Even after death, some people want to do it their way

Dead or alive, Jim Bozarth doesn't want to be cooped up. So the 55-year-old has written into his will that when he dies he wants skydivers to scatter his ashes to the winds.

"I couldn't stand to be in a box or an urn," said the recently retired University of Nevada, Las Vegas athletic facilities maintenance chief. "That would drive me nuts. The sky's been my home for over half my life. That's where I want to go."

Bozarth, who made 3,000 parachute jumps before quitting two years ago for health reasons, has planned what funeral directors refer to as a "personalization" of the final curtain call.

For many families, according to Ned Phillips of Palm Mortuaries and James Mullikin of Bunkers Mortuaries, it's often no longer enough to have a traditional service where a loved one is laid out in a casket as a church official recites standard religious texts.

"Increasingly, the families we serve want to make a statement about someone who lived," Phillips said. "We've had sit-down lawn mowers in the funeral home as a way of paying respect to those who worked in landscaping. We will do anything a family requests so long as it's dignified and reasonable.

"It isn't uncommon at visitation for someone to have brought in grandma's favorite chair and lamp and table with the cherry pie she liked to make."

Though some people, Mullikin said, are going the way of Bozarth, writing their own epilogue so there's no debate about how a closing scene plays out, most of the time the personalization is driven by the family of a loved one.

"There are some who do a prearrangement, but they are very few," he said.

A legal document such as a will can serve its purpose, but most of the time a person's "prearranging" is done through letting other family members know what is desired.

The trend toward personalization, Mullikin said, has largely occurred in the past five to seven years. "In the past, there has been a cookie cutter approach to what has been done or said," Mullikin said. "No more. The only limiting factor today is creativity."

It is clear, Mullikin said, that people today no longer find the subject of death to be taboo.

"In the past, no one really wanted to talk about it," he said. "Now people see how others deal with the situation in the media or on the Internet and they say, 'Hey, I'd like to do something like that.'"

One family, Phillips said, bought an inexpensive coffin and took it home and painted it to look like a race car, stripes and all.

"Their loved one obviously loved racing, and they got it back in time for the funeral," he said.

Another family brought a horse and stationed it in the portico next to the chapel.

"They were remembering a horse breeder and that horse always seemed to bray at the right time," Phillips said.

To date, Mullikin said he hasn't seen families at odds over how they want a personalized service handled.

"I think they realize that if a fellow spent 90 percent of his free time golfing, he might want to be remembered for that instead of the 10 percent of the time he spent hunting," he said. "I have told families to just think it over and they come up with a consensus."

With the average funeral costing $7,000 to $10,000, the $11 billion a year funeral industry -- which serves the families of the more than 2.4 million people who die in the United States each year -- has developed a new revenue stream by incorporating some facets of personalized funerals into its business portfolio.

The International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association has a program each year to identify the Best in Personalization events.

One that was honored: A construction worker who admired cranes was transported to the cemetery in a casket hanging from a 90-ton crane.

Less dramatic, but far more common, is the practice of funeral homes helping mourners turn photographs of a loved one into a video remembrance.

Mullikin said at many funeral homes family members are encouraged to bring in dozens of photographs of a loved one beginning from birth. Those photos are turned into a video that has a musical background. The cost ranges from about $75 to $150.

"Many people want to buy copies to take home with them," Mullikin said.

Even coffins can be highly personalized.

ArtCaskets.com has developed a profitable venture by selling coffins that literally serve as a canvas to remember the deceased. A casket can portray military scenes, police and firefighter motifs, or display a favorite activity, like hunting.

"Soldiers' families appreciate that we have something available that showed what their sons and daughters did on behalf of their country," said Gail Morgan of the Texas-based coffin maker.

"We can get a customized casket to a mortuary in 24 hours."

Morgan said a coffin that looks like a shipping crate emblazoned with a "Return to Sender" message is showing surprising popularity.

Phillips, who noted that Morgan's art caskets can be ordered through Palm Mortuary, said coffins of all types generally run from just under $400 to about $5,000.

And personalized jewelry that holds cremation remains gets more popular in Nevada every day, according to Mullikin.

Although the Cremation Association of North America found that earlier this decade nearly 28 percent of Americans were cremated, the figure was nearly 61 percent in Nevada, second in the nation. The transient nature of the population, Mullikin said, might have something to do with that.

Survivors who want their dearly departed back home often favor cremations because it generally costs less than $20 to ship a canister of ashes, while the permits and transportation costs for a casket often drive shipping costs to more than $1,000.

"Our jewelry that holds remains in, say, a locket is just beautiful and it doesn't have to be too expensive," Mullikin said. "It really is personal."

Not all attempts at personalization have been successful.

Both Phillips and Mullikin said mortuaries used to offer funeral scenes for departed gamblers, golfers and rodeo types.

Most don't today. One problem with the "stage sets," he said, was that there was nowhere to store them.

"We had a difficult time getting them set up in time," Phillips said.

Phillips said that a funeral home in St. Louis has been successful in selling mourners a "Big Mama's Kitchen" setting that features Crisco, Wonder Bread and real fried chicken. "It's a way to remember those who make the meals for the family," he said.

Yet Phillips said he has no plans to bring the concept to Las Vegas, and it's not because the fried chicken has to be replenished.

"We just see funerals with themes as taking too much time," he said.

Music at today's personalized funerals ranges from the traditional organ to heavy rock 'n' roll.

"We had one funeral where the family wanted everyone to enjoy Hawaiian music and, of course, they had to do so while wearing Hawaiian shirts," Phillips said.

In the end, of course, personalized funerals are all about giving birth to memories.

To Bozarth the skydiver, it should really be a time for friends and family to reminisce.

"When they see my ashes flying, they'll remember me flying free or as a Flying Elvis," Bozarth said. "I'll like that."

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.