Risher Mortuary and Cremation Services

Our own Greg Welch told us about what he termed “the business of funerals.”  Having married Barbara Risher, daughter of longtime Rotarian Ray Risher, who founded Risher Mortuary and Cremation Services in Montebello in 1959,  Greg has gotten to learn about the business, from the outside in.

When his father-in-law died in 2010 at the age of 92, Greg and Barbara took over the company.  There is now a branch in downtown Downey, on Downey Avenue.

The most important thing we can do for our families before we pass, Greg stressed, is to pre-plan our own funerals.

With wishes clearly written down and in place, the family is spared decisions which can often turn out to be costly mistakes.   For example, cremation costs much less than casket burial, but bereaved family members may choose the more expensive way, out of a misplaced sense of what is the proper way to honor the loved one’s memory.

The question of cremation rather than burial is a touchy one to guess about, and it is essential to know the wishes of the deceased.    Greg warned us about some mortuary companies which are unscrupulous in trying to sell the most expensive funeral possible.  Some even have classes in casket salesmanship, where they teach their employees to how to “up the casket,” to get more money spent with them.

These high-pressure tactics they use, says Greg, are equal to those who try to sell you a time-share.  That’s impressive.  But a modest funeral service can actually cost under $1,000, including casket.

Greg feels it is imperative to go to an independent family-owned mortuary, where making you satisfied with your choices, is the aim.  “Giving people what they want” is how he put it.  Corporation-owned funeral businesses, on the other hand, have to satisfy a profitable bottom line for their corporate owners.  Naming no names, Greg mentioned P-rc- Br-th-rs and F-r-st L-wn as the latter type.

One of the advantages of a company that has been doing business for a long time is that they have developed contacts in correlative branches of service, so they can get things done efficiently and quickly.  For example it is important to know that there is no extra charge for a veteran to be buried in a military cemetery or the veteran’s section of a regular one.

After a person dies, a doctor needs to give the cause of death so the death certificate can be issued.  When a person dies in hospital this is usually done quickly, as a doctor has been in attendance.  When someone dies in a hospice or at home, getting the doctor’s verdict is not an immediate procedure.  But instead, turning the remains over to the sheriff as a coroner’s case, knowing the hospitals and the sheriff’s department can give some leeway time until a doctor can be reached.

We were told that caskets do not go directly into the ground any more.  They are encased in a cement vault, which is interred.  This keeps the earth in the cemeteries from settling in uneven dips.

Everyone was silent during Greg’s presentation, considering what preparations they had made, if indeed they had done so at all.

Other insider information included the fact that at a Mass the body is required to be present: cremation can occur afterward.  The “cremains” in an urn can be used however to represent the deceased, at other kinds of services.

Questions from the audience gave Greg the chance to explain that bodies are never mingled in cremation: they now cremate them one person at a time.  And the Neptune Society will take “cremains” beyond the three-mile offshore international limit, if you wish to be scattered into the ocean’s vasty deep.  

Greg can help to set that up.  He could also arrange for you to be put into a garden, or have your cremains sent by registered mail to another city.  Risher Mortuary also can put the friends and family in touch with an on-line grief group.

The way to phrase your big question when you find you are in charge of funeral arrangements is, “How much do you charge for your professional services.”  These services include retrieval of the body from a hospital or home or hospice; preparation of the body; a memorial service if desired, and disposal, such as burial or cremation.  Greg also helps families who wish to send a body by air, as cargo, for burial elsewhere.

We don’t know the time line, said Greg, but we know death is going to happen.  So plan ahead.  And when you come to someone like Greg for his professional services, you can be assured you will be treated ethically and with respect.  “We do it because we can, and if we can, we feel we should.”