americang unera October 2007 rector www.katesboylston.coarticles 20 Cremation CANA Cremation Statistics By Thomas A. Parmaec 42 Pricing The Simplicity Principle By David Nixon Q Planning Succession Planning By Jake Johnson 54 Finance A Profitable Funeral Home By Rober L Pence 60 History A History of Death Customs By Ralph Kicker 8 Mensa Bren 66 History In Custer’ Footsteps By Brian Buchanan 74 Funerals of the Famous Bonnie & Clyde By Jin Moshinskie QA4 AFD Profile From Death Care ro Doggie Care? By Thomas A. Parmate Q2 Annals of Funeral Service Legacy of a Fat Undertaker By Todd Van Beck departments Association News 114 Publisher's Message Ee Calendar 122 Supplier News College News 110 Up Front News End Nove, 120. Advertiser Index Obituaries 108 Classifieds Openers : 8 In Faure on the Covers the notorious bandits Bonnie and Clyde pose for a photograph. Read about thelr infamous life and death in this month's Funerals of the Famous on page 74CT aS eee ee eh Ee eck aCONTROVERSIAL BANK ROBBERS e BY JIM MOSHINSKIEFUNERALS OF THE FAMOUS | BONNIE & CLYDE On Wednesday morning, May 23, 1934, Frank Hamer and his posse of three Texas and two Louisiana lawimen waited patiently in dense woodlands for the tan 1934 Ford V-8 sedan, containing outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, to appear. The tired lawmen had been hiding for two nights menaced by chiggers and mosquitoes, but they were determined to end a series of cold-blooded murders and numerous robberies in the Southwest, At 9:1 a.m., their patience paid off in a hail of bullets that left Clyde, age 25, slumped backward in the seat, his dangling head a mat of blood, and Bonnie, age 23, with her carefully fixed hair, crumpled with a weapon across her lap and holding a half-eaten sandwich. rice the deafening sound fom che cannonade of bullets subsided, the lawmen waited. When no return fire came, they stepped our from the bushes and viewed the carnage. Dallas Depury ‘Ted Hinton grabbed a 16 mm Bell & Howell movie camera and meticulously documented the scene When he opened the passenger side doos, Bonnie's petite, youthful bod, shattered with more than 40 ballet wounds, fell out. Their ceign of terror was over, but their funerals were to become spectacles witnessed by thousands of the ‘morbidly curious in the days before live television, ‘Clyde’ life in eime started in December 1926 when he failed co return sented car on time, While he got out ofthis evime, he continued to cause trouble. Bonnie was a waitresses for several Dallas eafes, but the Depression caused the last eafe she \worked at to close. When visiting the home ofa giliriend in West Dallas in January 1930, she met Clyde ~ apparencly falling in love at fest sight. Ar the ime, Bonnie was 19 and ousted co an imprisoned criminal whom she never divorce Bonnie and Clyde's fist criminal act together came theee months latee when she smuggled a pol to spring him from a Waco, Teas, jail where he was being held om burglary charges. During che week after THE MOST weiSticanan’ INFAMOUS AND robbery before being captured in Ohio. Clyde was renamed t0 Texas and imprisoned in the brutal Eastham Prison where he is alleged to have committed his first murder, using a pipe to kill a particularly violent prisoner who had. sexually assaulted him. The Eastham experience changed Clsde into a bitter man, hell-bent on revenge. He rejoined Bonnie, and they embarked on a ruthless two-year crime spree, robbing banks, grocery stories and service stations, and stealing countless vehicles. His brother, Marvin I. Buck” Barrow, fresh from prison himself after receiving a CONTROVERSIAL BANK ROBBERS OF THE 1930s full pardon by the Texas governor, joined the emerging “Barrow Gang,” bringing along bis wife, Blanche. Others who joined included W.D. Jones, brothers Raymond and Floyd Hamilton, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults and Ted Rogers. Across the Southwestern states, the Barrow Gang exploits spread like wildfire. They were known and feared for their miraculous escapes from police traps, shooting their way cout of a half dozen major gunfights. Clyde, who displayed remarkable driving skills on rural gravel roads, preferred 10 steal the new Ford V-8 sedans as getaway cars. The powerful cight