Cultural Competency in Local Government Cemetery Management

Abstract

Local government cemetery management is an unexplored area of public administration, and this paper begins to tackle that gap by exploring the role of cultural competency in the role. Based on a content analysis of interviews with 35 municipal cemetery managers throughout the U.S., I find cultural competence manifests in several ways: racial segregation even in death; intersectional identities; and funeral economics. The paper brings to light the ways in which cemetery managers must confront, understand, and tackle cultural differences in life, death, and beyond.

Keywords:

• cemetery management
• interviews
• social justice

The City of Selma, Alabama owns and operates three cemeteries–New Live Oak, Old Live Oak, and Lorenzo Harrison Memorial Garden. The latter is older, predominantly African American, and not well maintained. Since the supervisor took the position nearly a decade ago, he has been working to revitalize records, deeds, and the land itself at Lorenzo Harrison. “The condition of that cemetery is just not what it ought to be, and it’s kinda, that community has kind of accepted it, that that’s just the way it is. Well it’s not the way it is over here in New Live Oak, and I think we ought to do all we can to get that cemetery out there in better condition.”

He has a Southern accent and speaks with passion for the city where he grew up, left, then came back to take care of his ageing mother. That is how he landed at the cemetery department, because he needed to get out of the house during the day so began genealogy research. He started working for the cemetery as a secretary then assumed the superintendent position when his boss retired after 39 years. “I’m 72 years old so I’m not a spring chicken. And I don’t plan to be out here until I come out here permanently.”

Cemeteries are such a pervasive part of our lives (Rugg, 2000; Sloane, 2018) because they connect us to loved ones, preserve a place’s history, and serve as tourist destinations. From an urban planning perspective, cemeteries are public parks or even arboretums meant for peaceful enjoyment (Rugg, 2006). Cemeteries are essentially cities of the dead, so from a public administration perspective, we can learn about their management and the people tasked with caring for them.

The findings presented herein are based on inductive coding of interview transcripts from conversations with 35 municipal cemetery managers throughout the U.S. Cultural competency and social equity were not topics I asked specifically about, but during coding it became clear these were key elements of the job worthy of further explanation. Necessarily, much of the work in cultural competency and social justice turns a distinct eye toward correcting injustices (Blessett, 2018a), so this article extends that line of thinking to understand how inequity continues even in death.

CULTURAL COMPETENCY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The literature cited herein is meant to give a brief background for cultural competency in public administration rather than a full treatise. The administrative state, it is clear, plays a pivotal role in continually othering non-White stakeholders, marginalizing them from every fully participating in governance practices (Alkadry & Blessett, 2010; Witt, 2018). From my research, it seems this pattern continues in death when burial practices, especially historical ones, purposefully segregate white and black bodies (King, 2010), rich from poor (Francis, 2003).

Finding and settling on a definition of cultural competency is difficult (Sue, 2001). With an in-depth review, Sue (2001) reminds us cultural competency is intersectional, multi-dimensional, and systemic. While much research focuses on individuals, cultural competency also extends to the organization as well. Herein, however, I report how cemetery managers themselves are exhibiting cultural competency in their daily practices, falling into the center of Sue’s (2001) multidimensional cultural competence model whereby the individual plays a pivotal role in exercising cultural competency.

“Cultural competency can be characterized as specific organizational actions and policies that enable the organization to more effectively serve its culturally diverse populations. That definition can also be broadened to actions and policies that help a diverse workforce feel more engaged with their work” (Carrizales, Zahrandnik, & Silverio, 2016, p. 127). Sue (2006) articulates three aspects of proactive cultural competency: cultural awareness and beliefs; cultural knowledge; and cultural skills. Though much is left to learn about the levels of knowledge needed, precise skills, and when to use required competencies (Sue, 2006).

Cultural competence usually is an individual-level construct and reflects a person or organization’s ability to work with diverse population in fair, equitable ways. Put simply: cultural competency is a cornerstone of good governance (Norman-Major & Gooden, 2014) based on fairness and equitable treatment of all (Norman-Major, 2011). Surface-level cultural competency is more reactionary to a person’s obvious physical traits, such as age or race, while deep-level cultural competency also takes into account historical units of oppression, which could be harder to recognize and change compared to surface-level cultural competence (Rice, 2007). Both, though, are necessary for social equity pursuits.

Social Equity Challenges

Cultural competency is closely related to social equity challenges and could be considered the application of social equity to public service delivery (Gooden & Portillo, 2011). While these kinds of proactive policies are a good step, they often conflate or ignore key issues underlying racial and social disparities (Alexander & Stivers, 2010). For instance, it often is assumed that people who are, say, black or Jewish or Latinx subscribe to the same belief system, but intersectional realities assure this is a dangerous mischaracterization (Alexander & Stivers, 2010). Nevertheless, cultural competency that focuses on fair and just treatment of everyone is a positive step toward a more just administrative state (Norman-Major & Gooden, 2014), though we can still recognize the inherent challenges ahead (Blessett, 2018a). While this section is not meant to give a full detail of social equity, I include it here to showcase some of the social equity issues faced by the field in general and specifically cemetery managers working within tight resource constraints.

At the core of the problem is the fact that minority communities in the U.S. have historically been left out of social, political, and economic participation (Moore, 2018; Richards, 2000). Bittick (2009) notes much of our concepts of social equity are rooted in Rawlsian conceptions of justice as fairness, with differences among groups rooted in social and historical practices. In public administration, the Minnowbrook Conference in 1968 spurred the New Public Administration movement with a focus on social equity and justice, which had previously taken a back seat to scientific rationalism (Frederickson, 1990). Though Minnowbrook ushered in the movement, social equity thinking and writing traces to Aristotle and Plato (Wooldridge & Gooden, 2009). Under the old regime, administrators were viewed as neutral experts, but as the field shifted, so did attention to and realization of an active role administrators and policy makers could make in progress toward social equity (Frederickson, 1990). This means social equity requires judgment, and street-level bureaucrats are often the agents of change (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2012).

Given that action is required to pursue social equity, one can see it as a moral and ethical obligation for public servants (Hart, 1974). That is why, as McCandless and Ronquillo argue (2019), codes of ethics can be a place to address social equity questions, as social equity should be a chief ethical concern for the field (Gooden, 2015). But recognizing that policy, practice, and implementation of social equity is difficult given there are few measures to say when it has been achieved (Wooldridge & Gooden, 2009).

Cultural Competency and Social Justice in Cemetery Management

There is scant research explicitly elucidating the importance of cultural competency for municipal cemetery management. Longoria (2014) notes an overall death competence–how someone deals with death and dying–should ideally include cultural competence given the diverse population within the U.S. Intersectional identities add to this complexity, and cemetery managers need to be aware of–or at least learn about–these cultural differences when doing death care (Longoria, 2014).

Cemeteries are a melting pot of cultural identity and representation, with all races and creeds buried next to or near each other. “The cemetery is the appropriate sacred space where the living and the dead are separated and symbolically joined as one people through the performance of transition and memorial rites” (Francis, 2003, p. 223). Though people could be separated based on race, religion, or social status, the result is the same–someone has died. Cemeteries, then, become microcosms of societal disparities and cultural changes through time (Francis, Kellaher, & Neophytou, 2000). Death rituals not only connect the living with the departed, but they also are cultural and social signifiers that shape a collective identity (Reimers, 1999). That is why, for example, celebrations like Memorial Day or Veterans Day draw such closeness because everyone has a common ground and collective identity.

Cemeteries are interestingly both living and dead–people come to visit, pay respects, or even relax. At any given time, there are a mix of people milling about within the spaces. The cemetery, then, is a social landscape and great equalizer (Francis, 2003). Death is pervasive, and cemetery mangers need to be aware of how cultural differences affect burial and mourning.

When it comes to the cemetery, a big challenge is the cost associated with funerals. Walking through a cemetery shows these stark differences–some plots have ornate markings while others might be a simple stone. Funerals did not become a social status representation until between 1750 and 1850, when the rich and poor distinguished themselves even in death (Laqueur, 1983). The bigger the funeral and memorial, the more likely someone is to have money and status (Pine & Phillips, 1970). Funerals, then, are performative acts where a family might want to signify grandeur in death even if there was little in life. A White family in Austin, Texas, for example, will spend about 16 percent of their annual income on funeral costs compared to 22 and 27 percent for African American and Latino households respectively (Longoria, 2014). Costs come when cultural and social norms drive up expenses–keeping up with the Joneses. Though the industry is shifting toward cremation, which sometimes is a less expensive option than traditional burial, certain cultural and religious customs forbid the practice, making the funeral services more expensive (Banks, 1998).

