By Joey Haas
Transcript From Our Video Interview with Peggy George at Proko-Wall Funeral Home.
Heather:
Hi everyone. And thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Technology, where we chat with leaders in the profession, discuss marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation. Plus, we talk about how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski. I am the marketing director here at Funeral Innovations.
Alex:
And I’m Alex McCracken, VP of sales here at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And today we’re so happy to have on as our guest, Peggy George from Proko-Wall. Hi, Peggy.
Peggy:
Hello!
Heather:
Could you just kick us off by telling us a little bit about who you are, what your firm is like, where you’re located? Kind of some details like that to set the scene?
Peggy:
Sure, sure. Well, my name is Peggy George. I have been in the role of aftercare coordinator for four and a half years at Proko-Wall Funeral Home in Green Bay. We are a community of about a hundred and a hundred thousand people. We’re very busy funeral home. We’ve been at it 50 years. This year is our 50th anniversary. So we’re doing a couple of extra things to promote our 50 year anniversary serving the community.
Heather:
Awesome. And how long, how, how long did you say you’d been there?
Peggy:
Four and a half years.
Heather:
Okay, great. Go ahead, Alex.
Alex:
And what all do you do at Proko-Wall?
Peggy:
I am the aftercare coordinator. So I take care of a family after the funeral has happened, after the funeral and celebration of life has occurred. So there are a number of things we do to stay connected to a family for about a year after. Do you want me to go through the list of things we do? It’s kind of like, okay. The very first thing I think the funeral home started was the holiday program. We invite families, we have a prayer service. We give families an ornament. We have a reception after. We’ve been doing that to my knowledge, since the funeral home started, that’s the earliest form of aftercare we had. After that in 1996, they started a newsletter which goes out quarterly. A newsletter has support ideas, greif support ideas. It has a recipe for one, book review. What’s going on in the community to try to encourage people to get back out, back out into the community. Cause that’s difficult for people in the first year that they’re grieving and that goes out quarterly. Let’s see, we have a grief library. We have about a hundred titles. Those are that’s free for the community. They can just come and take out a book. We have that online. We also give a copy of that to the families, when we deliver their just certificates, we always try to deliver the death certificates to families after the funeral. We deliver their flowers, the directors deliver the flowers to their home. We don’t have them load them up in their car. We deliver them for them. We also have a spring planting. That’s new, that started in 2015. Similar to the holiday program. Just happens in the spring. We have a, am I talking too fast? I started talk fast. I’m sorry. On the spring and we have we have a flower bed in front that we people come and they plant flowers there. They we have lemonade and cookies and we also prepare service. We have a dove release, things like that, and that’s really very well attended. Another thing bus trips.
Heather:
Can I go back and just ask a quick question?
Peggy:
Sure.
Heather:
So you said you have the holiday service and then the flower planting in the spring. Do you find that ones more heavily attended than the other or is it kind of timing on when the person lost a loved one?
Peggy:
It doesn’t seem to, that’s a good question. Does it seem to matter when they lost the look on some people when they grieve are ready to have somebody helping support them? Some people are not. So it’s kind of nice that these two events are about six months apart. So if I’m just not ready to go to a holiday party or a holiday program because my grief is too, too personal yet to me, maybe I’ll be ready in the spring. So it all depends, grief is such an individual thing that we just continue to offer programs in different ways for people to try to connect and get through their grief.
Alex:
And do at these events. You’re obviously bringing people together and in having a comfortable environment, do you provide any type of actual grief counseling or like a therapy dog or any type of like things other than just the connection that, that helps you through the grief on those events?
Peggy:
No, we don’t. We provide them access to that. We can link them to that, but we don’t, we don’t have those types of grief programs or therapy dogs, or a unity hospice here does a wonderful job with grief programs and things too. We connect people to that. Our grief page in our newsletter must have 35 different ways people can contact a group or activity to try and handle their grief.
Alex:
I see. And you’re, that’s a, is that a physical thing that you send out via mail or do you
Okay, great email it they’ll get four issues. So for the, for one year after their loved one dies plus it’s online for whenever they want to access. It
Heather:
Sounds good.
Alex:
And you mentioned something about your bus trips too?
