“We have a saying here: ‘The poor pay more,’” Slocum said.
Private Memorials
Instead, rich families will put money into a memorial service, which can be lavish affairs celebrating the life of the deceased at private homes, he said.
In addition to Schmidt, chairman of Google Inc., and Johnson, president of Fidelity Investments, Nantucket is home for part of the year to former General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Those opting for a full-service funeral on the island will pay about $1,000 extra to have the body ferried off the island and back, said Catherine Flanagan Stover, the Nantucket town clerk, who also has funeral director’s license. The island typically has 60 to 70 deaths a year, she said.
“If the body is going to be embalmed or prepared, right now the only choice is to go off island,” said Bill Chapman, a co-owner of Chapman Cole & Gleason Funeral Homes and Cremation Services, a Cape Cod-based chain. “That’s just a harsh reality of the closing.”
Black Dodge
The chain, in business since 1862, positioned a black Dodge van on Nantucket to transport corpses. It sits in an auxiliary parking lot adjacent to the island’s police station. When a resident dies, the funeral home flies a staff member to the island to remove the body, though the company is training a handful of Nantucket natives to perform the task, Chapman said.
The van then brings the body to the Steamship Authority ferry -- known on island as the slow boat -- where it’s loaded onto a modified luggage cart and stowed aboard for the approximately two-hour sail to Hyannis on the mainland.
The embalmed body can then return on the boat in a hearse for the service.