UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, March 31, 1993
7
Home With The RUMSEY BOYS
Story continued from, Page 1
Doug Hesse / KANSAN
tapes got the job at Rumsey through his high school counselor in Eudora. He jumped at the opportunity.
But there was more to the job.
He'd have plenty of time to study in a peaceful environment with no room and board expenses, he figured. He'd drop the phones, keep the place tidy.
"There wasn't any mention of having to deal with dead bodies at all," he says. "I was rather shocked. I didn't know what to say."
Weiser eats ice cream with every meal except breakfast, garnishing it with peanuts, judice, chocolate sauce, bananas and peanut butter.
Actually, Staples has had only two "really bad calls."
He once had to pick up a drowning victim who had been in the water a week.
But the worst, he says, was a man who shot himself in the head near the Wakarusa River in Staples' hometown.
"We had to walk down a hill, and we was muddy," he says. "We were in our suits. We had to put him in a body bag and put him on top of guys to lift him up and get up the hill."
"Actually, it's quite amazing that I've only had two calls like that, that were bad. Having been here three-and-a-half years, I feel pretty fortunate."
On death calls. Staples and Weiser don't deal much with the families. That's left to the funeral directors. The students try to keep an emotional distance, at least on first meetings.
But some times are harder than others.
One of the high schoolers died recently, he says.
"It's weird to go to out a call, and you see people you know." Weiser says. "There are a lot of high school kids that work at the grocery store that I see, and a lot of them have been through here lately."
"I recognize them, and they come up to me and ask me how I'm doing. They're still getting over their grief, and I'm someone to talk to. It gets old after a while, I guess. I mean — death — geez, there's other things to talk about. But I don't mind. That's what I'm here for — to help them out."
Of the three upstairs bedrooms, Staples is the biggest. Weisher the smallest. The other is full of empty casket models.
Weiser and Staples alternate workdays and weekends. One of them is always there after five, when the funeral directors head home. When the students are on call, they cannot leave the house at 601 Indiana St.
Sometimes a funeral director is showing a family through the casket room just after Weiser steps out of the shower. To avoid an awkward moment in the hall, Weiser hides out, shivering, until the coast is clear.
"That's the worst," Staples agrees. It is an unusual living arrangement they admit.
oth weiser and Staples study a lot. Weiser studies business communications. Staples is a history major.
Hot water radiators pop and bang
Hundreds of books — classics, history, philosophy, religion — are stacked in neat piles along the walls in Stanley's room.
upstairs. At night, they are the only sounds.
"I've grown accustomed to this life," says Staples, who gets mostly As and a few Bs. "There wasn't anything else for me to do. I didn't want to take another place to live or another job, and I realized that if my goal was to excel in my school work, that this would be the ideal place to work."
Staples often studies in his bedroom. The funeral home has no living room, no dining room. The home's airy foyer is decorated in mauve and grays. Weiser watches television at night in an office adjacent to the small, spotless kitchen with gold-flecked, mint-green counter tops.
Weiser's cookies have become popular with the mortuary staff. He cooks far more often than Staples, both agree.
But he never makes dinner anytime before a funeral service.
"If there's a family here, you don't want the smell of chicken in the air,"
The downstairs chapel is around the corner. Most nights, a body lies there in state.
"Most people, if they thought about sleeping in a funeral home, they would be quite discomforted about the presence of a corpse. 'Staples save.'
But he's used to it.
t first, dealing with death and dying was almost too much for him. Staples says He once thought about leav
ing, but Rumsey fit the studious lifestyle he sought.
In high school, Staples spent the weekends cruising Main Street and get drunk. It's what everyone did in Eudora, he says. He got Cs and Ds in school. Several times, the principal suspended Staples and his friend — once for stealing their biology teacher's keys.
"He kind of suspected us," he says. "We were the rowdy individuals in the class."
During the summer before his senior year, he realized he was sick of partying. Staples wanted more than what many of his classmates planned
— staying in Eudora after graduation.
So he quit hanging out on Main and turned to reading, mostly Stephen King novels. When fall came, he was ready to become a serious student.
Dave Hallenbeck, a Rumsey funeral director, remembers a conversation another funeral director had with Staples shortly after he arrived.
But there was still a little hell-raiser in him.
Staples remembers, too, and nods as he hears the story.
The way Hallenbeck tells it, the funeral director told Staples. "One thing I want you to know is that, when you're at the funeral home, you won't wear an earring."
Staples quit wearing it a few weeks after moving to Rumsey.
"It's pretty much sealed up now," he says.
Hallenbeck also remembers the first time Staples met with the funeral directors.
"He came in here with his sandals and jeans and his T-shirt all rolled up."
