Urn Talk: St. Francis of Assisi Pet Urn
We’ve created a cast metal urn to honor St. Francis and bless the sweet creatures he protects, and has become one of our most requested pet urns. This urn can serve as a pet urn or keepsake urn for animal lovers, holds pets weighing up to 55 pounds.
Saint Francis of Assisi is known as the patron saint of animals, the environment, and Italy. It’s customary for Catholic churches to hold ceremonies honoring animals around his feast day of October 4.
St. Francis statue urns are available in a satin bronze finish, as well as pewter and copper finish. Lined bottom to protect furniture. Urn can be personalized with a brass nameplate on the base.
The Softer Side of Sears
For Funeral Directors that worry about competition from Costco, internet retailers, and maybe even Wal-Mart. Remember, it’s all been done before.
Vintage Sears Catalog:
At the turn of the 19th century, budding retailers Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck breathed new life into a stagnant funeral industry by introducing mail order funeral products. Before this time, extravagant monuments, gravestones and similar goods were only afforded to the affluent and wealthy.
But they had a plan. Since their regular merchandise catalog was growing in popularity, they wanted to expand into a market that everyday working people would need. Sears, Roebuck & Co started selling marble tombstones, monuments, tablets and markers at half the cost of traditional funeral parlors and monument makers.
At its inception, Sears’ “Monuments & Tombstones” catalog offered markers starting at $4.88 and tombstones at $7.40, making them extremely affordable. The products were manufactured and shipped from Vermont in about four to six weeks.
What’s amazing about these funeral products is the craftsmanship. Though these were obviously designed by hand, the graphics are so meticulous. Customers had several varieties from which to choose including hearts, shamrocks, religious symbols and even Heaven’s gates. The block lettering was simple and elegant.
Speaking of craftsmanship they appealed to the Woodmen of the World members to honor the brotherhood with a Sears Monument. You may have seen the tree trunk style stones at the cemetery.
Unfortunately, just as the regular Sears catalog went defunct, so did the “Monuments & Tombstones” publication. By the early 1900s, Montgomery Ward also started selling funeral products via mail order too, but with a better payment plan than Sears.
Within a few years, as the United States entered World War I and subsequently World War II, mail order sales dropped significantly. In 1952, the catalog ceased publication.
Nonetheless, the advent of the Internet gave rebirth to mail order funeral products. Today, there are an endless number of websites that have urns for sale, headstones, caskets, funeral keepsakes, and memorial jewelry at a fraction of the cost at local funeral suppliers.
Don’t Mess With the Twins
Hey, we’re all about the yard art and will probably be one of those old ladies with a yard full of statuary and obstacles to mow around. But this seems a little excessive.
Eccentric twin brothers Gerald and John Hubbs, Paulsboro, PA started erecting a display in their tiny yard four years ago. Since then, they have amassed a collection of 100 bronze figures crammed onto an all-concrete front yard about 50 feet wide. Dozens of finely crafted pelicans, tortoises, grimacing alligators, frolicking mermaids and fountains make up the collection. The house is surrounded by a locked chain-link fence.
The neighbors love it! Not. When the 59-year-old twins celebrated the Fourth of July by firing ceremonial bronze cannons in their backyard and activated a spiky metal dragon that spit flames, neighbors called the law.
Police charged them with maintaining a nuisance, fireworks violations, and harassment after neighbors said one of the twins screamed that he would kill her if she called police again to complain about the noise.
It is not the first time police have been dispatched to the Hubbs home. Six years ago, their lawn and driveway were dug up by police after their 82-year-old mother, Ethel, went missing. A former girlfriend of one twin had told investigators that she believed they had buried the body and continued to cash her Social Security checks.
A body was never found and the men were never charged.
However, during the search of the premises and a warehouse owned by one of the twins’ former wife, police uncovered illegal weapons, including an AK-47, booby traps, expensive jewelry, coins and allegedly forged documents. The Hubbs’, chiropractors and former registered nurses, were tried on more than 100 charges and given probation.
Source: Philly.com
Images: John Costello
Special Delivery
Crystal Lake, IL
Jeff Hornagold loved Nascar, baseball, spending time with family and friends….and his job at UPS, where he worked for 20 years as a driver.
Hornagold died last Tuesday from lung cancer. As a memorial tribute, his friend and co-worker Michael McGowan, made a final delivery in his UPS truck, transporting the casket with Hornagold’s body from the funeral home to the church where memorial services were held on Saturday.
McGowan says he plans to keep a picture of Hornagold in his truck until he retires so that they can keep riding together.
Tip to TT, story here.