Peggy:
Yes, twice a year we have a bus trip for widows and widowers and they can bring a guest and we go, we’ve gone to brewer games. We’ve gone to Dork County, which is a, like a resort area here in Wisconsin. We’ve gone on bunk trips, includes lunch. We’re usually gone most of the day and it’s free for them and their guests. And I would say we take about 60, 65, 70 people this year, of course, a different year for everybody. And we’re probably get into that a little later, but we had, I don’t know, we have a polar express here. We have the national railroad museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and they have the Polar Express every year. It’s magical. It’s a wonderful way to start the holiday. So we contacted them and said, are you going to, you know, continue to host this with COVID with all the restrictions that are in place with the state, especially Wisconsin, because we seem to be a hotspot for the disease. So the virus, I shouldn’t say disease, virus. So yes, they were. So we sent out invitations and then Governor Evers put out an emergency. Nope, we’re not doing that anymore. So we are not having the bus trip this year, which is disappointing, very disappointing, but we’ll just figure out when, when the virus has been contained, we’ll continue to offer and invite people that missed out on it this past spring, this fall, and probably, I would assume this spring, we’ll just, we’ll figure it out and invite them all. It’s kind of connecting people and getting them to get out. And that the nice thing about the bus trip is those are people on similar journeys. It’s not a group therapy event. We don’t talk about it if they don’t want to, they can, they’re just out in public having a good time. There are people on board, there are directors on board. If they would like to talk or other people they would like to share, but we don’t, we don’t have a sit down and hold hands and talk about it kind of a thing. It’s just to get them out. No pressure.
Heather:
Well you just, so I know this year, you can’t do the bus trip and the polar express bus trip, but it sounded so cool. You just describe what that is like a little bit, especially since there’s. Yeah. Especially since there’s a vaccine on the horizon and hopefully next year we’ll be back to normal.
Peggy:
Yeah. the railroad museum does a spectacular job of putting on their rendition of the Polar Express. There’s a reading of the book. There are conductors around, they hire a local dance group that does the tap that you see in the, the hot chocolate. Of course they serve hot chocolate and cookies, and then it’s snows inside the museum. That’s fantastic. And then we all get on a bus or I’m not a bus, but I’ll get on the train and you, there are different ticket levels. You can get, you can get on the double-decker. You can get on the dining car, you can get on. And we take a couple of trips around and if you’re in the dining car, Santa comes to your car. And so he’ll, you know, hohoho and, you know, give you a cookie. And if you are on the other cars, which are a little more crowded, when you get off, there’s a place where you can meet and greet with Santa. They run three and evening. I think this year they were scheduled, even with COVID to have about 11,000 people take the train. It’s magical, tickets sell out in July and are gone. So luckily Bob Walchuk, who is the owner of our our funeral home is on the board of the railroad museum. So I said, we need to take her widows and widowers on this bus trip. And so we made some calls and they said, yep, we can make that happen. So we had the tickets, we just couldn’t do it this year. Maybe next year.
Heather:
Yeah, hopefully next year.
Alex:
Well, and when the aftercare program, you came on four and a half years ago. So when you started, was there an after care program or did you spurred all this? Can you tell us a little bit about how you transitioned it, what your goals were and how these activities are really helping achieve those goals of where your after program was?
Peggy:
Sure. the, the woman who was in the role before me actually started it, so I took over for her and she transitioned out. I didn’t get to meet her you know, find out her methodology. So I just kind of assumed the role and, and Bob gave me complete freedom to make it whatever it was I needed it to be. And for me I was an event coordinator before this. So I know something about timing and getting things together and making, making sure people are where they need to be when they need to be there. But for the grieving process, meeting people where they are offering all different kinds of things so that one of these might be something that speaks to them to help them get to the next level or get to the next phase, get through, get through the day, any one of these things. So I’d like, I like to offer many things and there were many things already here, the newsletter, the bus trip, the holiday program, the spring planting. So we kept all those, all those going, all those alive, the, the library, I I updated and make sure the titles are current, things like that. And then we also started, and this was Bob’s idea, a veteran first responders picnic, and that’s free to the community. We have a polka band come. The band plays all the anthems to all the branches of service. The veterans come with their families, children. The community comes it’s a great event. And again, because of COVID, we were not able to do it this year. So it was another aspect of getting the community involved. Part of getting out of your own grief or your own depression is doing something for somebody else. So we offer this veteran picnic. This is where you can come out and thank a veteran. So it’s not a big step. It’s not a huge again, let’s deal with your grief kind of a thing. It’s an offering of. Here’s something you might like to try. You might want to just come and have a hot dog and have a root beer and sit outside and listen to a polka band.
