SALLY BURCHETT
Project Proposal
I am genuinely interested in human anatomy and hope this internship will allow me to explore a potential career interest in medical examining. While looking into possible learning opportunities that relate to my interest, I came across a very subtle and yet informative way of introducing myself into the field of postmortem study called funeral directing. After coming to the conclusion that this would be a beneficial method of gaining my desired knowledge without overwhelming myself, I set up an interview with our local mortician at Hood Mortuary. Subsequently, I decided to pursue an internship with them and they were kind enough to agree. Therefore, during the weeks of provided time in March, I will be interning at Hood Mortuary where I will be able to observe the workings of a mortician.
When I was planning my internship at first it was very difficult to stay in contact with Hood Mortuary. This required me to continuously pursue them and convince them to allow me to be an intern there. This gave me a perspective on how difficult it truly is to obtain and maintain a steady job in today’s society.
Hood Mortuary is the local funeral directory of Durango and services the entire La Plata County area. They transport the bodies of the deceased, consult with grieving families, plan and perform funerals, and arrange the burial. Hood Mortuary has been providing its services to the public since 1902 and has kept detailed death records throughout the past century.
This overall experience will provide me with some insight on working with postmortem patients. Since I want to work more with murder patients I will also need to look into the laws that go along with murder cases. This means that I will look at the causes of death in my patients and write a professional piece on their cause of death. My internship will help me decide whether or not performing autopsies would be a right career path for me based on if I am able to handle the different environment that working with postmortem patients provides.
My mentors will be Ryan and Kristal Phelps, the owners of Hood Mortuary. They will be able to thoroughly explain the workings of funeral directing and will even be able to give me insight on autopsies, my true area of passion. They have quite a lot of experience in their field, and even in the interview it was quite obvious that they would be able to provide a lot of information on everything pertaining to postmortem work.
For my final project I will be conducting research on death records and how they have progressed throughout time as medicine has advanced. This project will require a basic understanding of death records and how they have changed as time has progressed. I hope to be able to find some correlation between overall advances in both medicine and technology as a whole and the provided death records. I would like to present this in a article that can be published in a newspaper or a magazine. This will allow me not only to exhibit my work to those who come to our exhibition, but also to those whom are avid readers.
In conclusion, I am very ecstatic to be joining Hood Mortuary in March for my internship. I believe that the overall experience will be extremely beneficial in both my high school experience, and my college preparation experience. I look forward to being able to study my passion and helping those who are truly in need by giving them a helping hand in their time of grief and allowing them to find peace along with their deceased family member.
LINK Project
Mortuaries: A Closer Look
LINK Project
Sally Burchett
Walking through the doors of a mortuary with your heart dragging behind you is the austere reality of those who reluctantly compose themselves in order to begin the funeral process. This experience of loss is unlike any other in the aspects of a human’s short life span. Imagine what it would be like to be the support system for these suffering people. The technicalities of a small town mortician’s life go far beyond the media inspired fictitious obsession with death and money. Their passion for their job and the people they help drives their compassion and tenderheartedness. From what I have seen at Hood Mortuary, a family owned business, society is greatly mistaken when they perceive funeral directors to be purely money hungry. In fact, I have seen more humanity and compunction towards people in need during the past few weeks as an intern than I do in many of the other aspects of daily life. Not only do the owners and workers of Hood help people in one of their greatest times of need, but they go out of their way to make sure that everything that is done is out of respect and affection for the grieving families.
I witnessed Hood Mortuary at one of its most sympathetic moments when it provided services with little cost for a family who had lost a child of two years of age. I don’t know of many businesses that would give up a profit and, in reality, take a loss in order to benefit those who they serve. To see a business owner sacrifice their livelihood to help provide comfort to those whose souls are aching. Their kindness does not cease when certain limitations are surpassed, but is quite evident with every family they help, and their outreach in the community. They are constantly involved in community charities, such as the the courage classic benefiting the Children’s Hospital in Denver, CO. For every family meeting that I have sat in on I have seen scrupulous ethical principles in the care they put towards each member. The key to this, from what I have observed, is their open mindedness and how careful they are when first approaching a family. What they have learned, and mastered identifying, is that death can ironically be viewed in many different ways, and each family has their own view.
Some of the families have exhaustion and horror written all across their faces, while others appear to be more prepared for the passing of their loved one. Though it is obvious that all families who come into Hood Mortuary require comfort to fill the void in their souls, many choose to hide it. Throughout my weeks at Hood Mortuary I have seen many different methods of coping that families have used during their grieving processes. The most common of which has ironically been humor which shows through in their cheesy remarks and retelling of memories with their loved ones. Despite this fact, there are those few families who fight their grief in a different manner; with silent violence and rage. This only begins to define the life within the work place for these respectable people in the funeral business. The situations they deal with constantly change from day to day and they are always kept on their toes; ready to be of service. My admiration for these small town workers has grown tremendously throughout the past few week and will never fade.

Final Project
LINK