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Denning insists that the lawsuits are part of a "smear campaign" led by funeral directors jealous of his low-cost, high-volume business (last year the Neptune Society accounted for almost one-quarter of all California cremations). "I'm taking money from undertakers' pockets and putting it in the pockets of the living," says Denning, whose white goatee, folksiness, and success have earned him the irreverent nickname "Colonel Cinders." For less than $400, Denning promises that ashes of the departed will be taken out to sea on an elegant yacht, then scattered across the Pacific under flags at half-mast while a crewman reads appropriate poetry like Tennyson's Crossing the Bar.
Betty McMullen and Melvin Belli, the plaintiffs' principal attorneys, urged their clients to form a Dignity After Death Society; the group's tearful demonstrations outside Harbor Lawn have generated morbid interest. The two lawyers also placed ads in the Santa Ana Register in Orange County, looking for others with loved ones who were cremated at Harbor Lawn.
No matter what happens in court, the furor over Harbor Lawn has brought closer scrutiny of the cremation business. Next month a new California law goes into effect making it a crime to conduct mass cremations or commingle ashes. ∎