FINDINGS: MUNICIPAL CEMETERY MANAGERS ROLE IN CULTURAL COMPETENCE AND SOCIAL EQUITY

The remainder of the paper traces the three major ways I identified in which cultural competency and social equity manifest in the municipal cemetery: racial segregation even in death; intersectional identities; and funeral economics. Findings are based on a manual, inductive content analysis of nearly 400 pages of interview transcripts from the 35 semi-structured interviews with cemetery managers throughout the U.S. I spoke with managers in cities of all sizes (ranging from small towns to cities as big as Orlando, Austin, and Boston). Each interview lasted approximately one hour and was recorded.

I relied on purposive sampling to choose subjects. My original goal was one manager from each state, but after a year of trying, that proved challenging. I relied on purposive sampling, reaching out to cemetery managers whose names were listed on public municipal websites. I then asked those who agreed to an interview to suggest colleagues who might also be willing to participate. I did intentionally want to interview managers in cities of all sizes, so I spoke with managers in cities ranging in size from Austin and Orlando to Bozeman, Montana and Deadwood, South Dakota. Interviews were semi-structured and changed as I did more interviews. For instance, I did not have an original question about records management or deeds, but it was clear from the first few interviews this would be an important area to inquire about.

An initial hand coding of the data yielded several large patterns (Miles & Huberman, 1994) that were quite clear (records management, for instance). The patterns detailed herein emerged on a second-level, inductive, manual coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994) and feedback from colleagues regarding the project. Inductive analysis applies here, given for this manuscript, findings emerged from my coding on interview data, as I did not ask specific questions about cultural competency or social justice (Thomas, 2006). (By manual, I mean I coded the data by hand, not using a software. I made coding notes in Word. Colors guided the analysis, then I labeled the patterns herein based on commonalities.) Thomas (2006) calls this a general inductive analysis approach, which mirrors the coding scheme I followed. A single coder is a limitation of this research, but I followed established coding protocols to derive these findings.

Table 1 includes each code for this paper with exemplar quotes, some of which also appear in text below.

Table 1 Coding Examples.

Code	Exemplar Quotes	Connection to Literature
Racial segregation	“I know that it is for sure a slave burial ground. I don’t know if they have any proof on the ancient Indian burial mound. It might just be local lure kind of thing.” “There are areas they believe are slave burials because there are no monuments, but we haven’t done ground sensor.”	Barrett & Heller (2002) Brooks (2011) King (2010) Laurie & Neimeyer (2008)
Intersectional Identities	“I dealt with the LGBT aspect with families who didn’t know.” “So, when someone dies in the village and they’re being sent to Anchorage for cremation, for example, the body will be stored in our morgue until they’re able to arrange a flight out.”	Cho, Crenshaw & McCall (2013) Crenshaw (1989) Gaynor (2018)
Funeral Economics	“We don’t take payments. That’s one thing that I personally struggle with. I just think that it’s very expensive to die.” “In Massachusetts, there’s a law that you can’t make a profit on selling a cemetery plot so there is a law that prohibits anybody who owns a cemetery lot but with private cemeteries, I don’t know.”	Drakeford (1998) Longoria (2014)

RACIAL SEGREGATION EVEN IN DEATH

The first pattern is what I termed racial segregation in death. This is perhaps not surprising given the segregationist history in the U.S., but some of the cemetery managers to whom I spoke work in cemeteries that were formerly slave burial grounds. This pattern was clearest in the South in my data. That does not mean these same issues do not manifest in states outside the South; instead, it means the people to whom I spoke who mentioned slave graves were concentrated in southern states. Some cemeteries still have portions dedicated to slave burials, so understanding that history and importance requires cultural competency and the ability to explain the significance to visitors and clients who think fields are empty because there are no formal grave markers.

Before the advent of municipal cemeteries and memorial garden burial grounds, traditional burials took place in small, rural, often church-based cemeteries. Another popular option was burial on family land (Sloane, 2018). White families that owned slaves often did not allow for burial on their property, or if they did it was on the outskirts. As such, rural cemeteries became an amalgamation of European, African and new-American customs when it came to burial and mourning (King, 2010). Slaves, for instance, often relied on traditional customs, stories, and memories from their home countries related to burial practices (King, 2010), so in this way slaves were afforded a sense of freedom when there was none in daily lives (Brooks, 2011).

Slave burials usually took place after dark and away from the watchful eyes of white masters who might break up the celebratory aspects of death (King, 2010). Plantation owners who wanted to build good will, though, would allow the ceremonies to continue unabated. But just as slavery disconnected the laborers from the land without a path to ownership or freedom, death practices kept those bodies separated from richer, whiter counterparts (Jones, 2011). Oftentimes, those burial spaces went into severe disrepair (as described in Selma), with perhaps only rocks used as grave markers (Jones, 2011)–a stark contrast to sometimes elaborate grave markers used in white cemeteries.

African American funeral and mourning practices, of course, differ via cultural background but are usually elaborate and communal (Barrett & Heller, 2002; Laurie & Neimeyer, 2008), likely because many black families belief death is a critical part of life so honor it properly (Stanley, 2016). Religious differences add to this complexity so cemetery managers must be aware of intersectionalities in death (Longoria, 2014).

Older cemeteries throughout the U.S., especially in the South, have slave sections that are often unmarked and unknown. One way to uncover what is buried below is to use ground penetrating radar (Jamieson, 1995), but that is generally too expensive for local government public servants. Cultural competence allows for thinking about these spaces as sacred and marking them properly, either through a memorial structure, or repairing existing rock markers. The markers can become physical reminders that segregation continued in death (Francaviglia, 1971).

Several stories from my data illustrate this. I start with the cemetery manager for the City of Somerset, Kentucky, a small town with deep roots in the Civil War battles of the era. Somerset Cemetery came into city ownership in 2012, before which local volunteers and nonprofit organizations ran operations. She (the manager) told me William Fox owned the land on which the cemetery was created, and “he was a big to-do guy around here,” she said. “He started his family cemetery on this land,” and buried there are himself, his children, grandchildren, and slaves. “He did own slaves, and his children owned slaves. He buried his slaves in the area behind where his family is. Slavery is such a hard thing to talk about because obviously we all know today it’s not the right thing to do, but at the time it was just something that was done. You can’t deny that. I don’t mean to make it sound all flowery and nice, but the fact that he buried them so close to his family was a rare thing, and I think is different than what some other slave owners did. Allegedly those slave graves were at one time marked with little field stones, but we don’t have any of those now, so I don’t know if somebody removed those at the time.”

Burying slaves near a white family and including grave markers was an indication the owners treated the slaves “with more respect than was normal for the period” (Bigman, 2014, p. 17). Through archaeological investigations, researchers find slaves were able to maintain and share important cultural and family traditions even in death, affording them a freedom not available in life (Brooks, 2011; Jamieson, 1995).

The slave portion of Somerset Cemetery appears as empty land, given there are no markers on the site. For her, it is important to preserve and protect the area–even sanctify it, which took place in 2018 when a local church leader sprinkled holy water to acknowledge those people buried underneath. People often come to purchase pre-need burial services and will ask to be placed within the seemingly empty land; she of course tells them no. Eventually she hopes to have a monument built in the section. “There’s been several groups come to me and say that they’re interested in raising funds to put that marker out there, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

While not a slave burial ground, Lorenzo Harrison Memorial Garden in Selma, Alabama is an example of racial segregation in death. The cemetery manager in Selma, to recall, operates the cemeteries in Selma. After a budget crisis led to the firing of 68 employees (Smith, 2018), he went from 14 cemetery workers to one–himself. He is a life-long public servant who served in the Air Force then worked for government contractors upon retirement. When we spoke, he became cemetery supervisor only eight days prior, taking over for the retired administrator. “You have to understand our city and our leadership.”

Selma, Alabama’s storied history is well documented. The pivotal Civil Rights demonstration called Bloody Sunday took place in Selma, with marchers traversing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, a physical symbol of white power (Peeples, 2015). Young black activists organized a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery in favor of voting rights, and the brutal images from the march led to civil rights reform in the U.S. Put simply: segregation runs deep in Selma.

The cemetery manager’s office is in New Live Oak, and his family roots remain in the city. “I have family members buried in this cemetery. I know a lot of the people we deal with when their families die. I grew up here. I know these people, at least on the Caucasian side. I don’t know many of the African American clients that I have. I know the funeral home operators, but I don’t know the African American community as well as I know the Caucasian community.”

