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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Paying your respects from a drive-thru funeral home

I came across a video yesterday while at lunch of something that's a bit different than what I normally see and post here on Weird Fresno. It was an interview of a woman who owned a funeral home in Compton and it had a unique feature of a drive-thru viewing window. One would be able to drive up to the spot where the body was being viewed and you could either stay in your car or step out and view the body and sign the register.



This isn't the only drive-thru funeral home in the country. There is one in Chicago and another in Louisiana. But the owner of Robert L. Adams Mortuary, Peggy Scott Adams, believes her's to be the only one in Southern California.

At first I thought this was a bit weird. But as I watched the video I began to warm up to the idea. There are some people who can't attend the funeral of the person and this gives them a chance to pay their last respects. Another interesting thing I found was that people who were walking by would sometimes go up to the viewing window and pay their respects, even if they didn't know the person.

Now I doubt this concept will catch on everywhere, but it is something unique and not morbid in the least. In a culture that seems to fear death, it's comforting to know that not everyone out there is afraid of it and wants to pay their respects to the dearly departed.

The LA Times did an article on the funeral home and it can be found here.

2 comments:

Dan said...

Thanks for sharing this post. Is it just me or does this seem to trivialize the person who passed away? I mean if you can't be troubled to park your car and walk up to a respectful service, maybe you didn't really respect the person. Just a thought.

Thanks for delivering stimulating content.

Michael said...

Thanks for the feedback Dan, always appreciated.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on viewing someone in this manner. I see the benefits of it for people who may not be able to make it into the home to view the body (elderly, persons with disabilities, etc.) and this gives them a chance to view the body and pay respect.

Also this funeral home is in Compton and I read that gangs would do a drive by after a viewing of rival gang member were over and killing more. So this funeral home was used to try to prevent that from happening and the owners went so far as to install bullet resistant glass.

Granted I'm old fashioned and would do a regular viewing, but to me if someone comes to view a body to pay their respects it doesn't matter if it's in a building or from their car. But that's just me.