Todd Van Beck,
at about age 10 Growing Up Across the
Street from the Funeral Home
ICFM: Tell
us about your childhood, where you were born and raised.
VAN BECK: I was born February 15, 1952, in southwestern Iowa,
about 35 miles east of Omaha and Council Bluffs, in the small
town of Avoca, population 1,500.
My grandfather came over from Holland in the late 1880s. There
were three Dutch settlements in Iowa: Orange City, Pella and
our little town, and he was one of 27 families who immigrated
and settled down to farm. It was a very conservative, Old
World, old-fashioned place to grow up.
My grandparents didn't have running water or electricity in
their house. I think I was 12 before we got our first car.
But that was probably not at all unusual for southwestern
Iowa in the '50s. I believe my brother and I were the first
in our family to attend college.
ICFM: Your father was also a farmer?
VAN BECK: No, he joined the Navy, and for some reason -- it's
still a mystery to us -- he became a hairdresser, which was
an almost unbelievable career for a man to choose in a small
Iowa town.
ICFM: As opposed to being a barber.
VAN BECK: Right. My mother was a court magistrate. She was
the judge in our town for a long time, I think 25 years. So
my parents both had unusual career paths.
ICFM: So you weren't brought up in the
funeral profession.
VAN BECK: No, but I truly think this: I was born to do it.
Whether you call it karma, or the stars, or fate or I don't
know what, I think I came out of the womb an undertaker. To
me, there's no other rational explanation for it other than
I was born to do it. We lived across the street from the funeral
home, an old mansion which was the most beautiful building
in town.
That funeral home was an integral, non-negotiable, essential
part of our community. Just the very presence of the place
commanded respect and deference and reverence -- I saw it
immediately. In fact, I would say, without exaggeration, that
the mortuary and the funeral directors in our town were as
influential as the churches, because the ministers would come
and go, but the funeral directors were there forever. Maybe
the minister would be at a church in our town five years --
then gone. The Blust brothers, who were the funeral directors,
their father started the funeral home the year the town was
founded. He died and the Blust brothers, Henry and Nobert,
took it over in 1916. They also ran the furniture store downtown
and were an integral part of the community.
ICFM: You knew them?
VAN BECK: I knew every human being in that town. I could give
you the names of 1,500 people, and not only that, I knew every
farmer in Knox Township and Valley Township.
The Blust brothers had buried everybody in my family -- my
grandfather's first wife, my grandmother's first husband.
So these guys went back with my family. There was a connection,
so that when somebody died, it wasn't a chore, there was no
feeling of, "Oh, what do we need to do?"
In that environment, when somebody died, you were significantly
affected, because you would have gone to church with these
people, and you would have seen them at the courthouse, you
would have run into them at the post office and the grocery
store -- constantly. It wasn't like you ran into them once
every six months; you would see these people every day. In
our town, when somebody died, stores would close for the funeral.
Store owners would shut their businesses down and go to the
funeral.
The town's newspaper published just once a week, on Thursday
-- your funeral and burial could happen before your obituary
was in the paper. So the Blust brothers had this signal when
they had a body in the mortuary: They would turn the front
yard lights on at the funeral home so everybody in town would
know somebody had died.
I'd come home from school, I'd see the yard lights on and
I knew something was going to go on. The building itself was
very impressive, particularly in a child's mind, and my bedroom
window looked over the street where the front door of the
mortuary was. Before I'd ever set foot in the building, I
remember knowing that what went on there was very important,
and I didn't even know what it was, per se.
Also, as a kid I was fascinated by the cars -- the hearses,
the ambulances -- just because they were unlike any other
car in town. All kids, I've noticed, boys particularly, are
interested in hearses and ambulances.
ICFM: You did eventually go inside,
to a funeral?
VAN BECK: Yes. My grandmother was a nurse for years in our
town. This was before the days of nursing homes. When somebody
became incapacitated, they'd hire my grandmother to come in
and nurse them.
One day, Bertha Norton, one of the ladies she nursed, died,
and we went over to the funeral home. I had never been in
the place, and the minute I walked into that funeral home,
I knew there was a knowledge base, a connection, something
about it. I don't know what the word would be in a 5-year-old's
mind, but I remember going into the room where the body was,
and it was as gentle and as friendly and as beautiful an environment
as I'd ever been in in my life. She'd been a physical wreck
-- I could remember because I'd been to her house, visiting
my grandmother -- and now she looked wonderful.
I've never forgotten that, ever, seeing her lying in a casket,
with flowers all around, and I remember the music playing.
