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August 2004 YB News
By Michael T. Baklarz
The general perception that many people have about private mausoleums is that they are only for the rich. The other perception that is often aired is that private estates are a little too ostentatious and take up too much space. Let me refute both points. Private estates represent a space-efficient, financially viable and especially meaningful form of memorialization.
People might think mausoleums are a throwback to the late 1800s and early 1900s when first generation wealth and economic growth before the Great Depression fueled a boom in mausoleums that were then largely purchased by wealthy individuals and families. A similar trend is taking place now. The private estates market has considerably expanded since 1985 when only about 65 units were sold in the United States. That number increased more than 20 times to around 1,400 private estates in 2003.
But the resemblance of the trend compared to the one that occurred 100 years ago stops there. A majority of the private estates purchased today are smaller, dominated by two-crypt versions. At the turn of the last century, families purchased fewer mausoleums than today but the mausoleums tended to be larger, lavish affairs.
Another trend developing within this fastest-growing memorialization sector is the appeal for families to unite immediate family members in a single estate that will be visited by family members for many generations. We live in a fragmented society today where family members, except for our dependent-children, live in different parts of the country. Many family members are also buried or interred in different cemeteries, if not in different locations within the same cemetery, making it difficult for living family members to find their memorials.
To memorialize family members in a single estate that can attract many family members and be easily located, more Americans are buying private mausoleums that can accommodate 24 to 48 crypts and niches and additional spaces for below ground burial. Immediate family members may live apart for most of their adult lives but can ultimately be united in a family mausoleum.
Private estates, in this context, are extremely space-efficient. A private estate no larger than 20 square feet can accommodate as many as 96 members. Given the fact that many Americans have few memories of their great-grandparents or older relatives, a private estate accommodating so many family members encourages living family members to relay memories and stories about forgotten family members to younger family members.
If the trend among cemeteries is to develop personalized themes in designated sections reflecting hobbies, lifestyles, religious denominations of, and wars experienced by the deceased, we are only a step away from such sections being developed into educational museum-like memorialization theme parks with bas reliefs, statuary, sculpted images, and inscriptions explaining historical events, developments and cultural trends that were contemporary when the deceased lived so that family members can understand what their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents lived like and appreciated. The same can be said for private estates, which can be developed with granite and bronze artwork depicting things that were cherished by different generations of the same family.
A child or teenager visiting such a private estate is bound to be curious about the significance of subject matters featured in such artwork and ask questions and learn about things he or she never knew about his or her relatives that lived in the last century. There's nothing more significant in memorialization than learning about and appreciating late family members. Private estates will continue to provide a special means to achieve that through highly personalized estates accommodating dozens or scores of family members in any desired form of interment, entombment or burial.
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Michael T. Baklarz is vice president of business development for the Memorial Group of the Cold Spring Granite Co., a leading fabricator, designer and distributor of granite and bronze products. The Cold Spring Granite Memorial Group offers the broadest line of memorial products, including upright monuments, flat markers, cast bronze memorials with granite bases, urns, columbariums, cremation memorials, community and family mausoleums, benches, and specialty cemetery features. For more information, visit www.coldspringgranite.com.
Michael T. Baklarz has more than 25 years of diverse experience in sales, marketing, finance, and strategic planning and is an active member of the Monument Builders of North America and International Cemetery and Funeral Association. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy for two years and completed his undergraduate degree at Duquesne University. He also holds a master's degree in business administration from Ashland College.
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