Kelley Firm - March Newsletter

MARCH 2022 CHARACTER | HARD WORK | COMPASSION KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER WRONGFUL DEATHS – 18 WHEELER ACCIDENTS – PERSONAL INJURIES 1 (800) 498-KELLEY (5355) | WWW.KELLEYFIRM.COM

AA Rayner & Sons Funeral Home Interview Everyone should have a role model, a hero in their life. Someone ther called a family meeting and asked me and my siblings to who has been a visionary or difference maker and has shown enter into the family funeral business. Sure, the funeral business you what it means to impact the lives of others. It is not easy has been around me all my life. But I never, never wanted to be stepping in the shoes of an icon --- its like stepping on hallowed involved. Quiet as its kept, I was somewhat scared of the whole ground. You never think you can be that great or make that kind funeral thing. So having to be involve, I knew my answer would of impact. I, Pamela C. Rayner, was fortunate to have someone be NO. Well, it didn’t work out that way. I became the “chosen like this. A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home was established in one”. I went and graduated from Worsham College in 1986. And Chicago, Illinois in 1947 by my grandfather, Ahmed to this day, I am so glad I was. A. Rayner, Sr. My grandfathers funeral homes was a place where I personally give value, compassion and respect to each family I grieving families could come and receive the “personal care” he service. Everyone is treated like family. To this day, I have fami- would provide during a very difficult time, regardless of stature lies that only want to see me. It’s a blessing, I’m glad to have. I’m in life, race or faith. He set a standard of service that is still the also glad we have the best staff and embalmers too. backbone of our success. If you come to A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home, you will feel As kids, my father, (second generation) would take and pick us the difference from other funeral homes. We have an uniqueness up from school in a hearse. We lived over the 7l5t. Chapel funeral all our own. home. My parents developed “quiet hour” for us between 7 and 8pm, when the visitations would be going on downstairs. When I am at the cemetery, after I’ve said something pertaining to the deceased. I usually say something like, “as you can tell, I am a third generation funeral director at A.A. Rayner and Sons I’m not like the typical funeral director. I joke and laugh with the Funeral Home, who wanted to take another path until my hero, family. And if I made one of the most painful and unforgetting “Big Daddy” my grandfather, called a family gathering to get my moment and little more baring to handle, then I’ve done my job. generation on the same page. My grandfather and father would be proud. I always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I was entering my third year at National College of Education, when my grandfa- KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER

FUNERAL HOMES STRUG- GLE TO KEEP UP WITH LOUISIANA’S COVID SURGE: ‘WE’RE DOUBLING OUR NORM’ Pierre Cobb walked through one of two empty, air-conditioned The state’s newest surge hasn’t been easy on anyone, but for the chapels at Baton Rouge’s Winnfield Funeral Home while de- dozens of funeral home directors in the especially overwhelmed scribing the logistics of hosting a drive-by funeral in the age of greater Baton Rouge area, it’s a reality they never could have COVID-19. fathomed. It was a rare quiet moment for the director, who spent the better While hospital beds throughout Louisiana continue to fill with part of the past two months in a near-constant cycle of meetings, COVID patients, government and media focus has, for the most embalming and funerals as the pandemic’s vicious fourth wave part, remained firmly centered around healthcare workers and grips the state thanks to the highly contagious delta variant. their efforts to save the living. “The initial wave was overwhelming, and then it kind of calmed Behind the scenes, however, COVID’s grim statistics are taking KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER down,” Cobb said. “Now there’s this increase and it’s a lot more their toll on even those accustomed to dealing with death, leaving young people. It’s breathtaking.” some funeral home employees to say they feel invisible on the pandemic’s front line. From July 4 through the end of the past week, East Baton Rouge reported 180 deaths from COVID-19 — nearly 20 percent of the “We have every reason to believe that the funeral directors who parish’s 930 total deaths since the pandemic began in March moved the cemetery back in the 1950s did a thoughtful and 2020 — and its victims are getting younger. thorough job,” Crum wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times. In a statement, Crum said he does not believe there are any bodies According to the Louisiana Department of Health, Louisianans buried on the site. ages 5 to 17 make up the largest bulk of COVID cases at nearly 20 percent. The next-highest percentage of cases are those ages 18 “Everybody’s focused on the front line and whatnot, but not the to 29 and 30 to 39, both at 16 percent. ones dealing with the bodies,” said Cedrick L. Lawson, who works 3

