A
necessary service
Story and photos by William Lannon
In a sense all entrepreneurs provide necessary services for someone,
but practically none of those services have the universal necessity of
the one provided by Walker Hutchins and others like him. Hutchins owns
and operates the Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, Inc.
on Limerock Street in Rockland, one of the roughly sixty-five independent
funeral homes in Maine.
Since 1983, Walker Hutchins has
been the Licensed Funeral Director
at the funeral home on Rockland’s Limerock Street—now
named Burpee,
Carpenter & Hutchins in recognition of its history
as well as its present.
Hutchins is fond of quoting a radio advertisement for a
Southern funeral home, “Better to know them and not need them than to need them
and not know them.” In many ways the slogan sums up the availability
and visibility which Hutchins feels is incumbent on him to provide for
the community. Advertising is essentially by word of mouth.
His calling, or profession as Hutchins sees it, requires the mastery
of disciplines ranging from the anatomical sciences to the cosmetic arts.
In many respects, however, the technical and physical aspects of Hutchins’ vocation
represent the easy part of the work. Of more crucial import are the compassion,
gravitas, and emotional strength which the funeral director must embody
and project in order to serve the needs of his clientele at what is likely
one of the most difficult times in their lives. And Hutchins emphatically
does see himself as the servant of the bereaved.
Most young people would probably not immediately consider funeral direction
for a life’s work. It is worth noting though that Hutchins’ daughter,
J’Anna Hutchins Hedrich, is soon to be licensed and will join her
father at Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins. She will join the ranks of
a number of women funeral directors in the state including Carol Hall
Perry at the Hall Funeral Home, Waldoboro; Rhonda Wiles-Rosell at Wiles
Funeral Home, Farmington, and Holly Smith Fernald at Brookings-Smith
in Bangor.
And even Hutchins, who wanted to be an undertaker from childhood, took
a couple of detours before making the decision which brought him to Rockland
in 1983. His father was an American Baptist pastor who was called to
churches all over Maine. Young Walker was born in Portland, but grew
up in New Gloucester, South Harpswell, and Bridgewater in Aroostook County.
He was back in Portland to graduate from Deering High School.
Burpee,
Carpenter & Hutchins
Funeral Home, Inc. on Limerock Street in Rockland, one of the roughly
sixty-five independent funeral homes in Maine. In 1983, Hutchins
and his partner bought the original Burpee Funeral Home which was
founded in 1830 and is the oldest in the city.
An honorary Uncle Hack who was a funeral director exerted a huge influence
on Hutchins and he ascribes his childhood choice of vocation to the regard
which he felt for the complimentary relative. Though he started college
at the Portland/Gorham branch of the University of Maine studying business
administration, he only lasted two months before deciding to attend the
New England Institute of Mortuary Arts and Sciences from which he graduated
in 1976. And he also did manage to finish his degree in Business Administration
as well in 1976. Then in 1977 he received his certification as a Practitioner
of Funeral Services. To do so requires passing a series of exams. The
candidate must satisfy the National Board exam, the State Board exam,
and perform an actual embalming.
Having done so, he went right to work for Ally Hutchins, director of
the Hutchins Funeral Home in Portland. The elder Hutchins—though
no relation—became a father and mentor to the younger man. The
senior Hutchins was, however, of the belief that someone should be available
all the time. Now that he had an assistant, it was the younger Hutchins
who got to be on call pretty much to the exclusion of the rest of his
life. A premature burnout ensued and by Thanksgiving of 1979 he and his
wife were in Fort Myers, Florida, where he went into business as a cabinet-maker
with his father-in-law. He had worked construction during high school
and become particularly adept in woodworking. Curious in a way, because
in the 18th and 19th centuries the task of undertaking was frequently
the purview of furniture companies because they had carriages.
Unfortunately that fledgling cabinetmaking career was cut short just
when it was starting to be successful because Hutchins came down with
a serious illness which cost him a year for treatment and recuperation.
Then, in 1983, a friend from school, Scott Kinne, who owned the Strong
Funeral Home in Damariscotta called to propose that he and Hutchins become
partners to buy Rockland’s Burpee Funeral Home which was up for
sale. Barrett Jordan who had run the establishment was retiring. The
original Burpee Funeral Home, founded in 1830 and the oldest in the city,
had been affiliated with the Burpee Furniture Company of Rockland.
Hutchins believes in ongoing traditions and community so, despite the
amount of renovation required, did join with Kinne and they opened the
Burpee-Strong Funeral Home in 1983. Later, when the Carpenter Funeral
Home was up for sale by the chain which had purchased it after Melvin
Carpenter’s death, Hutchins was able to buy it. He had already
bought out his partner Scott Kinne in 1998 and thus in 2000 became the
sole owner and director of the Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral
Home. He has continued to improve the property and recently bought the
adjacent building which housed the Shore Village Museum. He plans to
use that site to further enhance the services he can provide his clientele.
Walker Hutchins is a thoughtful man and he has obviously spent many hours
pondering his role and how best to perform it in a society which, as
he puts it, “venerates what the body stands for.” He firmly
believes in the bereaved’s need to say goodbye to “that visual
part which encompasses the loved one they knew.” While he won’t
attempt to persuade people who have firm beliefs, he does point out that
reconstructive techniques have become remarkably sophisticated. He also
believes that he himself at any rate has “no right to tell my family
what to do with me.”
He remarks that dealing with the family and loved ones is “like
walking a tightrope.” On the one hand, they seek guidance and advice,
but the funeral director mustn’t take advantage of their vulnerability
to urge a course of action that he’d prefer. And here Hutchins
isn’t speaking of selling high end caskets but of making decisions
about the nature of the service and whether to inter a body or scatter
ashes. His preference is for an open casket service and the internment
of the remains. He feels that particular ritual provides the most complete
way of saying goodbye. But while that is his preference, he will not
try to persuade people to follow that path against their own judgment.
He tends not to use the word “closure.” Rather, he offers
a couple of phrases which suggest his own experience and understanding
of bereavement. “Grief comes in only one size...” he offers, “Mine.” And
later he compares grief to the tides in their ebb and flow. He gives
the impression that “closure” may be a useful shorthand term,
but is an oversimplified way of talking about an enduring process.
Walker Hutchins’ opinions are worth listening to carefully. They
are the result of “lonely hours contemplating mortality and the
family’s suffering.” Jessica Mitford wrote in The American
Way of Death that our culture sees “no value in a dead human body.
She wrote that we “just dispose of it; get rid of it.” Hutchins’ experience
has taught him just the opposite. He has found it essential that the
bereaved confront their loss with a final rite of passage.
And that is why he is such a firm believer in the importance of locally
owned and operated funeral homes whose directors are familiar with the
people who live there: their beliefs, customs, traditions, and their
thinking. Hutchins would suggest that in this case, “Familiarity
breeds respect.”
Clearly Hutchins’ profession is suitable only for a dedicated few.
His calling, like all those which concern themselves with the final matters
and the threshold between this life and what follows, must deal with
the problems of those who have remained here in a dignified and compassionate
manner. In some way, the practitioners may become a part of the mystery,
the uncertainty. In some indefinable way they stand apart from the rest
of us, perhaps estranged by their knowledge and experience. Certainly
that experience gives rise to devastating insights for Hutchins offered
as a parting thought, “How many weddings have you been to where
the bride and groom weren’t there?”
FMI: Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, Inc. 110 Limerock
Street, Rockland, ME 04841 207.594.4212, 800.590.4212, www.bchfh.com.