by Jerry Weber
Karen and Vic are living in her apartment in Scranton, eight miles from Duryea. Vic is commuting back and forth setting up his new business. He gets all the approvals and has the 10 ton retort relocated one mile away to Mike’s garage. Carpenters build a small office up front and electricians are busy hooking up the retort. Next, Vic forms a Pennsylvania Corporation. The Duryea Crematory, LLC is now ready to commence operations.
Since Vic is not in the funeral business, it is now much easier promote it to the area funeral directors. But, the big news is that the nearby and closest crematory, Evergreen Cemetery, is going to discontinue cremations because the owners are old and want to retire. Their obsolete equipment needs expensive fire brick relining. Also, it won’t pass the EPA’s more stringent pollution requirements.
Here are two hundred cases only five miles away. If Vic can capture most of this business he will be a success from day one. He can charge the directors, $300 per case and do it for about $100 including costs. He could then clear $40,000 a year. He never made that much in his failing little funeral home. Vic and Karen have a reception for the area funeral directors. (Vic knows how to provide beer, wine, and snacks to party attendees.)
That evening, they welcome nearly fifty guests with their wives. Karen and Vic meet and schmooze the people like pros. Most are interested in the new service and the ones that are only there to be on the ‘find out committee’ won’t matter anyway. Vic, with Karen’s and her family’s help, is on his way to his first successful venture in his life.
CHAPTER 44
Success
If you don’t count the time that Vic was earning thousands for mob cremations, this was the first time in his life that he is finally successful financially. He is easily making the rent and lease payments on his crematory. Because the funeral directors pay Vic up-front for each case as he does them, he has a ready and steady cash flow. He now can finally focus on his and Karen’s personal needs. They want to get out of Karen’s small apartment in Scranton and find a more suitable home for a family to live in. They are looking around Duryea at some larger apartments and even some homes that they might be able to afford.
Karen again seems to be in the right place at the right time. Duryea has an old time drugstore/pharmacy in the downtown district. Dating back to the early nineteen hundreds it is a well-known area landmark. It has large windows with awnings that roll out on the outside, and inside there is a marble soda fountain with the old stainless steel dispensing equipment still in use. There even is a wooden barrel standing on the counter that dispenses draft birch beer. They make Cokes by putting syrup in a glass and then adding carbonated water. The large globe incandescent lights hang from a metal embossed ceiling. This place is right out of central casting for an old movie. Karen is there to pick up some allergy medications. So, she goes to the back of the store where the pharmacy window is and gets in line. She is standing behind two older women waiting for their turn with the pharmacist.
After eavesdropping, inadvertently, on the conversation her ears perk up when she hears that the speaker is a Mrs. Borovich. She is relating a story to her friend about her husband Jake Borovich. Jake is a longtime Polish Funeral Director in Duryea, and a competitor to Vic’s old family funeral home. It seems that Jake had a severe paralyzing stroke earlier in the year. Unable to conduct funerals, it was the family’s duty to notify the State Board of Funeral Directors.
To continue, they would have to hire a licensed Funeral Director to serve as supervisor to operate Jake’s business. After a couple of attempts, Maria Borovich, can’t find anybody interested in being a supervisor. However, Jake did have a handyman that he trained to embalm bodies, direct funerals, and do much of the other technical and professional work when Jake was away or indisposed. All of this is illegal under State law, but as in many small funeral operations, no one is going to complain unless something goes wrong. Jake’s wife was lulled into complacency because old Ned the handyman was carrying on with the funerals quite well. He was even forging Jake’s signature on the death certificates.
Being a small town, the third funeral director a Joe Jaresky knows exactly what is going on. Joe files a written complaint with the State Board of Funeral Directors in Harrisburg spelling out these violations. After sending in an investigator, the State Board has a hearing two weeks later they notify Mrs. Borovich to cease and desist from operating the funeral home unless she can find a supervisor immediately. She is also fined for the violations.
After three weeks, she is unable to hire anyone and notifies the State Board. This results in an immediate order to close the funeral home, delist the phone number, and take in the outside sign. In one fell swoop the Borovich Funeral Home, after forty years of operations, is out of business.
Joe Jaresky hopes to capitalize on this and get some of Borovich’s business. However, Borovich’s friends were outraged upon learning that Jaresky caused all of this just when the Borovich’s were up against it.
Karen can’t help but take all of this in with increased interest. She sees a possible opportunity for her and Vic in all of this. Karen rushes home and relates all of this to Vic.
Vic says, “Yeh, I feel sorry for Jake, but not Joe Jaresky. He was an opportunist in all of this.”
Karen comes back with, “Vic what if we offer to buy the place from Maria Borovich and reactivate it using your license and name?”
“Well, the Borovich name is over, but I could call it the Victor Kozol Funeral Home.”
Karen responds, “And what is wrong with your name in this town after all of the heroic publicity you got? Plus we need a place to live. This could double as our new home.”
“Okay Karen, issue settled, I will make an overture to Mrs. Borovich.”
