Hospice Engagement: A Resource Guide for Funeral Professionals

11/19/2025

November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, a time to recognize the profound impact hospice organizations have on patients, families, and communities facing life's most sacred transition. This year, I'm celebrating by sharing with CANA members an exclusive resource; a comprehensive guide to hospice volunteering for funeral professionals.

After ten years as a hospice volunteer with Hosparus Health in Louisville, Kentucky, I can honestly say it has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my professional life. When I started, I wasn't sure how hospice volunteering would fit into an already demanding schedule. What I discovered is that hospice organizations are incredibly flexible and welcoming to funeral professionals who want to serve.

Crafting Your Why

Here's what I want you to know: if you can only give two to five hours a month, hospice organizations will deeply appreciate that contribution. Whatever time you can offer—whether it's one patient visit a month or helping with a quarterly event—makes a genuine difference.

You already navigate what most people avoid. Death doesn't make you uncomfortable to be around. It’s where you bring your best skills. That familiarity with grief, combined with your ability to stay steady when emotions run high, positions you perfectly for hospice volunteer work. You know how to hold space for families in crisis because you do it every day.

The nice aspect of hospice volunteering is its adaptability to your life. Direct patient visits are just one option. You might contribute by supporting administrative needs, creating memory books, helping families preserve legacies, organizing community memorial events, or staffing educational programs. Whatever fits your schedule and your strengths, there's a place for you.

The guide I've created for CANA members walks you through the essentials: identifying your personal motivation for serving, maintaining appropriate boundaries between your volunteer and professional roles, navigating patient interactions with compassion, handling challenging situations, and sustaining your service without burning out.

My volunteer experience has been wonderfully varied from sitting with hospice patients during their final journey to working behind the scenes organizing medical supplies or dressing up as an elf for the Kourageous Kids Holiday Party. Some of the most meaningful connections I've made have been with hospice care team members whose tireless work has expanded my understanding of compassionate care and enriched my professional practice in ways I never anticipated.

Building a Partnership

This synergy between funeral service and hospice care is exactly why I'm excited to present at the CANA Symposium in February. My session will focus on how funeral and cremation providers can partner more effectively with hospice organizations not just through volunteering, but through building collaborative relationships that benefit the families you serve.

Building on Greg Grabowski's insightful hospice presentation from February 2025, I'll share more practical strategies for deepening these partnerships and explore how volunteering can open doors to meaningful professional relationships with hospice care teams.

These partnerships create continuity of care that spans life's final chapter. In your funeral home, you meet families in the aftermath. As a hospice volunteer, you may walk alongside them through the journey itself or assist care team members in a meaningful way. Each role enhances the other, creating a fuller understanding of how to serve families with both competence and heart.

This November, as we honor National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, I invite you to explore hospice volunteering for yourself. Download the CANA member-only guide, reach out to your local hospice organization, and discover how even a small commitment of time can create profound ripples of compassion in your community.

At CANA's 2026 Symposium, Lacy Robinson moves beyond basic hospice collaboration to equip funeral and cremation providers with four actionable strategies that transform casual hospice relationships into strategic partnerships, to generate measurable results.

Register now so you don't miss the actionable strategies, visual examples, and practical frameworks to position your funeral home as the preferred provider among hospice teams while serving families with dignity and excellence!

CANA Members! You can download Lacy's helpful Hospice Engagement guide from the CANA Connect CommUnity Forum.

Lacy Robinson brings over 20 years of expertise in developing and facilitating customer service training programs tailored for funeral home clients. As an instructor at Worsham College of Mortuary Science, she teaches Fundamentals of Customer Service and conducts training programs for Johnson Consulting Group clients. Lacy co-authored the book Engaging the Heart of Hospice - Making Funeral and Memorial Services an Extension of Hospice Care with Greg Grabowski, founder of Hospice Advisors.

A licensed funeral director/embalmer and certified funeral celebrant, Lacy has served as a board member for the Selected Independent Funeral Homes Educational Trust and the APFSP Board of Trustees. She holds degrees from Georgetown College and Mid-America College of Funeral Service and an MBA in Bourbon Tourism and Event Planning from Midway University.

Cremation Sesquicentennial: The Cremation of Baron de Palm

11/5/2025

It was a cold and wet day when the cremation movement made its grand entrance in the US in December 1876. In continuing the story of America’s first cremation, we move to the small hamlet of Washington, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, where an eccentric physician named F. Julius LeMoyne had constructed the only crematory in the country. The determined New York attorney-turned-spiritual leader Henry Steel Olcott had convinced Dr. LeMoyne to use the facility for the cremation of Baron de Palm.

