Historic preservation takes on a whole new meaning in the South Arkansas Historical Preservation Society's temporary exhibit showcasing antiquated embalming and funeral equipment.
Dr. Tommy Lester, undertaker at Perry's Funeral Chapel, first had the idea for the exhibit earlier this year, when he found some antique morticians' equipment in an attic at the funeral home. Since then, he and Preservation Society Executive Director Steve Biernacki have been planning for the exhibit, which opened earlier this month in the Gallery of History, 412 E. Faulkner, and will remain on display through the middle of November.
'Oldest and noblest profession'
Embalming has a long history. Egypt is largely credited with the development of embalming techniques, which, according to the Smithsonian Institute, involved removing most internal organs, drying the deceased's other internal fluids out and finally wrapping the departed's remains in linen.
According to the Smithsonian Institute, ancient Egyptians practiced mummification to ensure those who underwent the process would retain their status in their after-lives.
During the Renaissance period in Europe, discovery and understanding of the circulatory system revolutionized the science of embalming, and in the U.S. the practice took off during the Civil War.
"On the East Coast, you didn't have anybody doing real funeral home stuff... in Colonial America. So the idea of the funeral home really didn't catch on. That was a Southern thing. The South brought embalming over, but they didn't really need it up north," Lester said. "The Civil War changes everything. They have embalming in the South because the South is hot, and in our culture, you want to lay the bodies out for two or three days for viewing... So when the soldiers came down here and got killed, the embalmers embalmed them and then sent them back up north, and they liked it."
In the funeral equipment exhibit at the Gallery of History, one will find a dated "home kit," consisting of an embalming machine and fold-out, metal cot, which a mortician would carry to a deceased person's home in the early 1920's.
Antiquated embalming chemicals are also on display. One old, blue glass bottle labeled Peter's Germex, The Modern Deodorant, apparently "imparts a most desirable, refreshing affect" when sprayed.
"Another thing that helped spread (embalming) was things like people who sold chemicals, the embalming fluid. They would come to a town and there would be no funeral home, no embalmer, whatever, and they would kind of give them a little training class, so that they could now have someone to sell chemicals to," Lester said. "It was kind of a thing of like, 'if it's not here, let's invent it so that we can sell to this guy and he can become the embalmer.'"
Across the room is a casket that Lester said most likely carried a body sent over from Europe; the coffin's dark wood, silver hardware and rounded corners distinguish it from the squared, often cloth-covered caskets that were popular in the U.S. in the 1920's, Lester said.
Also on display are the cases coffins would be shipped to El Dorado in – large, wooden crates one might have seen on a ship traveling internationally in the early 20th century. A lid for a smaller crate is also on display; Lester said a baby's casket would have been delivered in it.
In the same room are an old typewriter, counting machine and directories showing Rumph Mortuary – the former name of Perry's (more on that later) – listed with a three-digit phone number alongside McWilliams Hardware & Furniture Company and Lion Oil Refining Company, where T.H. Barton was President at the time.
The exhibit continues into a second room, where the funeral parlor feeling is amplified by the faint sound of the sort of calming, not-quite-melancholy music one might hear at a wake. A look for the source might lead visitors to think the music is coming from one of the old-fashioned tapes displayed next to their player that even the manufacturing company doesn't remember how to work.
"When we got that, we called the company that made it, they're still in business, and they were like 'we don't have any clue what you're talking about,'" Biernacki said. "Finally, we were like 'let's just hook up a speaker.'"
Across the room is the aforementioned American-made casket, covered in a delicate, flower-patterned pink velvet material. A skeleton lies inside; Biernacki said he couldn't help himself but to include it.
"(This casket) was never unpacked," Lester said. "So people coming to the exhibit can see a casket that's never been seen since it was packed and shipped here from Tennessee, from the Tennessee Coffin Company... It's cloth-covered wood, that was a popular thing at the time. Now, nobody buries anybody in cloth-covered wood like that; everybody wants a metal casket, or they want to see the wood."
Gallery: Funeral and embalming exhibit at Gallery of History
Back on the other side of the room, a glass case holds other memorabilia – the metal plates, complete with cutouts for a funeral home's logo, that would stamp advertisements onto the pages of the then-El Dorado Daily News; handmade wicker fans that were used before the paper fans showing Biblical scenes became common; and small notepads, which Lester explained were used in the "ambulances" (we call them hearses nowadays) to provide a record of body transportations.