alongside Cobb as an assistant manager. He said morgues have become so crowded, hospitals will sometimes call his home even before a patient dies to make sure someone can come pick up the body quickly and make space for the next. Both say they were drawn to this business because they like to comfort people, but even that has become a challenge thanks to COVID-19 safety restrictions that enforce strict social distancing measures. Before the pandemic, Bobby Suchman of Seale Funeral Home in Denham Springs estimated his home took 40 to 50 calls in a given month, maybe 60 during a particularly busy time. In August, they fielded more than 100.“We’ve been averaging in the mid-80s for the past eight to 10 months since COVID really became prevalent,” Suchman said. “We’re doubling our norm.” Although hospitals don’t always provide a cause of death for patients, he estimates about half of those numbers are COVID-re- lated, noting it’s been difficult juggling the drastic increase in calls with a decrease in facility and staff availability thanks to state-mandated COVID precautions. His home is only offering two services a day, one at 10 a.m. and one at 2 p.m., in order to give the staff enough time to properly clean the facility and sanitize for COVID. KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER “The increased number of families but the decreased number of dad’s in the hospital with COVID and so is mom, so we’re waiting service times has put a strain on everybody, the families included, for mom to pass away because they say it’s going to be this week because they’re having to delay services due to the availability of and we’re going to do a double funeral,” she said. “Those are the staff at our facilities,” he said. ones that really get you.” He added that about 50 to 60 percent of his services are crema- Stephens’ funeral home tracks calls yearly. In a typical year, she tions, which helps ease demand when it comes to how quickly said, they get an average of 500 calls. Although she didn’t have burials need to take place, but even still, he and his staff have the numbers for 2020 and it’s too soon to know for 2021, “it’s defi- been working around the clock to keep up with the seemingly nitely increased,” she said. To cope with their stressful new reality, endless flow of customers. Cobb said it’s essential for funeral directors to practice self-care. Generally his home’s hours of operation run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., “Sometimes you have to take that day off and not worry about but the previous night, Suchman said he stayed until well past 10 (being) here,” he said. “A lot of times, as funeral directors, we p.m. to complete a mountain of paperwork.He came in the next don’t want to do that because we’re always thinking about the day at 5 a.m. to do it all again next family that’s coming in. ‘They’re going to need me, or the place can’t run without me if I’m not there. Of course when this “Last year we saw all the numbers come across the TV,” pandemic came, it was overwhelming, but at the same time we Schuman said. “We saw the press conferences and everything were still doing what we had to do.” “Even though there was a huge number of (deaths) last year, it seems to be much more in your face now, so to speak.” However, Lawson argues more than anything else, funeral homes in areas hit especially hard by the pandemic need support in Like Suchman, Cobb and Lawson, Rachael Stephens, director of providing employees with essential safety supplies. Green Oaks Funeral Home in Baton Rouge, said the amount of business she’s seeing has doubled in recent months. “We really need our government, local, state and federal, to move us from the bottom of the totem pole and include us with the What stands out to her is the number of families forced to bury nurses, the doctors, everyone else,” he said. “We’re the last ones multiple loved ones at once to deal with the body before it’s interred or cremated, and we’re still traumatized.” “Just in the past week, I’ve met with families where literally every- one in the family has COVID, so we’re waiting to do services, or 4

ONE AND 100: MONTE MADDOX, FUNERAL HOME OPER ATIONAL MANAGER Instead, he’s helping the community mourn, planning Many of the families Maddox serves struggle to pay the funerals for mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters — unexpected bills associated with a COVID death. For that, sometimes just a week apart. Maddox directs them to seek out federal funding from FEMA to help cover the costs. Within three days, Phillips-Riley Funeral Home, where Mad- dox is the operational manager, had 13 services planned. “Honestly, in the Black community, a lot of people don’t have life insurance,” Maddox said. “Sometimes they have “Before COVID, we were doing seven to eight funerals in to get the money the best way they can. We wanted them a week,” he said, leaned against the doorway of a parlor to know that if they needed assistance, the assistance was room prepped for a viewing. “Now, we’re doing seven to there. We wanted to be one of those firms that didn’t keep eight funerals in a day.” that a secret.” Sitting in the heart of west Montgomery, Phillips-Riley predominately serves the local Black community, which, like many across the country, has been disproportionally affected by the pandemic. KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER 5