"I was not wearing sandals," Staples says for the record. But he does recall his informal appearance, and he stares down, shaking his head, snul-
Hallenbeck says living at Rumsey gives college students a far greater sense of maturity.
"Oh, boy. That was so foolish.
"We have a lot of college kids that come here, and they barely know how to boil water. Our full-time staff really tries to play a part in the lives of our college students. We take quite a bit of pride in our Rumsey Boys. We jokingly say we make men out of boys. The guys that have been here left a lot more mature and a lot more steadfast in their life goals and ambitions."
The funeral home has had well over 100 Rumsay Boys live there since they first offered the job 73 years ago. Some have stayed for their entire college careers. Others have stayed only a few weeks.
Weiser and Staples plan to stay until graduation.
They are part of a tradition.
Matt Staples, Eudora junior, and Scott Weiser, Kansas City junior, make tea in the kitchen. Weiser, who cooks most of his own meals, calls himself the Betty Crocker of the funeral home.
om Morris, vice president of Downing and Lahey Mortuary in Wichita, remembers the 1980 school year he
spent living and working at Runsey. After that, he lived in a fraternity house.
"It gives you more of a sense of responsibility and more of a respect for the business," he says of his time at the funeral home. "You've got to be able to treat people with respect and in a dignified way. A lot of people think of college students as wild and rambunctious, and in a funeral home you can't really be that way."
Many of the guys — there never have been women — who come to Rumsey have families who have been in the funeral home business. Weiser was one. And many Rumsey Boys have gone on to funeral home careers.
But Weiser and Staples have no such plans. Ask them if they think more about death than most people do, and they laugh.
They know they do.
"Unless they find out that I work in a funeral home and then they do. Maybe I just naturally draw that from people. Like a guy who walks around and forces people to think about death."
"It's inevitable." Staples says. "When you pass by a corpse in a coffin you have the choice of thinking about it or not thinking about it. Usually, I do. I don't know how much other college students think about death."
It is, he admits, kind of bizarre
taples also admits that he would have been a much different person had he lived in residence life. Life
at Rumsey has made him much more conservative. At KU, he's never had much of a chance to socialize.
"That's one of the disadvantages to living here," Staples says. "If you consider your social life important, you really have to go out of your way to join an organization or meet someone."
much with friends because of the life he leads.
Friends don't call much because they're afraid of interrupting business.
"And many would consider that a cost. And it is, indeed, as far as I can tell," Staples says.
"For the average college student, you can see that this is not a place where you could have a lot of friends or be friends like this is McCollium." Staples says.
Besides history, some of Staples other favorite subjects are religion and philosophy.
He finds a connection between some of the things he learns at school and some of the thoughts he has at the funeral home. During funerals he stands at the door, mostly just thinking as he watches people come in.
Thinking "about life and what are the most important things."
But both Staples and Weiser can separate themselves from death, thoughts of it, and the families they deal with when they are working.
Death is hardly a subject that consumes their thoughts during their off-hours. Or sometimes, for that matter, during their working hours.
Sometimes Weiser cranks the radio when he's alone in the hearse, drumming on the steering wheel and singing along. He's drawn curious glances from other drivers, he says.
"I went to pick up the family, and when they got in the car the radio was blasting. Actually, they thought it was kind of funny."
He says he doesn't date or go out
One time he left the stereo on when he shut off the ignition.
But there is never a complete detachment, especially during the
services.
"When I deal with a family, I'm a totally different person." Weisers say. "But sometimes you'll watch a family during the service, and you'll just about start crying. I almost have to leave the room sometimes."
True, after so many funerals and so many families, both students have been somewhat desensitized to the grief they see week after week. But when they put on their black suits, their concern for the families they comfort is real, they say.
Being considerate is their work
basis.
tapless and Weiser both say that their work at Rumsey is just a job. They just happen to deal with death on a daily
"It's just trying to answer the question 'Why are we here?' in a philosophical way. That question will always be connected with death. Ive always had a sort of disposition towards at least asking the question 'Why?' I really believe that if more people did that, they'd find more meaning in their lives." Staples says.
Weiser thinks about dying sometimes. He knows that after he takes a body to the crematorium, only one other person will see it: "I think. Wow, after this person will be gone, back to where they came from. Back to dust."
Doug Hesse / KANSAN
Staples talks with Fleda "Short" Yost, whose husband, AI, is a Rumsey funeral director. Fleda Yost occasionally helps out at the home.
Above, Stapies has a lot of time to study during the nights he is on call. He and Weisner work alternate weekends, when they are required to be at the house 24 hours a day. Right, Covering his head in defeat, Weisner gives up studying for the night. Weisner, who is a member of ROTC and works two jobs, also finds time to be involved on campus as a Student Ambassador giving campus tours.
Doug Hesse / KANEAN