On December 5, 1876, the body of de Palm arrived in Washington and was transported to the crematory in the area known as Gallows Hill on the south end of town where Dr. LeMoyne had constructed his crematory. The building was built on a simple plan – on the left, a larger room was available for conducting services. A door led to the adjacent room which is where the cremator itself was located.

The furnace had been fired to heat the retort beginning the night before, and the following morning when the cremator was heated to just above 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, it was declared ready for use. By that time, more than two hundred local and national health officials, reporters, and onlookers, had descended on and around the crematorium grounds for the event.

Just after 8:00 am, the body was wrapped in an alum-soaked sheet (to prevent immediate combustion while entering the super-heated chamber), and Olcott sprinkled flowers, herbs, and evergreens on the body. Then, after removing their hats, Olcott, LeMoyne, and two associates bore his body to the crematory and, placing it head-first into the cremation chamber, de Palm made his mark on history.

Within seconds, the door to the cremation chamber was sealed and through a peephole those present watched the crumbling remains within.

A correspondent from the New York Sun claimed that no fire touched the body, though no fire touched the body, though some flame could be seen when clothing or the wrapping linen were ignited by the heat. A “glorious roseate” glow engulfed the body, and at one point, contractions caused a slight upward point by the left hand, “as if the spirit of the dead was yearning for above.” Just before noon, the cremation was pronounced complete by multiple officials in attendance.

From the beginning, LeMoyne and Olcott strived to portray the event as a scientific experiment. To demonstrate this, visitors were allowed into the crematory two at a time so they could see the process through the opening. Additionally, following the cremation, a public meeting was held in the town hall where Olcott, LeMoyne, and other ministers and health officials could discuss the merits of cremation.

The following day de Palm’s remains were removed from the crematory and placed in an ornate “Hindu” style lidded vase engraved with “various Hindu motifs and devices” reportedly made of unbaked clay. The urn remained in the care of the Theosophical Society until the remains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean at an undetermined time.

Many of the health officials in attendance received a small apothecary jar with a portion of de Palm’s remains – an early form of keepsake urn – primarily to show the innocuousness of human remains after cremation.

Though a modest beginning to what is now the most commonly chosen form of disposition, this event marked a significant start to the conversation of cremation on the continent. It would be nearly a decade for another crematory to be built in America, but Dr. LeMoyne’s crematory was not quite ready to forfeit its work.

Into the next century

Two years later, the LeMoyne Crematory would be back in national news again – this time for in its role in the cremation of Jane Pitman, wife of noted Cincinnati stenographer Benn Pitman, the first woman to be cremated in America. While hers was the second in the LeMoyne Crematory, it was the third cremation in America, as the second was that of Dr. Henry Winslow, a physician in Salt Lake City whose friends built a cremator there for his cremation only.

The end would come for Dr. LeMoyne the following year as he would succumb to “a lingering and painful illness” at the ripe old age of 71 and at the reported corpulent weight of 225 pounds. After brief services at his home, his body was borne up Gallows Hill for the last time on October 16, 1879, and the “Apostle of Cremation” was cremated in the crematory he had constructed. Following the cremation, his remains were placed in a one-gallon apothecary jar, sealed with cork and wax, and buried just outside the front doors of the crematory. A monument to his memory reads:

F. Julius LeMoyne, M.D.
Born
September 4, 1798
Died
October 14, 1879
A fearless advocate of the right.

After its first use and the role it played in the beginning of the cremation movement in America, the LeMoyne Crematory would only be used a mere 40 more times before being permanently closed by the LeMoyne family in 1901. Interestingly, only a handful of the cremations that took place there were residents of anywhere closer than Pittsburgh, highlighting its original purpose of cremating Dr. LeMoyne himself.

In the present, the LeMoyne Crematory is under the care of the Washington County Historical Society, which is based in the LeMoyne House in Washington. It still stands, not only as a curiosity, but as a monument to Dr. LeMoyne and the legacy of his achievements.

We have barely scratched the surface in the history of modern cremation and how our practice has modernized and transformed funeral and memorial practice over 150 years of history.

Join us in 2026 to mark the 150th anniversary of the first modern cremation in North America. Reflect on your business’s history, your own practice, and make your predictions for the next 150 years to come!

Jason Ryan Engler is a licensed funeral director and is considered a thought leader in cremation products and merchandising. Known to many as the Cremation Historian, he is the historian for the Cremation Association of North America and is the cremation historian for the National Museum of Funeral History. He is the regional sales manager for the Wilbert Group in Kansas / Northwest Missouri and lives in Kansas City with his miniature dachshund, Otto.

Hospice Engagement: A Resource Guide for Funeral Professionals

Crafting Your Why

Building a Partnership

Cremation Sesquicentennial: The Cremation of Baron de Palm

Into the next century

The Cremation Logs Blog

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