He walked me through demographic changes Selma has seen in the last several decades. “The power structure here up through 1965 and the early ‘70 s, I’ll just say white and black, and I don’t mean any disrespect in any way or the other. Power was white. Black people did not vote” so they had no real voice in leadership, he said. That changed in the 1970s, and the city’s current (as of this writing) elected officials are majority black, including the young mayor. “A lot of the whites have moved out as they retired and had the means to leave here. They have left. We’re a predominantly welfare community, a lot of welfare, and I don’t mean any of this in a bad kind of way. I’m just telling you how it is. You can Google Selma, Alabama, and the Census data will tell you.” Estimates from 2018 show Selma’s population is 17,886, a 13 percent drop from the 2010 Census (US Census Bureau, 2019). The city has about 80 percent black population and 17 percent white, and the median household income is $24,223 (US Census Bureau, 2019).

In death, racial segregation remains as Lorenzo Harrison Memorial Gardens is in disrepair. Many black families with roots in Selma have loved ones buried there, but record keeping was so poor it is often difficult to know who is buried where. Today, deeds are issued when someone is buried and proper records are kept, but going back historically remains a challenge. “A lot of the burials that we do out there, the family will come and say, ‘I’d like to be buried next to my mama’ and we ask when she died. [We] ask to show them [the plot inside the cemetery]. If it doesn’t look like there is anybody next to the body because there is no marker, our procedure has been we’ll start digging, and as long as we don’t see any signs that somebody was buried there we will bury there. If there is somebody, we will stop and bury in another place in the cemetery,” the manager said.

Another example comes from the administrative assistant in charge of cemetery operations for the Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The town maintains four cemeteries: Old Chapel Hill, Barbee-Hargraves, Chapel Hill Memorial, and Jay Street. The first two are older and have many slave graves. Tension came in 2013 when the Cemeteries Advisory Board members asked for an expansion of Chapel Hill Memorial, but elected officials decided to sell the land for an affordable housing project (Wygant, 2016). Instead, a columbarium was built to house cremains, eschewing space for traditional casket burials. She said: “African-Americans don’t believe in cremation. There’s just something about tradition. They don’t want to be burned. They want a casket.” Neighboring towns are inundated with calls about available burial space, meaning people who have lived in Chapel Hill a while or who feel a deep connection might not have a chance to be buried there.

INTERSECTIONAL IDENTITIES: THE CASE OF PULSE

This code refers to how cemetery managers should use cultural competency to interact with people who have intersectional identities. The clearest example in my data comes from the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, but people also work with indigenous populations and other people who have specific cultural needs and economic constraints.

Crenshaw (1989) deftly details how white feminism erases black women from the narrative, and an intersectional view would allow for appreciating and focusing directly on the lived experiences of black women. Since then, intersectionality has been used to examine and explain “how single-axis thinking undermines legal thinking, disciplinary knowledge production, and struggles for social justice” (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013). Ideally, an intersectional lens can unmask power dynamics and aid in seeing situations through multiple lenses (Cho et al., 2013), and within public administration an intersectional lens is vital for advancing social justice (Blessett, 2018b). Pertinent to the story below, analytical frames that consider intersections of race, gender, and LGBTQ experiences are vital for a just public administration (Blessett, 2018b), as individuals with intersecting identities that put them in power differentials often fare worse in society than those with in-group power affiliations (Gaynor, 2018).

Perhaps the best story from my interview data to highlight this aspect of cultural competence comes from the retired sexton for the City of Orlando. He oversaw the burials of four victims from the Pulse nightclub shooting, which when it occurred in 2016 was the worst mass shooting in the U.S. A single gunman entered the nightclub and opened fire, killing 49 innocent victims. Pulse was a popular LGBTQ nightclub, and that night happened to be Latin night. Many of the victims were not from the U.S. (and subsequently buried elsewhere), so the intersecting realities of being LGBTQ-identifying (or an ally) and Latinx were critical to understanding mourning practices.

Pulse was one of the biggest challenges for the sexton, who served in the position for more than 30 years. “I was sitting at Cape Canaveral watching a rocket go up, and then I get a phone call from the mayor that 49 people, at that point they didn’t know, but all these people were killed at Pulse so I had to come home right away. Right away.” During the call, the mayor asked about the possibility of and logistics for burying the victims in Greenwood Cemetery, the city’s cemetery.