THE SHEPHERD OF BLACK GRIEF IN MINNEAPOLIS KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER This funeral director has buried Jamar Clark, George Floyd “At what point would a 12-year-old cause such a threat that you would feel and Daunte Wright. It’s the names you don’t know that now the need to just gun him down?” Wesley wondered aloud. “It’s so senseless trouble him. and unnecessary and unwarranted. My anger comes from the why. Why do you continuously do this? Why? Why?” Tracy Wesley stood near his hearse in the parking lot of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in north Minneapolis, In the church parking lot, though, there was no time for soul-searching. knowing this crisp fall morning would soon turn into a stew of Wesley had a job to do. Inside the church, one more grieving family was grief and anger. waiting for him. The day before, Wesley had embalmed then dressed the At his funeral home in the heart of Black Minneapolis, Wesley serves as a young body that now lay inside the church. Wesley had slept shepherd of Black grief. The 55-year-old father of two cuts a striking and poorly, which is typical before draining days like these, then distinguished figure, showing up to work in an array of three-piece suits and read Bible verses over coffee. In his 35 years at Estes Funeral fedoras. His baritone voice is at once booming and reassuring. His graying Chapel, where Wesley serves as funeral director and CEO, he beard is well-kept, as dignified and soothing as his presence when families has directed thousands of funerals and borne witness to any walk into his funeral home on a street named after his uncle: Richard Estes number of traumas in Minneapolis’ Black community. But Avenue. funerals like today’s, for a 12-year-old boy gunned down on his first day of sixth grade, hit hardest. The family was inside, viewing the boy’s body. Security shooed away media. One man out front wore a bullet-resis- tant vest. Wesley sometimes knows in advance of potential gang violence at funerals, and although that was not the case this morning, he always knows it’s possible: A few months before, Wesley was caught in the midst of a fatal shooting moments after a funeral. Wesley cannot comprehend how we have gotten to this point: We as Minneapolis residents, as Americans, as humans. He’s done funerals for Black men whose names have become synonymous with a nationwide movement for police reform, names like Jamar Clark, George Floyd, Daunte Wright. But he’s also directed funerals for scores of young people slain in gang-related violence. He hates that even the most tragic of these names — like 6-year-old Aniya Allen or 9-year-old Trinity Ottoson-Smith, both shot and killed earlier this year — tend to be forgotten. His up-close view of Minneapolis’ skyrocketing homicide rate, which is approaching its mid-1990s record, stirs up all sorts of emotions: of lives of deprivation that lead youth toward gangs, of gun culture running rampant on the streets, of broken homes in broken neighborhoods, of the frayed relationship between police and the Black community. 6

