Wouldn't you rather ...

[Decolliber]

Wouldn't you rather be put in your 911 and set on fire in a modern Viking style funeral?

See today's WSJ:

The New School Spirit: Burial Plots for Alums
Cash-Hungry Universities Sell Space in Columbariums
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Talk about a homecoming.

Eager for new revenue, a number of universities have come up with a novel fund-raising strategy: on-campus burial plots for alums.

Schools from the University of Virginia to the 1,100-student Centre College in Danville, Ky., are giving graduates a chance to extend their college experience into the afterlife. They are providing such offerings as small slots in a memorial wall for ashes and airy hillside plots overlooking the campus.

For some schools, these new revenues will mitigate the hit their endowments have taken in the slumping stock market. Others view it as a way to cement bonds with alums that could lead to bigger donations.

The University of Richmond in Virginia just opened a million-dollar "columbarium," a vault with individual niches for cremated remains. The serpentine-shaped structure, which surrounds a garden adjacent to the campus chapel, has room for the ashes of several thousand people, at $3,000 a slot. In nearby Charlottesville, the University of Virginia's "cemetery committee" has sold 130 of its 180 niches, and is talking about doubling the size of its columbarium. Slots there go for $1,800 apiece, but each holds four urns.

Prices run even higher at St. John's Northwestern Military Academy, which just dedicated an $800,000 burial facility last fall. The cost per niche ranges from $2,300 to $5,500, depending on your view of the fountain. School officials estimate the total potential revenue to be at least $4.5 million.

"There's no place more beautiful and that I'm as emotionally attached to," says Harry C. Vorys, a 1943 graduate of the Delafield, Wis., school who bought side-by-side spots for him and his wife, Frances. "So someday, you'll probably see me in box 12."

The concept of being buried at one's alma mater has gained momentum from devoted alums eager for new ways to show their school spirit. University of Virginia grads pooled together about $140,000 to build the school's columbarium. The facility sits on the edge of its sold-out cemetery. A few plots in the cemetery, which dates back to the late 1800s, are still unoccupied, but the school has been unable to find the families who bought them.

Even with the space efficiency of columbariums, some schools are sticking with traditional graveyards. Mount Saint Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Md., has a century-old cemetery that has been filled since the 1960s. Over the years, requests from alumni who wanted to be buried on campus poured in. So, in 1994 the college built a cemetery on campus that took up three groves and had 350 burial plots. Demand forced the building of a fourth grove, which opened in 1999. Already, it, too, is nearly sold out, and a fifth is being discussed.

Not all schools are quite that far along. The University of Richmond's new facility has room for 2,970. Spots still available: 2,950.

Needless to say, universities have been far more discreet about these ventures than they would be if they were selling, say, school mugs or jerseys. Few of them actively market the new service. Most rely on word-of-mouth or low-key advertising. Mount Saint Mary's runs ads in its alumni magazine that promote "the serenity and beauty of a sylvan setting as a final resting place for its sons and daughters."

While it doesn't have its own cemetery, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania collaborates with one nearby. During alumni weekends over the last several years, the Lewisburg Cemetery has been offering open houses to generate interest.

Some question the taste of all this. Centre College, in Danville, built a columbarium last year at the urging of alumni, who footed the $80,000 bill. "What happens when a tour group of prospective students is led through the garden only to encounter grieving relatives or memorial wreaths?" Libby Isele, a student there, wrote in the college newspaper.

And not every school is thrilled by the idea. "This doesn't seem like anything Harvard would want to be involved in," says Andy Tiedemann, Harvard's communications director for alumni affairs and development.

Still, plenty of universities are eager to serve their alums to the last possible moment. The land (that the columbarium sits on) "didn't really have use for anything else," says John Hoogakker, associate vice president for facilities at the University of Richmond. Its potential as a fund-raiser "made it very easy for the university trustees to approve."

Of course, there's always the issue of zoning. In Wisconsin, state regulations have traditionally restricted construction of burial facilities near residences or schools. When St. John's decided to build its columbarium, its officials turned to legislators, who granted the school an exemption. So far, only 14 of the 136 niches in the new facility have been sold, but the school is already talking about adding 1,200 more.

Crypts aren't the only part of the burial business that colleges and universities are exploring. About 50 schools, including the University of Alabama and the University of Virginia, license their emblems to a company that sells caskets and urns emblazoned with their insignias. The schools earn royalties of anywhere from 7.5% to 10% on the sales, said Scott Walston, president of Collegiate Memorials LLC, the company that makes the caskets and urns.

[WOODPIE]

With full credit to Dennis Miller, I wish for my remains to be disposed of in the same manner as how Miller described as Chief Iron Eyes Cody's final request. All Americans of sufficient age recall the chief's touching Public Service Commercial, with the single tear running down his face while viewing a polluted and garbage-strewn stream. Always a fan of irony, the chief requested his cremated remains to be poured into an empty Cheetos bag and tossed out the window of a '63 Ford Falcon in need of a ring job.

Ed