He had a lot of logistics to manage, including ensuring price gouging was not taking place at funeral-related companies. State officials also intervened, so he had to liaise with them regarding price gouging. To illustrate, 21 victims were flown to Puerto Rico for burial, “so kind of like with a hurricane where you make sure that everybody’s being treated fairly. We had to track every single one of those bodies to make sure that they were being treated correctly, that the funeral homes weren’t jacking up prices.”

On the ground at Greenwood, he contended with families, loved ones, international media, and protestors. The city donated burial spaces for all Pulse victims, and while there are currently four people buried there, 12 grave spaces will remain available remain available until 2024 for Pulse victims’ families (Seabrook, 2019), though there are spots set aside for all victims if need to be returned from overseas cemeteries and reinterred (Peters & Cavacini, 2019).

During a service, he met someone who identified as a transvestite who “never in her life has dealt with death. Never. I’m talking to her at funerals, and she’s just out there from a distance.” She knew many of the victims because she was a regular on the club scene, but she was experiencing death for the first time and “she had to deal with 49. So, we sat there and talked for a while, and she couldn’t understand the magnitude because not only 49 died, we had many more who were injured. These are humans. She gave me this whole new perspective on life. … She never lost a parent, she never lost a grandparent. These were the first funerals she’s ever been to. It killed me inside, it really did. It killed me. Here she was standing from a distance because she couldn’t approach the gravesites.”

Westboro Baptist Church members also protested outside the cemetery, so to protect mourners he pulled a parade permit, which allowed for the streets outside Greenwood to be shut down and the fences facing the streets to be covered with dark screen and rainbow flags (Spies, 2017). “Pulse hit me hard. It did because these were kids,” he said.

While this was the clearest example of intersectional identities in my data, other cemetery managers mentioned intersecting identities and being able to manage those. Take for an example this story from the cemetery manager in Nome, Alaska. Nome is a relatively remote part of Alaska located in the southwestern part of the state. Nome, she (the manager) explained, is one of the larger cities in the region and serves as a hub for services for many of the indigenous populations living in smaller villages. “So, when someone dies in the village and they’re being sent to Anchorage for cremation, for example, the body will be stored in our morgue until they’re able to arrange a flight out.”

This means in her role, she works with many indigenous people within the state and is continually learning about their burial and mourning practices. The remote island of Diomede, which is geographically closer to Russia than the U.S., receives many of its supplies via Nome, for instance (Jelbert, 2018). Burial practices differ among villagers throughout the state (Garber, 1934), and in Diomede, like other populations, people are buried above ground because the ground is simply too cold to bury within. As she told me, they are “not able to bury people in the island because it is just solid rock. People are placed in boxes above ground because they cannot bury.” She has helped families relocate bodies back to Nome via Anchorage, watching as families carefully build wooden boxes for the above-ground interment. “They take care and great pride in how those bodies are prepared and taken care of once the person has passed. It’s an honor to watch some of that stuff.”

In another example, the cemetery manager in Paducah, Kentucky told me he has a challenge with helping poorer families (discussed further below) with funeral arrangements, especially minority community members. He is attuned to needs of the black residents in his community, noting because they often want traditional burials rather than cremation, he needs to take that into long-term strategic planning for the cemetery. That means there is a tension between expanding to have more traditional burial spaces against the need for columbaria for cremains. “Still particularly in rural America, that’s a concern that that’s not the way they want their remains to be maintained, taken care of.”

FUNERAL ECONOMICS

Another social justice challenge manifesting in the cemetery is the cost of burial. I coded this pattern as funeral economics because sextons in my study reported feeling torn when it comes to funeral costs. Many said as public servants they are not allowed to turn a large profit, which puts them in a tricky position when it comes to asking for funding for needed equipment, maintenance, or repairs. Keeping the costs low was paramount, and though for some people the fees are still high, they are cheap compared to private-sector counterparts. The Federal Trade Commission lists several components of an American funeral: cremation costs (if applicable), casket (if applicable), funeral director and staff, body transport, service expenses, religious leader, perpetual care, and more (Federal Trade Commission, 2012). The National Funeral Directors Association estimates funeral costs with viewing and burial at approximately $7,360 in 2017 without a vault included (National Funeral Directors Association, 2019). In other words, my family got off cheap.