Last summer, Wesley found himself thrust into the middle of the homicides than in the city’s other four precincts. So far in 2021, most visible moment of Black trauma in a generation. 35 of the city’s 78 homicides occurred here. While nearly half the city’s homicides this year have happened in the Fourth Precinct, Wesley put on three funerals for George Floyd: in Minnesota, other parts of the city have been virtually unscathed. The Second North Carolina and Texas. In one sense, Wesley was doing what Precinct, in northeast Minneapolis, has seen three homicides this he’s done thousands of times since he moved here in 1985 to year. The Fifth Precinct, in southwest Minneapolis, has seen five. work for this community pillar his uncle founded 60 years ago. He embalmed the body. He organized services. He tried to light- This comes as Minneapolis creeps closer to a record no one en the family’s pain. wants broken. In 1995, 97 people were killed during an era that earned the city an ignominious nickname: “Murderapolis.” But never before had a funeral taken on this symbolic weight. Rev. Al Sharpton called. Armed security guarded his funeral Wesley remembers those days vividly. He had grown up outside home once the body was inside. Realizing how volatile the Kansas City, his father the first Black elementary school principal politics had become, Wesley packed his Glock 9-millimeter pistol in Olathe, his mother a General Motors factory worker. When his for the drive to take Floyd’s body to North Carolina — until movie family visited the Twin Cities, they’d stop by his uncle’s funeral mogul Tyler Perry chartered a jet. home. Young Tracy would often disappear. They’d find him in the chapel, staring at bodies laid out for services. “This was something bigger than just a funeral,” he said. “From when I was 6,” he said, “I knew this was what I was sup- Wesley was horrified by the video of Minneapolis police officer posed to do. You know how ministers say God called upon them Derek Chauvin killing Floyd. He’d watched previous videos of to preach? I felt like God said to me, ‘You should be in the funeral Black men killed by police — Eric Garner in New York, Walter Scott business.’ “ in South Carolina — but this was different. Maybe the look on Chauvin’s face. Maybe the interminable length of Floyd’s suffer- Wesley had been ring bearer in his uncle’s wedding in 1972, and ing. Maybe just the proximity. To Wesley, it symbolized a lack of his uncle would continue as a commanding presence. Wesley accountability for how police treat Black men. admired his dedication to north Minneapolis. “My husband stayed here when everyone else left,” said Estes’ widow, April Estes.Being The movement that picked up steam after Floyd’s murder is, a funeral director is part art, part science, part pastoral care. Wes- Wesley believes, righteous and just. This time, he believes there’s ley loves embalming — he is the only licensed embalmer at Estes momentum to affect real change. Police accountability is a Funeral Chapel — and he believes families appreciate a loved one nuanced issue, Wesley said; he’s only had respectful interactions laid out as lifelike as possible. (Wesley embalmed and dressed his with police, and he believes defunding Minneapolis police would own parents. It felt like therapy, he said, “the very last act of love I hurt the Black community most of all. But he’s heard enough can give them.”) The core of his calling, though, is a grief minister stories about police treatment of young Black men to recognize who gives families a memorable “homegoing” for a loved one. something big needs fixing. But it’s one thing burying an 80-year-old after a long, fruitful life. “Nothing much is different,” he said. “It’s just that people are Those deaths feel natural, and Wesley knows those funerals can seeing it.”But there’s another problem, too, plaguing his world: be cathartic celebrations. What’s unnatural is lives cut short by Gang-related violence upending his neighborhood. “This is stuff senseless violence. I never thought about doing when I got into this,” Wesley said. “It was never to this degree.” And Wesley is stumped at the lack of momentum to fix that problem. Two blocks from Estes Funeral Chapel is the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fourth Precinct headquarters surrounded by chain- link fences. Police in Minneapolis’ northwest section, a hub for gang violence in Minneapolis, respond to far more shootings and KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER 7

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ONE AND 100: TE RNISHA SMITH, FUNERAL DIRECTOR They’re hosting a funeral for a 24-year-old woman today, The service is also one of many — they’ve gone from seven to eight services KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER welcoming softly sobbing family members into R.S. Lewis per week to 20 or 30. “Things have changed drastically, especially with our and Sons Funeral Home in Memphis. volume number,” Smith said. Cemeteries are booked. Doctors are swamped with signing off on cremations. Ternisha Smith, funeral director, wears a black dress, a green face mask and pearl earrings. In the empty chapel, she “A lot of us, we can’t visit families how we used to because we’re around so greets the pastor with a hug, then takes down the livestream many people we don’t want to expose them to whatever we may have been equipment left from another service. She sprays the body exposed to,” she said. Saturdays are the busiest days. There are six services with perfume, saying she wants it to smell nice for the family. on an upcoming Saturday. She puts on some gospel music to play in the hallways. “It’s been quite, I’m not going to say difficult, but it’s been different,” Smith Then, she helps usher the family from an adjacent room into said. the chapel, handing them programs and guiding them to their seats after they view their loved one. There aren’t as many v family members as there would have been if this service had been held pre-COVID-19. 9