Heather:
And do you do that on your grounds of Proko-Wall?
Peggy:
No, we did it at Johnston Park, which is a park in our community, Bellevue community. This year, cause it’s just getting bigger because we are getting bigger. We were going to have it at a, a local church and they had a lot of the things we needed that we wouldn’t have to buy. They had tents, they had chairs, things like that. We wouldn’t have to rent and move and making it a little easier for us to put on, a little less expensive, but accommodate more people.
Heather:
And you said that’s open to the whole community?
Peggy:
Yeah, we have ladder trucks come and they hang a giant flag. It’s really cool this year a kid came. So, you know, we advertise it as all over the place, social media, Facebook, our website, in our newsletter, we send invitations out to our families. So it gets out on a bunch of different a bunch of different ways. And this kid came I’ll bet you, he was 12 or 13. And he looked like one of the army men from toy story. Or if you remember, you know, people remember, those green, he was completely green. And he had like a platform like, like a toy soldier, like they stand on and he was just talking to people saying hi, and just, he just values veterans. He was, there were this mom, it was the sweetest thing.
Heather:
That’s super cool.
Peggy:
Yeah it really was. The community gets a chance to come out and say hi.
Heather:
Yep. Can you talk a little bit about how people get put into the program? You’ve spoken about how you communicate with the funeral directors on maybe what people need. How does that process work within the funeral home?
Peggy:
Sure. The aftercare sheet. So the directors have a sheet that has the name of the deceased on, when they died who were the first person I communicate with, the second person, what is their relationship to the deceased? Whether or not they were a veteran and whether or not they need some kind of aftercare. And when they check off extra aftercare, because everybody gets all the things I’ve talked about. Everybody gets all of that, but extra aftercare means something more tragic, something more I shouldn’t say it like that. Like a suicide or the death of a child or a young, a young family is having difficulty explaining to their children, things like that. They need something a little more than what we offer typically, those are pamphlets and things like that. So the director will tell me that, say, this is what’s happening in this family. This is what I think they need. And so I prepare pamphlets and different kinds of reading materials for them. And then I send a letter along. And the letter says something like, this might be way too much for you to deal with now, but if you just put it around the house and maybe you’ll pick it up someday and could be a week from now, a month, a year from now, and it might speak to you. So don’t think you have to read all of this now.
Heather:
Sorry, Alex. So that’s a handwritten letter from you, Peggy?
Peggy:
No, it’s, it’s it’s a form letter by I sign it.
Heather:
Gotcha. Yep. Yep.
Alex:
And the funeral, you said the funeral director makes the decision on one, whether they should be in the regular aftercare and then also whether they should make the extra aftercare, or is that something that community members and families choose?
Peggy:
Well, the director in sitting with the family will tell the family, this is what we offer and tell them all the things that they can expect are coming their way. And in the director, they’re intuitive as they’re talking to the family and they’ll say, you know what? I talked to that family and they would really benefit by, and then they’ll tell me what it is, that’s particular to that family. So the director makes that call just by listening to the family saying, they’re going to need more than more than what what’s typical.
Alex:
I see. Yeah. So, and so the family members know what’s coming. They’re not, they’re not always saying yes, I would like this. You’re saying, as part of our service, we’ve come up with aftercare. And if they were like, Hey, I really do not want this. The funeral director can uncheck that box when they send over that information.
Peggy:
Certainly I don’t think, boy, maybe a handful since I’ve been here, if ever said not interested. And I think part of the appeal is there’s a variety and none of it’s mandatory, none of it’s a have to do. These are offerings. What speaks to you? What do you think? And right now you probably can’t, you don’t know right now. So here it is. We’ll lay it all out for you and you’ll be getting calls. You’ll be getting invitations and it’s up to you if you’d like to come or not.
