First experiences

Before Dave was sent on his first death call with the funeral director, he mowed the law and washed the hearses during his first summer. 

“The first time I touched a dead person,” Dave said. “They [his coworkers] thought it was funny because I was studying to get my English degree. I remember touching the deceased lady. She was a little Greek lady, and she was in this nursing home. I was shocked that she was still warm. That kind of freaked me out. Some people always say when they move somebody who’s been dead for a while it freaks them out because they’re icebox cold.”

He became an apprentice in Oklahoma City at the three different funeral homes in the area. When Dave was an apprentice, he went down to Capitol Hill Funeral Home in the oldest part of Oklahoma City to help them out. He told another funeral director who did his apprenticeship at the funeral home that he saw a lady dressed with a pillbox hat, a veil and a purse, like she stepped out of the 50s, crying on the couch in the sitting room.

“He said, ‘I remember her son was killed in Vietnam,” Dave said. “He was a soldier. I remember when she did it the first time when she was alive, and she began to cry.’ Once you’d hear her, you’d go by and see her in the corner of your eye all the time.”