Erie funeral homes adapt to long

For 55 years, Nancy Dusckas lived above her family's funeral home.

She remembers sliding down the staircase railing and playing hide-and-seek in the casket showroom with her sister at Dusckas Funeral Home's flagship location, 2607 Buffalo Road.

From running the vacuums to typing obituaries, Dusckas said she grew up learning the ins and outs of running a funeral home from her father, Constantine "Gus" Dusckas, who started the business in 1946.

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"Because my dad was so well respected and worked well with the community in the things he offered and going above and beyond, I can't cut back on that stuff," said Dusckas, who's been the funeral director of Dusckas Funeral Home for more than 40 years.

Dusckas has learned to adapt to several long-term shifts in an evolving funeral home industry.

Dusckas remembers when a family's visitation and funeral service typically took two full days.

"When we lived above the funeral home, my mom would try and get us out of the building, or my dad would put us on a train to visit some family," she said. "I can remember we as kids would sit on the couch by the window and watch out the door until we saw the funeral procession pulling away, and then we’d start jumping and shouting because we were allowed to make noise again."

Funeral services and calling hours now are typically contained to one day, Dusckas said.

"I think some of it has to do with the children of the family coming from out of town, so by the time they come back, we have everything set and they’re not sitting here for two days," Dusckas said. "Plus, the younger generation, we’re lucky to get them through the door to have a visitation, they’re so busy."

Having shorter services doesn't necessarily mean less time is spent making them special, said Peter Burton, president of Burton Funeral Home.

"'People want nice places," he said. "They want to be taken care of, they want to come into the Ritz-Carlton and have a beautiful funeral home and experience."

Burton, a fifth-generation funeral director, remembers when funerals were conducted in homes with few windows and only specific, traditional services. But now, people are looking for exceptional experiences.

"They want it to be a party and sometimes funeral homes don't realize they have to offer that," Burton said. "Funeral homes a long time ago were dim or darkly lit, but now they’re more uplifting and more open. They’re not in a formal-type setting."

Services have become more about a celebration of life in a more personable way, Burton said. Families are looking for unique ways to conclude services with things like balloon, dove and butterfly releases.

"These things my dad didn't really do too much, we’re doing all the time now because people want an experience and they want to feel part of the loved one and celebrate this whole thing, not just have a priest come in and read five or six prayers and then leave," he said.

Burton Funeral Home also began offering a grief support group more than five years ago.

"In hospitality, we have to do more than just take care of the deceased like they did in the 1900s," Burton said. "We have to take care of the people more if you want them to come to you the next time. Today, you really have to exceed their expectations."

As memorial services evolve, so does the manner in which the remains are handled.

One long-lasting change funeral homes nationwide saw from the COVID-19 pandemic was an increase in cremations. The cremation rate in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. is expected to exceed 50% by 2035, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

Burton said 70% of the people his funeral homes take care of are cremated, compared to when he started in the 1980s, when almost everybody received a traditional burial.

Related:More Americans are choosing cremation over traditional burials, survey finds

"It's just a little less expensive and people are more transient now," he said. "When you were born and raised in Erie and never left, your parents were born in Erie and you’d go and visit them, and now it's hard for children to go out and visit the cemeteries today, so it's become less of a popular option."

For Dusckas, half of all her dispositions are cremations. She started to see this increased interest in cremations nearly a decade ago.

"I knew cremations were changing when I had a very strong faith-based couple come to me ― and traditionally, older generation church-based people would always bury ― and that was the first one I remember coming to me and saying, 'When I die, I want a cremation,'" Dusckas said. "I was shocked, but from that point, I started to see a generational shift."

Dusckas believes cremations have become a more popular option not just because of the generally lower cost but because people are keeping the environment in mind as well.

"The major reason, I believe, is people just want to keep life simple," she said. "I think people just don't want to waste the space on Earth, they want to keep it clean and neat. Why tie up Mother Earth for a burial-type thing?"

The increased desire for cremations has also eased the challenge of finding workers, Dusckas said.

The employment rate for funeral service workers is expected to grow by 4% from 2020 to 2030, thus many firms anticipate hiring eligible workers to be a future challenge, according to the NFDA.

That's enabled Dusckas to make do with the staff she has.

"With cremation, we’re not embalming as much, we’re not running the funerals as much, so you don't have as much staff as you’d need for those particular type of funerals," she said.

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But filling those gaps still proves to be an issue for Dusckas that affects how she and her employees approach the job.

"With limited staff, if you have two funerals going on and funeral directors out running those, you still need another able to see a family in the morning if a death comes in at night," Dusckas said. "So, that's one of our staffing issues: having a director free in the mornings so we can hit that noon deadline with the newspaper."

Dusckas said most of the funeral directors she's hired came looking for a job, but that doesn't mean she hasn't been trying to fill the openings herself.

"I’ve had a couple funeral directors who have retired, so trying to replace them has not been easy," she said. "There is a generation of kids in mortuary school, but you’re trying to find the right temperament of a person who has a compassionate heart, pretty sharp, good at details, and we haven't yet found another person to fill in the gaps yet."

Because of that, Dusckas Funeral Home staff will occasionally take on extra hours in order to service families to the fullest, but Dusckas said they don't mind.

"I’ve asked them if they want me to push to find someone to fill in the gap, but they don't mind stepping in when I can't do it, so they’re very willing to help," she said. "They’re very committed funeral directors who've grown up on old-school ways."

Dusckas said she's been fortunate to have a staff that shares her commitment to the business.

"To me, having one more funeral director licensed and trained well is what the ultimate goal is to have a 100% smooth flow, but we function well with what we have and they step up as need be," she said.

Baylee DeMuth can be reached at 814-450-3425 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter@BayleeDeMuth.