The social justice problem is exacerbated as centralization and even monopolization plagues the funeral home industry (Drakeford, 1998), though municipal cemetery leaders are not in the business of making money, as most charge low fees given the publicness. In Ruidoso, New Mexico, the cemetery supervisor told me a city plot costs $900 and burial costs are another $900, not including the casket and extras. “We don’t take payments. That’s one thing that I personally struggle with. I just think that it’s very expensive to die. But I don’t know the answer. I’m not sure what other people do with that. We don’t have the means to keep track of someone making 100 payments on lots here and there.”

Similarly, the cemetery foreman in Bozeman, Montana, said, “I find it interesting to call around and see what other people are charging.” Fees in Bozeman for a plot are about $1,500, which compared to other nearby Montana cities is high but nationally is relatively low or average. In Auburn, Washington, the cemetery manager said they try to offer a variety of burial options to manage costs. He told a story of a new burial area called ForestWalk, which opened in 2012 and includes a water feature, Koi pond, and a nearby mountain view. Auburn is relatively uptown, so he was not sure if the pricing structure would appeal, “and the first day we opened I think I sold three $4,000 cremation plots… It was like, wow, okay, people like water. If you build it, they will come type of thing.” A wishing well option costs about $700 extra and allows families to scatter ashes using well water. “We’ve tried to be able to help families that might not have a lot of money, and we just have a lot of options for both cremation and traditional.”

For the managers in my research, this was a Catch-22–charging higher fees could leave people out yet costs to maintain cemeteries are high. There is mowing, planting, maintaining roadways, walls, and fences, cleaning the property, managing records, paying staff, ordering equipment, and more. Set budgets are relatively small, and perpetual care funds are another area worthy of additional research. The bottom line is sextons felt conflicted when it comes to costs and hope to keep them manageable for all families. The cemetery director in Savannah, explained: “I could easily triple prices to try to close that [budget] gap, but I’d be doing a disservice to the community, and at the end of the day it’s not about how much profit we can make. It’s we provide the service to the community, and we’re also preserving the culture and the history of the city and its people. And it’s going to last forever. It’s a place for many purposes.”

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Public servants working in municipal cemeteries not only deal with death daily, they also are confronted with various social equity and justice concerns, as we are all not equal in death. Intersectional cultures, costs, and racial disparities all take place daily within municipal cemeteries, and sextons have a responsibility to confront these issues head on as our relationship to death and mourning practices change (Parkes, Laungani, & Young, 2015; Sloane, 2018; Walter, 2015). Long and Buehring (2014, p. 80) sum cultural changes up this way:

Even a cursory look at the obituary section of the local newspaper suggests that urban Americans practice a wide range of mortuary customs. There are private services and large public gatherings, services at churches, funeral homes or cemeteries. Others memorial events might be held at nursing homes or restaurants. Or, there may be no service until further notice, perhaps none at all. Mourners and friends may attend in person or by streaming video; they may send flowers, or donate to a charity in lieu of flowers, or pray for the soul of the departed. Bodies may be embalmed or frozen, buried or burned, ashes scattered or gathered into jars. When a family member died almost 30 years ago, the big decision was what she should be wearing for the ‘viewing’ of the corpse at the wake, but today there are more choices and more decisions to be made, including even the possibility of a pre-death party where the dying person can celebrate with friends and family while still alive.

The findings presented herein are based on interviews with 35 municipal cemetery managers through the U.S. This is a benefit and limitation, given the data are robust and exhaustive enough to distill these patterns. Perhaps future research can deploy survey methods to capture additional respondents. Another venue is examining veterans and federal cemeteries, as this study focused on local government. A study asking families about their death costs is another avenue to extend this research.

An additional area of future research addressed the next logical extension of this piece: how can public cemetery managers actively address some of the concerns presented herein? What I found in my data are acknowledgements of the need for cultural competency and a focus on social justice, but for the most part, each person was trying to keep their cemeteries monetarily afloat in the face of budget constraints and bureaucratic controls. As Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2012), social equity is active rather than passive. What I have illustrated here are reasons why the cemetery managers are aware of these issues, so following up with how they can achieve change would be a next logical extension of this project.

Overall, this research details the ways in which social equity and justice concerns manifest even in death. This extends the call from Blessett (2018a) to think about cultural competence in all aspects of public administration, and ideally this paper brings to light a venue we did not consider as one where these struggles still emerge and how the public servant face those.