Funeral directors hold Stop the Violence demonstra- tion in Las Vegas The Funeral Directors and Morticians Association of Nevada is said Courtney Hemphill from Giddens Memorial Chapel. raising awareness of an increase in murders since 2020. Grief counselors were offered by the funeral homes that partic- The group organized a Stop the Violence demonstration on ipated. Funeral arrangers there said the event is to raise aware- Sunday. The peaceful march and procession of ness that they can also can offer support after a death. hearses started near Owens and H Street, brining together funer- al directors and families who have lost a loved one to violence in the valley. According to Las Vegas police, the community has seen a 67% increase in murders compared to last year. “We’ve had alone in our funeral home this year we’ve had over 50 homicide cases that we’ve been dealing with- working with those families, dealing with their loss and helping with them navigating through the world is something that nobody should have to go through but unfortunately because this is not a perfect world this is something that most of us will have to deal with at one point or another,” KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER 10

Jack Miller, owner of first Black funeral home in Pittsylvania County, dies Jack Miller, the owner and founder of Miller Funeral Home in Miller also has served on various boards and commissions, Gretna, died Wednesday following a brief illness, the business including the boards of First State Bank (now Movement Bank), announced. He was 89. Pittsylvania County Crime Stoppers Association and the Gretna Rescue Squad, and served on the Pittsylvania County Board of Growing up as one of 12 children of a tobacco farmer, he first Assessors and Pittsylvania Economic Development Organiza- lived in Mount Airy and then moved to Gretna. tion. Miller said he knew as a young boy that God was calling him to Honors included being named the Small Business of the Year by help people with final arrangements, he told the Register & Bee in the Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce in 1996, Man of a 2017 interview. the Year by the Virginia Mortician Association in 1999 and Citizen of the Year by the chamber of commerce in 2001. “It’s not something everyone can do, but I felt it was something God wanted me to do,” Miller said. “All through high school I told In the funeral community, Miller was inducted as a lifetime people it was in me and was what I wanted to do.” member of both the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association and the Virginia Morticians Association, according After high school, Miller served two years in the Marine Corps to a news release. His leadership roles in funeral service included and then attended Eckels College of Mortuary Science in Phila- president and board chairman of the Virginia Morticians Associ- delphia, graduating in 1962. ation and president of the Western District Funeral Directors and Morticians Association. Miller said he apprenticed at a funeral home in Lynchburg and became a licensed embalmer in 1964. That same year, he A service of celebration will be held at 1 p.m. Monday in the became the first Black owner of a funeral home in Pittsylvania chapel of Miller Funeral Home in Gretna. A public visitation is County, the Register & Bee reported in 2017. planned from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday and from 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the funeral home. KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER 11

KELLEY FIRM NEWSLETTER Duplain W. “Pete” Rhodes III, president of Duplain W. Rhodes Funeral Home in New Orleans, died Sept. 23 of lung cancer at West Jefferson Medical Center, said his sister, Duplynn Joan Rhodes,. He was 61. Rhodes was vice president of the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, a licensing agency that regulates the profession. He also had been the board’s secretary and treasurer. In a statement on the agency’s website, board President Rodney McFarland Sr. said of Rhodes, “His knowledge and meticulous attention to detail during his attendance at every meeting of the board helped guide his fellow board members and colleagues to improve the quality of service to the funeral profession.” Rhodes, a lifelong New Orleanian, spent his career working at the business that his grandfather, Duplain Rhodes Sr., founded in 1884 as Rhodes Undertaking Co. to work with African Americans in a segregated society. He had been its president since 1989. “He was a calm person who made things happen,” Duplynn Rhodes said, “and he did it very quietly.” His sister said he acquired his nickname, Pete, because that was what their father called everybody. A graduate of St. Augustine High School, Rhodes attended LSU and Morehouse College. He earned a degree in mortuary science at Worsham College in Wheeling, Illinois. Duplynn Rhodes credited him with revitalizing the Crescent City Funeral Directors, an organization of African American funeral homes that had been dormant after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The organization, she said, exists to set standards for the profession and ensure that customers are treated honorably. Pete Rhodes, president of 137-year-old New Orleans funeral home, dies at 61 12

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