Vic made an appointment to see Mrs. Borovich at the funeral home. Things have not improved for the Borovichs. Jake had to be placed in a nursing home and Maria lives in a place far too big for her alone. They agree that after getting the property appraised, Vic could buy the property and the funeral home equipment would go along with the deal.
Vic observes that the place is old and needs remodeling; however it is bigger and better laid out with more land around the house than his old funeral home. There is a three car garage in the back lot and enough room to put in a twenty car parking lot right behind the funeral home. These were both things that the old Kozol Funeral Home lacked.
Vic is now on his way to a second deal in one year with no help from his parents. He secures a $150,000 loan from a local bank on the strength of his cash flow from his now very profitable crematory. He knows a couple of in-town funeral directors might not use his crematory when he goes into the funeral business, but the out-of-town directors won’t care. The tradeoff should be more than worth it.
After studying Jake’s books he sees that the place was doing about thirty-five funeral per year. Not great, but a base to expand from. The apartment is out of the 1950s, but it is large with three bedrooms. Karen thinks it is great, because it is twice the size of the old funeral home apartment above his father’s place. For the second time a very positive thing is happening for Vic and Karen.
Epilogue
Vic and Karen have never been busier. Karen has quit her nursing job in Scranton and is now the number one assistant to Vic around the funeral home. She is also the secretary for the business. Vic is finally that PR person his father always wanted him to be. He is involved in the community and his church. You can actually see him and Karen attending the 10:00 A.M. Mass every Sunday at Holy Rosary. Fred Schmidt, Karen’s father, has taken an early retirement from the plastics plant and is running the crematory for Vic. His mechanical skills fit in perfectly to operate and maintain a sophisticated piece of equipment like a retort.
Vic is so busy with funerals that he needed help on all fronts. He has hired an intern from the Northampton Funeral Service School to serve his one-year residency at the funeral home. This doesn’t count the three part timer retirees who drive and help with the business.
For the first time, Vic is fully involved with the funeral business. His client families are being given the service and attention they deserve, and they are responding positively to Vic’s new funeral business.
Word on the street is try Vic, he is doing a great job and is a caring and compassionate operator. Not to mention that the bodies now look like they should at viewings and the place is clean and neat. The funeral volume, just the first year, climbed to sixty-five and the crematory did over 250 cases in addition. Where did this nearly doubling of the business come from? Well Vic calls his place Victor Kozol Funeral Home successor to Jake Borovich.
He not only kept all of Jake’s old clients, but took a big chunk of work from Joe Jaresky, since Jake’s widow recommended Vic everywhere she went telling her story of Joe’s disloyalty in taking down her husband. The third piece of business came from his old place now run by Bob Postupack. Bob seems to not be able to relate to his client families with his robotic, clinical personality. Vic, with the family name, is right there to take in the disgruntled client families.
Karen is now pregnant with her first child due in five months. Vic feels that he can grow to over one hundred funerals in the near future as Joe Jaresky has put his place up for sale and poor Bob Postupack has filed for bankruptcy. He feels sorry that his father was caught holding a second mortgage on the place and stands to lose $50,000.
However, Vic is letting no moss grow under his feet. He has bought a lot on the outskirts of Duryea and is planning on building a new funeral home with no steps for the elderly and an adequately sized chapel that will seat up to one hundred fifty people. There will be parking for over fifty cars and it will be the only one designed to be a funeral home in the area. In three years, Vic has gone from the bad boy in the town to a success story no one would have predicted. The unsung hero in all of this is Karen who made Vic the person he is now. Even Aunt Sophie tends the front door for Vic at Lithuanian viewings.
Acknowledgements
The idea for this novel is mine, but it never would have gotten to you without the help of many other people. First, my loving wife of forty-six years told me, after I let the project drop for three years, to revive it. She saw it as a good tale that should be published. Thank you Cynthia.
Secondly, my two daughters have each given me help and input into the finished product. Natalie helped me shape it and provided the 80s culture and music input along with streamlining clumsy syntax and added ideas and a character like Sophie. She has a mind more fertile than mine and has spent much time helping from Berlin, Germany where she and her family reside.
Annette, my older daughter from Baltimore, helped me navigate the inscrutable menus of a computer word processor. She tried her best to bring me into the twenty first century with digital formats. All of you have cheered me on and forced me to see this thing through. I can’t say thank you enough.
Patti Knoles, how can I begin to thank you for your patience and talent in bringing my book to life with your extraordinary cover design? You are true jewel. I’ll be back with book two.
To Philip and Ginger Marks editor and publisher; I had no experience in this field and you two have made it easy and possible for me to complete this work. Thank you.
Author’s Note
I have tried to create this novel in a real-world context. I have no proclivities for science fiction or supernatural writing, so you won’t find it here. The Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania is filled with a mosaic of rich landscape, culture, and traditions. These descendants of Eastern European immigrants are no less a part of Americana than anyone else written about. They are warm and charming people who have remained true to their birthplace and celebrate it through their unique culture. There is not much in fiction devoted to this area and its people. If you hear about an ethnic area in Pennsylvania it will usually be about the Amish. I thought I would introduce readers to something different.