"In the ambulance car, they had some kind of a handle that would click over to write out, 'okay, we took you from here to there,' and they'd tear it off and that was your ticket," Lester said.
Also in the display case is a bill for a funeral – only $125 in those days.
"From '34... You have, casket and services was $50; embalming was $35; washing, dressing and shaving is $5; ... hose and underwear was $2.50; ambulance service – that's what they would have called picking them up – that's $10; and then two handles on box... And the total was $125," Lester said, reading the bill, which also included burial costs and showed where members of the deceased's family had paid portions of the bill and left a balance – that probably remains unpaid to this day, Lester said – of $93.
Oldest in Arkansas
One thing that won't die is Perry's Funeral Home, although it is known now by a different name than it was when it first opened.
According to a history of the funeral home provided by the museum, Perry's started as the venture of Charles Rumph, who began his own funeral firm in the early 1920's after his mother, owner of Camden's Proctor Funeral Home, died. In partnership with W.F. McWilliams – a prodigious businessman in El Dorado's early days – he opened Rumph & McWilliams Undertaking at Elm and Cleveland.
"Mr. McWilliams was a businessman, so he had his finger in everything. He owned the Studebaker dealership, he owned the furniture store, so Mr. Rumph needed to be friends with him and go into business with him, because the furniture store supplied the caskets and the Studebaker dealership was the only company in the 20's that was converting cars into hearses," Lester said.
The building where Perry's is now located first opened its doors in 1927, when Rumph struck out on his own. The same year, Rumph died, leaving the funeral home in the care of his sons, Tom and Dudley.
Over the years, the funeral home took different monikers: Rumph Mortuary when Charles Rumph opened on Oak Street, then Rumph Undertaking & Ambulance Service, Rumph Funeral Directors and Rumph Funeral Home.
In 2003, the business came under the ownership of Perry Eddleman and became Perry's Funeral Chapel. The red-brick building was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
Perry's is actually the oldest continually operating funeral home in the State of Arkansas, Biernacki said.
"You guys are celebrating your 95th anniversary, basically," Biernacki said.
As the funeral business has changed ("McDonalds-ized," as Lester put it), Perry's ("not even Olive Garden!") has worked to maintain its service to the grieving families who enter their chapel.
Lester, who obtained his embalming license through education and apprenticeship, said many undertakers across the country are reclaiming some of the antiquated terminology related to the profession, preferring titles like "undertaker" or "mortician" to the sanitized "funeral director."
"Death was really in your face, and then they started kind of trying to clean things up, so word like 'mortuary,' 'undertaker' and 'mortician' went away in favor of things like 'funeral director' and 'funeral home' and 'funeral parlor,' nice little words like that. 'Coffin' got changed to 'casket,'" Lester said. "We're undertakers – we're proud of it."
At 37, Lester is among the youngest embalmers around, he said. In spite of his youth, he can tell anyone how undertaking and funeral homes have evolved over the last century. And now, funeral homes are the preferred location for services, instead of churches or other large chapels.
"It's certainly, probably, got its depressing moments, but there's a huge rewarding side that you get to help people in their worst hour. I mean, it's everybody's worst day of their life when they walk through your front door," Lester said. "If I didn't love what I do, I wouldn't do it... When you know that God has called you to do something, and you know that you have a heart and compassion for people and you want to serve people, you wake up every day and that's what makes it go. That's what we do it for."
"Everybody's got two things -- they're scared of public speaking and they're scared of dying; pretty much everything else they can live with... I don't know what happens when I die, but I know the folks down there on Oak Street are going to take care of me," he continued.
The exhibit at the Gallery of History is not too spooky for children, but the items on display are conversation-starters.
"They say never talk about politics and religion around the dinner table, but we don't talk about the reality that none of us are making it out, so how does it really work, and why does it work that way?" Biernacki said. "That's really what (this exhibit) is about... If we can help prepare people for the inevitable through history, through education, through these stories so that it's not, maybe, as scary, then that's, to me, kind of what this is all about."
"Get to know Jesus and your undertaker before you need them," Lester added.