Heather:
What’s your response from the community been? What do people say about your aftercare program?
Peggy:
I served for a while on the chamber of commerce and we had a business breakfast where everybody gets their two minute elevator speech. And you tell what you’re doing in two minutes. And if you think I’m talking fast now, it was just, yeah, really, really. And the members of the community were like, do all funeral homes do this? I said, no, they don’t. Not in, not in the Green Bay community anyway. They do some aspects, some of them most have a holiday program. But not bus trips, you know? No. And they’re in surprised at the level of support we offer families after the death has occurred.
Alex:
I know you mentioned that you know, the 11, 12 year old community memory dressed up as a, as a soldier for your veterans event, but do you have any other examples or, you know, things that your community members are getting out of these programs or other stories that illustrates how well it’s helping your community members?
Peggy:
Excuse me. I mean, we get, thank you notes all the time from people who have attended events, the holiday programs, the while directors get, thank you notes all the time, all the time. The veteran picnic, we got a lot of thank you notes from that. There’s a, there’s a veteran organization in town, too, that all it’s Concordia University. And they, they put together all the different community outreach programs for veterans. And so when we go to there and tell them what we’re doing, they are like surprised, amazed, grateful. Veterans are very grateful. It’s very easy, very easy to do kind things for veterans who do so much for us.
Heather:
You shared with me a story about a man who had lost his wife, and you wrote him a note when we talked.
Peggy:
That was yeah, last year gentlemen, his wife had died on and somewhere in the notes, it was written that they had just celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary. So it was going to be on the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death would also have been the 50 year anniversary of their marriage. So I just assumed that was going to be a tough day. So I just dropped him a note and said, I know this was you meant, I just noticed it from last year. And I just thought, I’d send you a note and tell you, I’m thinking about you and praying about you. And I’m sure you’re cherishing your memories of you and your wife. That was, that was, it was a short little note and just sent it off. And he called and was just very, very grateful. And, you know, and that’s certainly not why I do it. It’s just you just kind of recognize little things and the smallest thing can make the biggest difference in the way a person is going through what they’re going through.
Alex:
I mean, little things like that. Do you do you have a system that you use to remember those? I mean, a year that’s gotta be hard. What, can you talk me a little bit about how you recall those dates or, you know tasks or anything like that that you have to do?
Peggy:
I put it in my calendar. I put it in my calendar because yeah, I would there, yeah, I put in my calendar and I put in my calendar a month ahead. So that, that gives me time to compose it and write it and look at it a little bit and maybe rewrite it, edit it a little bit, and then send it out a couple of days before it’s due. That’s how I, that’s how I, same, same thing with the aftercare pamphlets and things. I don’t want to send that to them. They shouldn’t get home from the funeral and get this packet of pamphlets from me. I wait a week or I’ll talk to the director and say, would they benefit from this now? Or should I wait a week? And mostly we wait, we wait a week. So they get a chance to catch their breath, get their feet under them a little bit. It depends.
Alex:
You’re deliberate, breaking it up and making it more digestible for them.
Peggy:
Correct. You had talked about community, other things. We do. We do other things to involve the community. We have Coats for Kids. We have Toys for Tots, so people can come to the funeral home and drop those kinds of things on. So that’s terrific. Yeah. The other thing we’re starting to do is receptions. I don’t know if you are other funeral homes have talked about that at all, but we have receptions here where people have the visitation and they’ll have maybe wine and cheese or some kind of, some kind of d’oeuvre kind of a thing for the people that come for visitation. And then after that they go home. They don’t have a lunch after they just do it all at once. And that’s, that’s that’s gained some traction. People are saying, Oh my gosh, that would be wonderful. Then could just be finished. You know? And again, that’s not going to be for everybody. Some people, that’s a great idea. Some people said, no, I would like the traditional way, or that’s what my mom would have wanted, things like that. So again, meeting people where they are is important, very important. Can’t cookie cutter.
Heather:
When I know that you mentioned a few things that have changed since the pandemic about events that you weren’t able to have, is there anything that you found is working really well in the aftercare program since COVID or things you’ve added to kind of supplement?