Yes, these characters are real and could be anywhere in America. However, this is the America I know best.
I hope you enjoyed following Victor Kozol in his journey.
About the Author
Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The Weber family had operated a funeral home there since 1928. Jerry first graduated Temple University in Philadelphia and then graduated from the American Academy of Funeral Service in New York City. He later received a BA in History from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. After serving in the US Army in Vietnam, he joined his father and uncle in the family business. After his father’s retirement he became the owner of the business. This included three funeral homes and a cemetery.
Jerry has been married for 46 years to Cynthia Wisniewski who was a nursing educator and also a Pennsylvania licensed funeral director. They have two married daughters. Annette lives in Baltimore, MD and Natalie in Berlin, Germany. They have five grandchildren. Jerry flew airplanes and is a commercial pilot. He is also interested in Antique Automobiles and is a judge for the Antique Automobile Club of America. Jerry and Cynthia reside in Venice, Florida.
Preview: Thunder in the Coal Mine
Book II Victor Kozol Series
At noon on a Wednesday in May, Karen takes a call from New York City. It is the Harlem Funeral Home with a “trade call”. These are calls to funeral homes from other funeral homes usually out of town asking the local funeral director to pick up and prepare a body that is to be transported back to the originating funeral home. Mr Doaks, the New York Director tells Karen that a Josepf Younnes, now deceased, has been released by the coroner from the CMC Hospital in Scranton. He would like the Kozol firm to do the local removal and prep work and get the death certificate and removal permit so that Younnes’s body could be transported back to New York. He tells Karen, after all of the arrangements are completed by Kozol’s he will make arrangements to pick up the body. Karen takes all of this information and then pages Vic who is out on another funeral.
Vic returns to Duryea and gets on this new mission. First, he calls the Lackawanna coroner’s office to see if the body has in fact been released. After getting an affirmative answer, He dispatches his intern and one of the handymen to go to Scranton with the van and get Younnes body.
Later after embalming and preparing the body he comes out of his morgue and begins to think, this guy really is a mess not even viewable for a funeral service. What happened? Vic rounds up the Scranton Times from the last two days and starts looking for accidents to square with the condition of the body. Sure enough, on Monday night there was an explosion at the Northeast Stone Quarry in Peckville about ten miles from Scranton. It seems Younnes who was an equipment maintenance man on the night shift at the quarry was handling some of the dynamite the quarry uses in its daily operations to blast loose the solid rock formations.
Vic is confused by this. Why is a guy who is greasing and maintaining the trucks and other equipment handling explosives? Did he have to move some of the dynamite to get access to something? Was he called by his foreman to change his routine and work with the dynamite? Vic’s thoughts are interrupted by another death call that he had to attend to.
The next day a van arrives from New York with a driver to pick up Younnes for his trip back to New York. Vic, while helping the driver load the body, begins thinking about the strange death circumstances, again becoming curious. He is talking a John Merrill who is the man sent to retrieve the body. After presenting John with the death certificate and transit permit the New York firm will need to complete the funeral, Vic strikes up a conversation with him.
“John, what kind of a clientele do you handle up there in the Bronx?”
“Well we do a mix of everyone up there. This Younnes guy is a member of a group that seems to be clustered around a Mosque on 125th Street. They are a pretty conservative group and stay to themselves. One interesting thing is that in the City we are all unionized. The gravediggers at the cemetery have their own union and you have to use them for any burial in one of our cemeteries. But, the members of this grou
p insist on taking shovels and burying their deceased themselves. The union allows this because they stand there and get paid anyway. It’s amazing the vastly different customs that are practiced, especially in a big city like New York. Vic asks, “John, do you ever talk to any of them at the funerals?”
“Naw, they are respectful but very cool and aloof around strangers.”
With that Vic bids John goodbye and safe journey and goes back to setting up for the Oravitz funeral, which is scheduled to take place tomorrow.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Kozols
Chapter 2 College Life
Chapter 3 The Family Business
Chapter 4 A New Beginning
Chapter 5 Funeral Directing in a Small Town
Chapter 6 Victor the Proprietor
Chapter 7 Victor’s First Year in Business
Chapter 8 Circling the Drain
Chapter 9 Aftermath of Atlantic City
Chapter 10 The Dinner Meeting
Chapter 11 Reflecting
Chapter 12 A Call to Action
Chapter 13 ‘Firestop’
Chapter 14 Victor and ‘Firestop’
Chapter 15 Throwing Out the Bait
Chapter 16 Going for the Close
Chapter 17 Onward, Upward, & Downward
Chapter 18 The Hammer
Chapter 19 Fight or Flight
Chapter 20 Under the Spell of the Mob
Chapter 21 Charley Jones
Chapter 22 Euphoria at Rosselli’s
Chapter 23 Jack Cardigan