I thought, "This is wonderful. This woman isn't sick
anymore, she looks wonderful and they've got her in this treasure
chest." I remember asking my mother, "Why have they
got her in that treasure chest?" And mother said, "Well,
she's a treasure. Everybody liked her."
I have often observed that if adults will leave them alone,
kids love to go to funerals. They love that scene, that setting:
safe, no surprises, beautiful, friendly, tranquil, pastoral
green, the flowers, the treasure chest concept. I've not seen
a child in my career who wasn't attracted to that. Now, the
parents will scare the hell out of the kids about going to
the funeral home, but left to their own devices, kids have
no fear whatsoever.
The Blust brothers were there, and I knew they were important.
I knew these two guys were running the show, because everybody
was going to them and asking them questions: "Where should
we sit? What do you want us to do?"
Maybe three years later my grandfather died, and I went over
to the funeral home again. That time I was impressed in a
way that pushed the envelope further. People were telling
us how much they admired my grandfather, and what a great
man he had been and how much courage he had to leave Holland
when he was a kid and start a new life. It was a great experience.
So then I started to become a pest. I'd sneak into the funeral
home to look at dead bodies, and that was anathema to everybody.
I always got scolded for that.
ICFM: By whom?
VAN BECK: My parents, the funeral director. The new funeral
director who had been hired by the Blust brothers took a tremendous
disinterest in me. I remember I went over to talk to him one
day about being a funeral director and I got the brushoff;
he was rude.
ICFM: How old were you then?
VAN BECK: Maybe 12. I learned in those days that life's not
fair always, and people will sometimes take a dislike to you
and won't do anything to help you. And this is why I ended
up going to Omaha to get my first job in a funeral home. I
lived across the street from a blessed funeral home and ended
up having to go 35 miles into Omaha in order to get the experience
I wanted.
My father was a beautician, and every so often one of his
clients would die, because he was kind of the "old-lady"
beautician in our town, and he'd be called to the funeral
home to do their hair. I used to beg him to take me with him.
I would have given anything to see an embalming room, because
I was already sending away for information, writing the embalming
chemical companies. I was already deeply immersed in this
world by the age of 6, 7, 8 -- this was my only interest,
my vocation. But I was not allowed to go there.
None of this deterred me, and as I got older, it caused me
to be more generous with my time as an undertaker with people
who wanted to become funeral directors, because I had had
so much frustration. I can tell you, it's frustrating to live
40 yards from where all this activity is taking place and
be ostracized from it.
But it ended up being a great blessing, and I ended up being
the most popular guy on the block. Behind our house, we had
this huge barn. In the old days, they kept horses and a carriage
in there, and there was a two-stall privy connected to it,
and upstairs a hay mount. My father didn't have a car yet,
so I took over the barn.
I made a fire department out of the garage area. I made a
funeral home out of the work area. I made a cemetery office
out of the old outhouse, and I made a gambling casino. People
laugh when I tell this in seminars, but kids came from all
over town. Sometimes we'd have seven, eight, 10, 12 funerals
a day. We'd have chairs in the barn, somebody would be the
minister and I'd always be the funeral director. We had a
little hearse, and sometimes we'd actually bury a bird or
a rabbit or something -- there was a little yard on the side
that I used for a cemetery.
So as a kid, I couldn't find anything about the funeral profession
that didn't fit my personality makeup in total. It was, "This
is it." And I've never changed that attitude. That attitude
is as alive and well today as it was then. In fact, if I go
into a chapel and sit and look at a dead body long enough,
I can resurrect the exact same emotional feeling I had as
a kid when I saw Bertha Norton laid out in the funeral home.
"All is right with the world. This is how it should be
done, and people who don't avail themselves of this are missing
the most economical healing opportunity there is. Who wouldn't
like this?"
ICFM: Your next exposure to funeral
service was when you got a job at a funeral home?
VAN BECK: No, before. I found rejection to be a great motivator
in my life. Since the funeral director 40 freaking yards from
my front door wouldn't give me the time of day, I had to reach
out to other funeral directors. I was in the high school choir,
which I joined for one reason only, and that was because we
got to take bus trips out of town to go to music contests.
The minute the bus pulled into another town, I'd blow the
concert off and go to the funeral homes. That's how I met
these guys. And the choir didn't miss me at all, because I
was a terrible singer.
I remember we went to Atlantic, Iowa, for a music contest.
