Local Funeral Consumers Alliance volunteer-run affiliates help people make difficult choices every day. But sometimes they help in far more dramatic ways. Dale Smathers, Vice President of the FCA of Greater Rochester, helped unearth more than 30 sets of cremated remains that had been abandoned in a burnt-out funeral home. One family had been told (illegally) that they could not claim the ashes until they paid the bill in full:
[Katherine Goodman]White said she tried to pick up her father’s remains after his cremation, but was told she could not do so until she paid off her bill for funeral services.
“I had the bill down to $250, but then I got very sick,” she said, “and I couldn’t pay it all off.”
. . . .
“Oh, thank God! … Thank Jesus!” White, 53, cried out as her boyfriend, Thomas Buono, walked out of the funeral home and handed her a tattered cardboard box, which contained a plastic box holding the remains. “I can’t even tell you what we’ve been through trying to get these back.”
Read the whole story at buffalonews.com.