Peggy:
The only thing, because we cannot meet in person. I continue to deliver death certificates or other things, other the things that they have ordered I’ll deliver them to their home. So they don’t have to come up because some people are afraid to come out. So I put a mask on certainly, and I, I deliver things to them. The other thing is we’re offering our holiday program virtually. So, and I would say the last time I looked, we had two thirds were virtual and a third were coming, which I thought, I thought a third coming was still a lot. I thought, especially in Wisconsin, but some people are, and they ask, and in the invitation, I said, this is what we’re going to do to keep you safe. So it’s distancing and we spray everything down and you will be seated six feet apart, and there will be no reception afterwards. We were going to, we are boxing up the cookies that we normally have in the social, and they’ll each get a box of cookies. And so those are the things we’re doing differently to keep them safe, but still try to meet their need.
Alex:
And you mentioned that some of your events had been canceled and some of them like this, you’re making some accommodations to keep people safe. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of how you go about determining whether it should be canceled or whether you say, Hey, here’s how we can make the accommodations, like, tell me a little bit about that thought process that you go through?
Peggy:
Sure for the holiday program, I was part of a seminar or a, like a live conversation, a Zoom conversation with funeral homes throughout the country. And we all talked about what, what are we going to do? Because we want to keep people safe and we want, and we want to meet their, their grief need as well. And the consensus after it was all finished, because we were first saying, let’s just do nothing. Some people were saying that some people say, well, I don’t know, full steam ahead. And we came to this balance of let’s offer it virtually and let’s offer it in person and let’s let the family make the decision. And that was kind of the consensus of the whole group. It took us about, about an hour of what about this? What about that, you know, trying to make the right decision in uncertain times. And I think we came up with a good, a good solution. I think virtually and in person is a good idea. And our funeral home is pretty big. We’ll be able to certainly distance the people that come here.
Alex:
Do you feel like now that you have that knowledge and will now have the experience of doing a in-person and virtual event that your future events, as, for as long as this virus is going, that you will accommodate all of them in this fashion? Or are there still ones that you’re like, no matter what we’ll have to cancel them?
Peggy:
I think virtual is here to stay, COVID or not. I think that’s a wonderful way to meet people who are shut in, whatever reason who just like, I’m just not going to come. The weather’s bad. It gets bad up here in Wisconsin. So, you know, maybe they’re just want to see us virtually, I think it’s here to stay. A bus trip. I wouldn’t want to take a virtual bus trip. That’d be horrible. No, no, no, not a virtual bus trip, but the spring planting. Sure. The holiday program. Yeah, sure. The veteran program, probably not, I don’t want to go to a virtual picnic either. I mean, it’s not ants and bees, but I’m I’m I think that has to be live.
Alex:
Right. So each one of them, it sounds like you’ll be making your own determination about not only being safe, but how do I, how do I make sure that these programs are, are going to be entertaining, whether you’re virtual or not.
Peggy:
Sure. Yes. Yeah. They’ll be, I think for the holiday program and we’re doing that Facebook live, so we’ll see how that goes. We do funerals like that now. So we have some experience because I’m, I’m fearful. That’s not my long suit, so I’m a little fearful of how well that’s going to go. I don’t want people to come to the virtual event and then have it not go well. So we’re going to practice that before, and then we’ll all be comfortable by the time we have to actually have people log in for it. So I’m looking forward to virtual events and learning more about it. And I think it’s really a good thing. I think it’s here to stay. I think people just like anything else they’re going to learn it. It’s difficult for older people to learn a new technology, it’s difficult for grieving people to learn a new technology. So as this becomes more and more part of the lexicon that we all share, I think this is just part of our future.
Alex:
Yeah. Yeah. I think decades of people getting used to FaceTime has probably led up to this. And a lot of, everyone is comfortable with Zoom enough to be able to do that. So it coincides well with being able to execute virtually.
Peggy:
Yeah. I, you know, if there had to be an upside to the pandemic, it would be that we are, we’re better able to connect with people now virtually.
Heather:
Great point. So if you were talking to other funeral directors about after pare aftercare programs, what recommendations would you make to them say they have a minimal aftercare program or, you know, no aftercare program or considering beefing up their after care program. What recommendations would you make?