The bus stopped and I bolted and I would walk for blocks,
because sometimes the school was on the opposite end of town
from the funeral home. I went to Roland Funeral Home on East
Fifth Street. The owner was a man named Burdette Roland, and
what a fine human being that man was. He was an old undertaker;
everybody in town knew him, they loved him. He was a character
from the word go; he was a joy to be around.
There would be times that he'd be just busier than stink --
I mean there'd be five bodies in that funeral home -- and
I don't remember once where he looked at me and said, "I'm
too busy to talk to you today." He would sit there and
talk to me. He would show me the embalming room, talk to me
about embalming and how important it was. I was 14, 15. By
that time I'd abandoned all the play stuff in the garage --
that was kiddie stuff. I still have relationships with the
sons of the funeral directors who treated me nicely 35 years
ago, relationships that have endured to this very day. I dedicated
my book to the memory of those men who gave me the time of
day.
And I will never blow off a young undertaker. If a "baby
undertaker" wants to talk to me, I'll give him the time,
because I know what it feels like to have such energy, such
hopes and dreams, and to have them laughed at or ignored or
treated with indifference, which is the worst thing. So as
a mature undertaker, I feel I've got a level of sensitivity
to the younger "baby undertakers," like these men
had for me.
I also used to write letters to all the chemical companies,
all of them. Jake Dodge, who died recently, used to tell me
he remembered getting letters from this pest out in Iowa.
A kid writing, "Send me all the technical manuals on
all your embalming fluid." And they'd send this stuff
to me and I'd pore over it.
ICFM: How did you even know to send
away for things like that?
VAN BECK: I would go to these funeral homes and see their
trade magazines, and sometimes I'd steal them, put them under
my jacket. And then I would read them, I would tear out the
pictures of the hearses and tape them up in my room -- the
1965 Miller Meteor Eureka model, or whatever.
In those days, there wasn't a funeral home that didn't have
an ambulance; all ambulance service in those days out in the
Midwest was run by the mortuaries. How can you lose? You're
not only helping people and their families when they're dead,
you're so humanitarian that you're running an ambulance service
for the community, so you're saving lives. You can't lose.
You're helping everybody at every juncture of life.
Growing up, I was fascinated by Albert Schweitzer. There was
a book in our church by Erica Anderson, photographs of Albert
Schweitzer and his work in Africa, and I was so drawn to that
idea of selfless service. When I found out that funeral directors
get out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to go help somebody,
that never was a negative to me. It was, "Yes, this is
it! The rest of these people -- lazy bastards -- are sleeping
all night long, but we're out helping people!" I took
a very immature view of it, a very self-righteous view. So
you add the ambulance service to this idea, and it was like
you couldn't miss.
ICFM: When did you get your first funeral
home job?
VAN BECK: I was 15 or 16, and I knew the key was to get my
driver's license, because I was unemployable in a mortuary
unless I had a driver's license. I went to Missouri Valley
for a music contest and I blew the music thing off and I went
to Hardy & Walker; Calvin Walker was still in business at
that time. Cal was a very odd fellow. He collected kerosene
lanterns they used on the railroad and he'd sand them and
paint them, and those kerosene lanterns lined the chapel.
I thought it was very strange. I went to Hennessey, Van Cleave
& Hurley and saw Rich Hurley, and he said, "Well, maybe
we'll hire you for the summer."
I walked out of that funeral home floating on a cloud. I went
home and told my parents, and that went over like a lead balloon.
A week later I get a letter from Hurley. He said, "You
know, I've been thinking about this and I've been looking
at the budget" -- he didn't have a budget; no funeral
home had a "budget" in those days! -- and he said,
"I'm sorry, we can't hire you. But when I was starting
out, I got a night and weekend job at HK Burket & Son on Farnam
Street in Omaha. I'm going to give your name to Randall Bigsby,
the owner of Burket's."
Farnam Street in those days was the most exclusive street
in the city of Omaha, and that's where most of the mortuaries
were. It was literally "mortuary row" -- there were
10 funeral homes in a 12-block area. So I announced to my
parents, "I'm going into Omaha and I'm going to get a
job in a mortuary."
"OK, go ahead," my father said.
Later I heard that after I left, mother started to bawl, "How
can you let a 16-year-old ... ?"
And dad said, "Let him go. No funeral home's going to
hire a 16-year-old kid."
Coming up in Part 1, Continued
- Living and working at a funeral
home
- Embalming a pig for the high school
science fair
- The transforming experience of
mortuary college
Article Text Copyright
ICFA 2003
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