(3 of 3)
Sir: Many thanks for your revealing article on "The Business of Dying" [Sept. 20]. The undertaking business needs to be exposed for its abuses of the emotions and pocketbooks of millions of American families who do not know what to do. Rarely are ministers asked to help plan burials—just to give the funeral service. Much of the high cost of burials comes from pagan adoration of the dead in open caskets. Let's hope reforms are on the way.
(THE REV.) WARREN C. McCLAIN Westminster Presbyterian Church Pasadena, Calif.
Sir: When I told our undertaker that I wanted my mother buried in a plain wooden coffin, he told me, "Only bums and nuns are buried in them."
MARY O'MALLEY CASTELLANOS Chicago
Sir: TIME writers compounded their ignorance of funeral service by putting Mitford in a mortuary (temporary), whereas she's in a mausoleum (permanent).
WILLIAM BERG Publisher Mortuary Management Los Angeles
> TIME thanks Reader Berg for his cryptic correction.—ED.
Pressies
Sir: After reading the pressies [Sept. 20], I was stunned not to see "March, of TIME."
MRS. WILLIAM ROUSE Providence
Sir: "Noyes, from the Bugle."
JEROME S. GROSS
Miami
Sir: "Sick, of the News."
MRS. EDWARD HIRSCHMAN Irvington, NJ.
Sir: "Mann, of the Hour"; "Spice, of LIFE"; "Lowering, of the Standard."
JANE AND IRA AVERY
Noroton, Conn.
Sir: "Merrimac, from the Monitor"; "Plato, from the Republic"; "Pontius, from the Pilot."
SCOTT HARRISON
CRAIG BURNS Los Angeles
Sir: We don't have to think up pressies. We are pressies.
MARY G. FERN
(Society Editor)
CHARLES J. FERN
(Publisher)
MIKE FERN
(Editor)
The Garden Island Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii