry?
It's fairly clear that most consumers don't understand the difference between cemeteries and funeral providers. This is somewhat like the way they view the health care system. Consumers don't focus on the fact that hospitals, pharmacies, doctors, nurses, skilled nursing facilities and so on are all licensed separately—they're all just part of health care.
Most people don't understand the fact that cemeteries, funeral homes, embalmers, funeral directors and salespeople may all be licensed separately. The licensing schemes are the creation of political forces and industry pressure to lessen competition. Consumers don't care about that; they just want to be dealt with openly and honestly.
Throughout the book you use the term Ceremony with a capital "C." Why did you do that?
For many consumers, "funeral" has become a loaded word; a funeral is perceived as a rigid ritual that has little flexibility. Many consumers are embracing the concept of "life celebrations" as an alternative to a traditional funeral. Also, some consumers choose memorial services over a funeral. Because of the many terms now being used to describe a final ritual, I started using the term Ceremony to cover all types of services and ways of saying goodbye.
Are there any changes in particular that you have noticed in your years at Forest Lawn?
The thing which I think everybody in both the cemetery and the funeral businesses is finding is that consumer preferences are changing and are still evolving. After decades of being relatively consistent with a "traditional" funeral—whatever that means—consumers have embraced the idea of rather than a funeral being a sad ritual, of it being something that celebrates the life of the person who passed away. How that plays out is still evolving.
Particularly in an area like Los Angeles where we're dealing with so many cultures, a tremendous melting pot, we're very conscious of the fact that people from different ethnic or national backgrounds look at the world differently from the traditional WASP market. They have the same emotions but want different ways of expressing them.
What the book is really all about is helping consumers understand the process and the options and then saying, "OK, as an informed consumer, you can have it your way, you can have whatever you want, whether it is something very traditional, steeped in the tenets of your religion, or something which other people may see as far out."
How do you think consumers will use the book?
In a prearrangement context, "Saying Goodbye Your Way" provides information about options for Ceremonies, gives a framework in which to discuss saying goodbye and encourages spouses to talk to spouses, parents to talk to adult children and children to bring up the subject of funerals with aging parents. The result is that families benefit from knowing about the wishes of people they love.
The book is designed with a detailed table of contents and an index so that people can read only the sections in which they are interested. This could be particularly important to families making at-need arrangements or to families where a death is pending. At that time, they don't have any interest in prearrangement but do want and need information about the options available to them. This book should help them make choices that are right for them.
Even though the book is just out, I recently heard from someone who had planned to read the book while on vacation. He ended up canceling his vacation plans to travel to see his mother, who had just been hospitalized. When she passed away several weeks later, he found himself having to make at-need arrangements. He wrote to tell me how having read the book made it much easier to go through the arrangement process.
Was there a particular point of view that you tried to use in the book?
Absolutely. I wanted to give consumers the power to choose how they would like a Ceremony to be, whether for themselves or for someone they love. I want to help them to be in control of the process. So I tried to explain what their options were and to suggest that they should feel free to ask questions.
For consumers, information is power. When a consumer feels that the person or firm they're dealing with has the upper hand by having more information, they worry that they'll be taken advantage of. But when consumers understand their options, they will not only make decisions that are better for themselves, they'll also tend to be more satisfied with those decisions.
How do you think your position as an executive of a large cemetery and funeral operation affects your advice?
For the most part, I think consumers are pretty smart. Most of the time, they recognize biases in sources of information. Any time they feel that they're only getting part of the story, they're bound to be a little skeptical.
I can understand why someone might wonder about a book I've written, but as they read it, I think they will find that I've tried to show them what their options are for planning and buying Ceremonies. To the extent possible, I've tried to be non-judgmental. Because "Saying Goodbye Your Way" gives options and perspectives with a goal of people being able to do it "their way" rather than being told what they should do, I believe that it will have credibility.
How would cemetery or funeral home operators use this book?
Although "Saying Goodbye Your Way" is just out, I've heard of it being used to orient new employees and suppliers to the industry. Also, several industry executives have said that they plan on using it as a gift for people who attend prearrangement seminars.
Progressive cemeteries and funeral homes will appreciate anything that helps consumers, but there may very well be some industry members who feel that it puts too much information in consumers' hands. Consumer-oriented firms realize that well-informed consumers are generally more satisfied with their decisions.
Where is the book available?
It's available now to ICFA members through the ICFA, either through the on-line store or by phone at 1-800-645-7700. "Saying Goodbye Your Way" has been chosen for the Independent Publishers Group's fall catalog, so this fall it will be available to consumers in bookstores, on-line retailers, and libraries.
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Copyright ICFA 2004
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