It’s a sunny February day as Cathie Murray walks up a trail in Fayette, Maine, snow crunching beneath her boots. She comes upon a grove of tall cathedral pines and oak trees. It’s silent except for the patters of squirrels and the wind rustling the tops of the trees...
For most of my life, I’ve found cemeteries to be foreboding places, best left to funeral processions and gravediggers. But seven years ago I met a man named Steve Baldwin who changed my thinking on the matter. Then about 60, Baldwin was known to some around New York City as the Parrot Guy, because for almost two decades he has kept unofficial watch over the city’s South American green monk parakeets...
Like any other industry, death care evolves and experiences shifts in how things are done over time. One of the last significant shifts occurred in the early 19th century when disease and overcrowding made it unsafe to continue churchyard burials. Since then, traditional cemetery burials have been...
On July 1, Oregon became the third state in the nation to allow a human body to be composted after death, following Washington and Colorado. The new allowance has already brought a human composting company to the state, and represents a growing trend toward sustainability in the death care industry. Distinct from traditional burial or cremation, human composting reduces all human remains...
In 2017, Judy and Al Mowrer of Wooster, OH, decided they wanted to be “pushin’ up daisies” in the literal sense when they died – using their bodies to help the Earth prosper and give new life. So last year when Al died of multiple sclerosis at 74, he was wrapped in a cotton shroud and buried beneath the prairie meadows of Foxfield Preserve in Wilmot, 20 miles southeast of their home...
Jewish law has a lot to say about what’s supposed to happen when you die: your lifeless body must be washed and buried quickly, with a simple headstone to mark your grave. But nowhere, in 4,000 years of Jewish law, custom or tradition does it say you need to rest eternally. As California struggles with the West’s longest megadrought in 1,200 years, emergency water conservation rules are set to...
Michael McFann has been an essential part of the CemSites team for the past seven years, serving as our VP of Operations over the past year. His daily responsibilities include overseeing our production and customer service departments, directly supporting the CEO, and helping to drive all company missions. With over 15 years of experience in operations management, customer service, and...
CemSites’ VP of Sales, Mark Anthony, has been an asset to the CemSites team for over two years and counting. His day-to-day role includes overseeing sales, conducting sales training, participating in marketing efforts, and providing support to the CEO. Mark has worked in high-level sales and marketing positions for the past 18 years, serving in a leadership role for 12 of those years. His talent for...
Our Chief Technology Officer, Douglas Sesar, has been an integral part of the CemSites team since we first opened our doors back in 2012. In the early days of CemSites, he was the sole software engineer for the company. As the company grew and expanded its team, Douglas progressed to senior software engineer. In January 2021, he was promoted to Chief Technology Officer...
Any responsible business owner must constantly consider the security of his or her business, compensating for any gaps, learning new threats, and creating measures to protect against those threats. While it may not be pleasant to think of things that could threaten your cemetery, it is a necessary part of running the business. There are three main types of security threats you need to consider...
