More than 1 in 3 Fox Valley residents choosing cremation

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A columbarium, a place for cremated remains, is shown here at Bluff City Cemetery in Elgin on Friday. | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: December 2, 2011 8:09AM

Elgin astronomer Don Tuttle asked that his body be cremated, and since his soul left this world last year, 96 percent of that body has been returned to the atmosphere of his favorite planet (the Earth).

But the marker commemorating his remains is one of the most visible in Elgin’s Bluff City Cemetery.

Homeless Elgin murder victim Richard Gibbons also asked that he be cremated. One of his daughters is thinking about spreading his ashes where he can continue to be a “free spirit.”

Retired Navy career woman and bank employee Joan Wilkinson of South Elgin says that after she goes, “I don’t want to be lying in a casket while people walk by and say, “How nice she looks!’ Cremate me. Then you can put me in a Folger’s can if you want, but I’d like to go back to where I grew up, in New York state. There are a couple of places on the old farm where I’d like to be scattered, or they can put my ashes in front of my parents’ graves.”

These people are joining a trend. The causes are many: A desire to save money. A yen for flexibility in how one’s remains will end up. A feeling that old-fashioned graves waste space in the age of “green.” The increasing presence of Oriental religions and changing views among Judeo-Christian creeds.

But whatever their motivation, more people are choosing to have their bodies burned instead of buried.

Almost all groups

“Probably 40 percent of the families we serve choose cremation,” said Steve Laird, co-owner of the Laird and Wait Ross Allanson funeral services in Elgin, West Dundee and Algonquin. “Fifteen years ago, that was probably only 15 to 17 percent.”

Marcus Jaeger, owner of Countryside Funeral Homes & Crematory in South Elgin and Bartlett, agreed that “probably 35 percent of deaths in Illinois are cremations, and more than that in northern Illinois.”

Because his funeral home is the only one between Montgomery and Crystal Lake that owns its own crematorium (it’s in Bartlett), cremations account for even more of his business.

About the only kind of people who never use cremation are Muslims, whose faith has rigid rules about burial, the morticians agreed.

At the other extreme, Jaeger said Hindu families in the Fox Valley almost always cremate their dead. Asian Buddhists also tend to favor cremation.

The Roman Catholic Church used to oppose cremation because that seemed to deny the coming resurrection of the body. But Jaeger said the Vatican II Conference in the 1960s changed that doctrine, and many Catholics now cremate, too. Laird said he began noticing an increase in Catholic cremations about 10 years ago.

Protestant churches generally leave the decision up to the individual. Orthodox Judaism frowns on cremation, but Laird and Jaeger both note they have cremated some Jews.

Service or not?

Laird and Jaeger say many people choose cremation because they think it will be cheaper than burial. But the morticians warn that the price can end up being almost as hefty as a burial if the family wants to hold services, buy a casket and place the ashes in a cemetery.

Laird said his homes offer a basic cremation package for about $1,200.

“With cremation, you don’t have to pay for the grave space, for the opening and closing of the grave, for a burial vault and for a marker,” Jaeger said. “The basic cremation process is just $300 here. The total cost of cremation, containers and transportation may be $1,500 to $1,800.”

Most people who choose cremation still want to hold a visitation and/or service. And 60 percent of those, Laird estimates, want to do so with the body on display.

In most such cases, the funeral home rents the family a casket and the body lies inside that, within a sturdy cardboard container. After services, the container with the body is taken out and burned while the outer casket is rented to other families. But Laird said some families still insist on buying a wooden casket and having it burned up along with the body. “Most often, that happens with Asian families.”

“Scientists tell us that (seeing the deceased) is important in the grief process. Seeing is believing,” Jaeger said. “When a memorial service is delayed and there is no body, often people will say, ‘It felt like there was something missing.’”

“I’m a firm believer that the family needs some kind of service,” Laird said. “I’m bothered when a family calls and says, ‘Mom died. Just pick her up at the hospital and cremate her.’ Those are the ones who will call six months later and say they realize they made a mistake. I tell them then that the next time the family gets together for some holiday, they should talk about Grandma.”

At the crematorium

Bodies to be cremated from Countryside’s South Elgin funeral home are taken to the crematorium at Countryside’s Bartlett location. Funeral homes in Huntley and Crystal Lake also have their own crematoriums. But most funeral homes in the Fox Valley send bodies to privately- owned crematoriums, such as Twin Pines Crematory in East Dundee.

In most cases, the family does not come along. In fact, state law forbids having relatives watch a cremation take place — probably because, Laird notes, “it’s not a pretty process.” But the morticians said Asians often will accompany their loved one’s remains to the crematorium and watch the wood casket or cardboard container being loaded into the “retort,” or furnace.

Jaeger said natural-gas flames are used to preheat the retort to 1,600 degrees to prevent smoking. The gas flame continues as the body’s moisture vaporizes and most of its other contents are burned into carbon dioxide, water vapor and nitrogen oxides. All that’s left after about 90 minutes is 6 pounds of inorganic minerals — mainly the calcium and magnesium from the bones.

The operator removes any metal medical implants and, if a casket was burned, any screws and metal plates. Then, because larger bones don’t completely disintegrate, the cremains are run through a pulverizer that reduces everything to a sand-like powder.

The cremains go back to the family in a cardboard box about 6 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches.

Handling the ashes

“One thing that makes cremation desirable is that it leaves more options for what to do with the remains afterwards,” Jaeger noted. “My Uncle Frank has been gone 20 years and my Aunt Lorraine keeps his ashes in a closet. When she’s gone, she’ll want their ashes mixed together and spread up in Wisconsin.”

Laird and Jaeger estimate 40 percent to 50 percent of families send the cremains to a cemetery to be buried or to be put into a mausoleum-like columbarium. Another quarter to one-third spread the ashes somewhere. The remaining one-fourth to one-third keep the ashes at home, which can range from stowing them in a closet in that cardboard box to displaying them over the fireplace in a fine-art metal urn.

Jaeger said most urns cost about $200 to $300. Laird said they can range from $30 to $3,000.

At Elgin’s Bluff City Cemetery, Supervisor Rick Ellis said rules allow an existing grave to be reopened and cremation remains to be placed on top of the original casket. “That allows two people to be buried together, even if one was buried years ago and the lots adjoining that grave have been sold off,” Ellis said.

But Bluff City’s fanciest destination for cremains is a column-shaped stone columbarium built near the cemetery office in 2002. It has slots for the ashes of 64 people, of which some 20 are taken — including the one occupied by the remains of “Donald E. Tuttle — U.S. Navy World War II.”

Another columbarium was installed two years ago in Hampshire Township Cemetery along Harmony Road. And River Valley Memorial Gardens in West Dundee recently announced plans to devote a section to cremation remains.