Danzansky Goldberg Memorial Chapels

But the driver who came to pick up the remains at the hospital said he wasn't going to Demaine, he was going to some other place.Upset and confused, Federici followed the van driver, who pulled up to National Funeral Home in Falls Church. When the white garage door opened at the edge of a cemetery just off Lee Highway, Federici said, the foul odor of decomposition smacked him in the face. A body lay on a gurney in the garage near a rack holding coffins, and the walk-in cooler where his father was to be left was filled with exposed bodies."The stench was horrific," Federici, 53, said about the cooler. "Bodies were laying buck naked all over the place. There was no dignity whatsoever. It was disgusting, degrading and humiliating."What Federici witnessed Dec. 6 echoed what embalmer-turned-whistleblower Steven Napper had been complaining about for months, first to his supervisors, then to the state. Napper documented the atrocities he saw in notes and photographs and turned them over to authorities.Napper, a retired Maryland state trooper, had been hired in May by National Funeral Home, which also acts as a regional clearinghouse that embalms and stores bodies for four other Washington area funeral homes -- Arlington Funeral Home, Danzansky-Goldberg Memorial Chapel in Rockville, and Demaine Funeral Home in Alexandria and Springfield. From May to February, when he quit, Napper said that the walk-in coolers could not hold all the bodies and that a manager told employees to store them in unrefrigerated areas.During his time there, Napper said, as many as 200 corpses were left on makeshift gurneys in the garage, in hallways and in a back room, unrefrigerated and leaking fluids onto the floor. Some were stored on cardboard boxes or were balanced on biohazard containers. At least half a dozen veterans destined for the hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery were left in their coffins on a garage rack, Napper said.He began to take photographs in December and presented them to the Vir... (Washington Post)

You can’t escape high taxes, but Edward Sagel and Albert Bloomfield are trying to take the financial sting out of death — or burying the dead, to be more exact.At 59, I have been around long enough to know that the familiar, compassionate presence of your neighborhood funeral home director is great comfort when you are grieving.But it isn’t cheap.Funerals can run from $5,000 to $20,000 and beyond. So there is nothing wrong with being cost-conscious, even when it comes to the recently departed.Sagel and Bloomfield, each of whom has been in the funeral business for a couple of decades, are branding themselves as offering a “fair and realistic” price at Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care, based in Rockville.“We are setting a price point, close to around $6,500 with casket, that is slightly below the national average and significantly less than the Washington average of around $9,000,” Bloomfield said.Sagel Bloomfield is actually two funeral homes located across the street from each other on Rockville Pike.To cut costs, “we are taking two funeral homes and combining into one,” Sagel said in an e-mail. “The one we are closing is 20,000 square feet versus a new one at 6,500 square feet. We will save a lot on expenses (including $15,000 a month on lease and tax payments), which enables us to bring the average sale down for each family.”The pair are also hammering away at costs, such as using more in-house labor to transport the recently deceased into the funeral home instead of hiring expensive specialists. They also use staffers to drive the hearse and body to the cemetery instead of outsourcing.The two drive hard bargains with providers. They keep salaries, including their own, relatively low.“We eventually hope to get our own, but we know it’s going to take time,” Bloomfield said. “We have debt to pay. We are going to grow the business, and we will be patient with it.”Sagel once worked for Danzansky-Goldberg Memorial Chapels, one of the more prestigious Jewish funeral h... (Washington Post)