Peggy:
That’s money well spent? I think meeting the needs of people after the death occurs, shows an exceptional level of care and concern for them. You’re not just there for the funeral, you are concerned with what happens, how they deal with the death afterwards. I don’t think you could put a price tag on that. I think you should, at the very least you should probably put out a newsletter where there are some resources for people where they can look at it in the privacy of their own home, mail it to them. So put it online should have an online presence, certainly. But I think every funeral home knows the value of aftercare. I’d be surprised if there was a funeral home that didn’t.
Alex:
Do you feel like, obviously probably the biggest impact on an after care program is for the individual families and helping them through these tough times. Do you feel like there’s been impacts on the funeral home business with this, anything that you’ve noticed with implementing an aftercare program?
Peggy:
If I’ve noticed, if anybody else has implemented an aftercare program?
Alex:
No, if your specific business, the funeral home business has seen any results?
Peggy:
Oh yeah. That’s one of those, one of those nebulous things that, that return on investment target, it’s really hard to measure a thing like that. I would say. And I, I would say that word of mouth that we get has definitely increased the number of people who attend here, who, who rely on us to take care of their family at a, at a really difficult time. I think the word of mouth totally not measurable, but I think that makes a difference. There’s no other way that I know of. And I’ve thought about it to measure. And I, and I don’t, I, you know, in other things like, how did you hear about us? You know, that’s not something you ask a grieving family, so that’s not a, that’s not a tool we would be able to use. So it’s, I can’t measure the return on investment. I can just say people talk in the community and we’re a pretty small community. And when they recognize what we do, they’re like, I want my family taken care of like that after I die. Yeah.
Alex:
You know, obviously COVID is, is going to have lasting impacts for who knows how long, but either with, or without that consideration, what, what are you hoping to achieve? What’s what’s in the future for the aftercare program, there are other big ideas that you have that you’d love to see come to fruition?
Peggy:
I should have Bob in here. He’s our big thinker. Right now, our emphasis is on the receptions. We’re spending a lot of time on that. This year is our 50 year anniversary. So we’ve been spending a lot of time just letting the community know we’d been a community partner for 50 years. We produced a couple of commercials, television commercials, which we put out, which just celebrate our 50 years. They’re not ad campaigns, but they’re just, we’ve been here for 50 years. We’ve been a family member, a community partner for 50 years. So our emphasis is on that, promoting, celebrating our 50 year with the community and then receptions, where we’re really spending some time on that as well. That seems to be the way our families are headed. As far as programs, I can’t think of anything right now. Bob will probably get after me for that.
Alex:
Well you’ve got a lot on you plate, with the programs you do have for sure.
Heather:
And so this is our last question. We asked this question to everything you said that you’ve been in this profession for, in this profession for about four or five years. What’s the most important thing that you’ve learned since serving in the funeral profession?
Peggy:
I would say that we all have the power to heal. You have the power to help someone else heal. And it can be in the smallest of things. It can be a smile, it can be a meal, it can be a, I’m going to pull the weeds in your garden for you, tiny things that you don’t think amount, too much have the power to transform people, to transform their mood, to lift them out of their sadness, to, to carry their burden for them a little bit. So they can put it down for a little bit before they have to pick it back up. We all have this power. And I think it’s a remarkable thing. I, I see it. I see it in people’s faces when, I mean, the smallest gesture is so appreciated. I guess I didn’t, I probably knew that somewhere in my head, but I see it to now. So I think that’s the most revealing most important thing, most gratifying thing that that’s part of my job.
Heather:
That’s a beautiful answer. And I haven’t heard that one before, so thanks for that. Do you want to do the close out Alex?
Alex:
Sure! I wasn’t ready for that. Well, hey you know, thank you so much for your time, Peggy. We, we really appreciate it. Thank you for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. And we’ll be posting this video on our blog or YouTube channels and able to access it on our Facebook page as well. So we’ll have another show for you all soon. So be patient with us and we’ll have one for you next week. If you have topics that you’d like to see, discuss, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you on other people in the profession that maybe you want to hear from be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com for any more information. I have a great day stay well, and we appreciate everyone’s time.
Heather:
Thanks so much, Peggy.
Peggy:
Thank you.
