For a Price, Final Resting Places That Even Tut Could Appreciate

[dogday]

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ed Peck is in no hurry to get there, but when the time comes for him to go to eternity, he wants his last earthly stop to be consistent with his social station.

Nancy and Lowell Lohman own a number of Florida cemeteries and funeral homes. A mausoleum can convey significance, Ms. Lohman said.So Mr. Peck, a real estate developer who made his fortune in Florida condominiums in the 1970's, not long ago joined a small but growing number of Americans who have erected that most pharaonic of monuments to life-in-death, the private family mausoleum.

A Greek-pillared neo-Classical style structure of white granite, Mr. Peck's mausoleum has a granite patio, a meditation room, doors of hand-cast bronze and a chandelier. The family name is carved and gilded above a lintel that in the original sales model carried the legend "Your Name."

Developed just over two years ago to accommodate a growing demand for mausoleums like the one Mr. Peck bought, which including its lot has a retail cost of $400,000, the Private Estate Section at the century-old Daytona Memorial Park here has 15 lake-view lots. Six have been sold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/us/17mausoleum.html?ex=1302926400&en=943f022295eadd11&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss



WHAT A WAY TO GO!!!

[eyesroll]

1. That's sad -- $400,000 could buy a lot of housing for the living.

I do not understand objections to a simple funeral at all. (I know of no religion commonly practiced in the U.S. that requires opulence.)

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Oh, lay me down in Forest Lawn in a silver casket

http://www.song-teksten.com/song_lyrics/john_denver/evening_with_john_denver/forest_lawn/

Oh lay me down in Forest Lawn in a silver casket,
Put golden flowers over my head in a silver basket.
Let the drum and bugle corp play taps while cannons roar
And sixteen liveried employees sell souveniers from the funeral store.

I want to go simply when I go,
They'll give me a simple funeral there I know,
With a casket lined in fleece
And fireworks spelling out "rest in peace."
Oh take me when I'm gone to Forest Lawn.

Oh lay me down in Forest Lawn, they understand there.
They have a heavenly choir and a military band there.
Just put me in their care, I'll find my comfort there
With sixteen planes in a last salute they'll drop a cross in a parachute.

I want to go simply when I go,
They'll give me a simple funeral there I know:
With a hundred strolling strings
And topless dancers with golden wings!
Oh take me when I'm gone to Forest Lawn.

Oh, come, come, come, come,
Come to the church in the wildwood,
Kindly leave a contribution in the pail.
Be as simple and as trusting as a child would
And we'll sell you the church in the dale.

To find a simple resting place is my desire;
To lay me down with a smiling face comes a little bit higher.
My likeness cast in brass will stand in plastic grass
While hidden weights and springs tip it's hat to the mourners filing past!

I want to go simply when I go.
They'll give me a simple funeral there I know.
I'll lie beneath the sand
With piped in tapes of Billy Graham.
Oh take me when I'm gone to Forest Lawn.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
For a slightly higher fee!

Oh take me when I'm gone to Forest Lawn!

[Warpy]

3. And then there's

Send me off to glory in a Glad Bag
Don't need no fancy coffin for my bones
Just set me out yonder by the curbside
Let the Sanitation Local bear me home


I wish I could attribute it, but I only heard it once and it stuck. Boston radio was like that.

[notadmblnd]

4. how insecure can a body be?

that you have to have a half a million dollar grave marker to let people know you were somebody in life?

[Inland]

5. Well, we all knew there was a good reason to cut estate taxes, right? nt

[dogday]

6. Who says you can't take it with you??????