Oakland morticians-to-be train for the business of death

A few blocks down Baum Boulevard in North Oakland, class is in session, and a group of… A few blocks down Baum Boulevard in North Oakland, class is in session, and a group of students carefully picksindividual pieces of artificial and human hair from tool kits.

They apply a bit of glue to each fiber, painstakingly positioning them onto Styrofoam head models and trim the hairs with tiny scissors to create two bushy, faux eyebrows on each bust.

The students pull and tug at the skin on their table-top heads, admiring the masterpieces of hair, plastic and wax.

These heads aren’t part of a Pitt art department sculpting class.

They’re the products of a restorative art class at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science.

The school teaches about 150 students each year the how-to’s of the death-care industry. Some students are as young as 17 and have had prior funeral service experience in high school.

“When students call with an interest, the first thing I usually ask them is if they’ve been behind the door,” Dean Eugene Ogrodnik said of the importance of an internship at a funeral home before committing to a profession so driven by death.

“And if they say no, I tell them that they need to get one,” he added. “You need to know if you want to do this.”

Obviously, working in funeral service is not for everyone.

For student Melissa Johnson, the tremendous task of taking care of the dead isn’t daunting or morbid.

“I’m so intrigued by it,” she said. “This is awesome. It’s the same type of service as a doctor or a surgeon, and it’s something that people just can’t do.” Ogrodnik echoed Johnson about the seemingly depressing profession’s appeal.

“It’s a specialized service, and someone just has to do it,” he said.

Morticians must have compassion, understanding, business skills and be active in their communities, Ogrodnik said. They can’t be emotional or become attached to clients.

Most of all, funeral service students must have a passion for the job because the life of a funeral home director isn’t an easy one.

“They must be hardworking,” he added. “It’s not a 40-hour-a-week job. It’s defined by people’s needs. Death occurs any time.”

In fact, for a mortician solely running his or her own funeral home, which is common in Western Pennsylvania, one family’s death requires 40 hours of work that is compressed into two or three days. These mom-and-pop-type businesses take perhaps 50 to 70 calls per year, Ogrodnik said.

On average, funeral homes across the country handle 182 deaths a year and most host only three full-time employees without much additional part-time help, the National Funeral Directors Association said.

Beside the grueling work schedule, students wanting to become funeral directors shouldn’t look to strike it rich, either.

Average wages tend to be low, Ogrodnik said.

Starting salaries for funeral home interns fresh out of mortuary school start as low as $20,000 a year, he said, although some entry-level positions can be up to $40,000.

Often, students have entry-level positions on their resumes before they even arrive at the school. Working at funeral homes at a young age leads many down the path to mortuary science.

Joshua Starr, a first-year student, decided to enter the school after he worked part-time at a home.

“And my grandfather had worked in one after he retired,” he added, as he adjusted fine hairs on a wax mannequin’s face during his restorative art lab.

Dustin D’Alessandro, another first-year working next to Starr, chimed in, saying that he came to PIMS because he wanted to take over the family business.

But Ogrodnick said funeral home management as a family practice is slowly dying out.

“Maybe 90 percent of the student body 25 years ago were related to owners or had work experience,” he said. Today, only about 60 or 70 percent of the students across the country have family in the funeral home business.

Eighty-nine of funeral homes are privately owned and operated, according to the NFDA.

Gender ratios also have evolved significantly in the industry. 2001 was the first year that women exceeded men in schools across the country.

Just last year, the national composition of newly enrolled students jumped to 57 percent female. One-third of all mortuary science students are women, according to the NFDA.

Demographics are not the only trends among today’s soon-to-be morticians. The schools themselves have changed, too.

Thirty years ago, a mortuary science education almost entirely focused on science, with chemistry, public health, toxicology and pathology, Ogdrodnik said.

Recently, though, that teaching style bit the dust with a greater focus on a broader curriculum with sociology, psychology, business and marketing.

And these traditional subjects aren’t the only ones students learn before their schooling ends. They take special classes in funeral management before putting people six feet under. Funeral service law and merchandising courses teach students to satisfy customers in the business.

PIMS students often have the opportunity to work with real remains in an embalming laboratory, where they preserve and prepare bodies for viewing. Here, they practice the techniques on unclaimed remains – bodies donated to science or remains sent to the school by families who can’t afford for their loved one’s preparation at a licensed funeral home.

In restorative art, students build wax faces for remains that have been damaged in an accident, in surgery or by disease.

After the basic year-long study of funeral service management and any additional schooling for associate or bachelor’s degrees, students can become medical examiners, chemists or take a job in a morgue.

But most – probably 99 percent – want to become funeral home directors or owners, according to Ogrodnick.

The business of mortuary science originated with the practices of the ancient Egyptians, famed for their mummies.

The birth of modern embalming came during the American Civil War.

Funeral home businesses then boomed in 1945, when G.I.s returned from World War II looking for a job requiring quick training. The first mortuary schools moved students through their ranks and into the professional funeral home field in nine months.

Some towns in those days even had more funeral homes than gas stations, Ogrodnik said.

Today, Pennsylvania has more funeral homes per capita than any other state, according to Ogrodnik. The Keystone State has about 1,900, though the entire nation only has 21,500.

With the national death rate predicted to spike in 2020 and rise steadily until 2080, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the students at Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science will be kept busy for quite some time.