SUNY Canton Funeral Science Professor Helps Transport Bodies In NYC

Almost 15,000 New Yorkers have died due to complications from COVID-19. Most of them were from the New York City area. That’s overwhelmed funeral homes and crematories in the city.

A mortuary science professor at SUNY Canton and his students are helping by transporting human remains and filing paperwork.

David Penepent, director of SUNY Canton’s funeral services program, and four of his students are traveling to the New York City area to help alleviate delays and move bodies. Their project is called Operation Hands With a Heart. They say the state bureaucracy is causing unnecessary delays.

"Right now I’m heading down to Brooklyn to pick up about five sets of human remains," he said in a recent interview from his car, "and I’m going to be going to a Pennsylvania crematory for final disposition of those human remains." 

Penepent said New York City area crematories are backed up 6 to 8 weeks. And a paperwork problem at the state division of cemeteries is preventing funeral homes from taking the deceased to closer facilities in New York State, Penepent said.

Usually, funeral directors aren’t allowed to change a form that indicates where a body will be cremated. But with so many crematories full, Penepent said directors are needing to do just that.

"The situation is very, very tense down here. Funeral directors are very upset because they can’t serve the family in the way they’ve been trained because the division of cemeteries is botching the paperwork process."

So Penepent said funeral directors are having families sign a release form to take their loved one’s body out of state, to Pennsylvania, Vermont or Connecticut.

"We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Things can’t be perfect," Penepent shouted as he drove. "We have to make the paperwork funeral director friendly, and they are making this nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare for the funeral directors."

John D’Arienzo, president of the New York Metropolitan Funeral Directors Association, says Penepent is doing a huge service. "David, by taking some of the numbers out of the city to the surrounding areas, is helping to decrease the workload," said D'Arienzo.

D’Arienzo owns a funeral home in Brooklyn. He says funeral directors, including himself, are barely keeping up. "I’ve lost twenty pounds in three weeks. Normally we do seven funerals a month. I did five funerals already today. And I have nine the rest of the week."

D’Arienzo said the city of New York has helped with the backlog by agreeing to freeze bodies and hold them for more than 15 days until cemetery or crematory space is available.

He says he’s also been in talks with state officials to cut the red tape that Penepent’s fighting. "There’s a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn’t there a week, two weeks ago," said D'Arienzo.

The state division of cemeteries had not responded to NCPR's repeated phone calls and emails requesting comment by Wednesday afternoon.