STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

there was an article about that in the atlanta paper today.

Can you dig it? 12 mighty morticians

By JULIE TURKEWITZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/01/06

Marty Byars knows the sting of the funeral director stigma. No, he doesn't have a hump on his back. No, he doesn't wear black all the time. And yes, he's just a regular guy.

To prove it, the 46-year-old posed shirtless with other funeral home employees for what he calls 2007's most unorthodox beefcake calendar – a month-by-month featuring the nation's men of mortuaries.

BOB ANDRES / Staff
(ENLARGE)

Keeping his shirt on while at work in the casket showroom, Marty Byars of Cumming is one of the dozen funeral directors who flexed for a calendar that will raise money to fight cancer.
 




(ENLARGE)

Outside-the-box thinking produced this calendar exposing some of the nation's most pumped-up funeral directors. They include Marty Byars (at right, and behind the headstone) of Byars Funeral Home in Cumming.
 

Firefighters do it. Police officers do it. Shoppers can buy calendars of buff golfers, motorcyclists, even chiseled gondola rowers. Why not funeral directors? Byars asked.

"I'm no stuffed shirt," he said, standing in the casket room of Byars Funeral Home in Cumming. "When the funeral industry sees this, some of the conservatives, they're going to go out of their minds. But I don't think it's distasteful. "

Byars, or rather, Mr. September, knows some will find the calendar odd. But everything about his business — from the type of caskets available to the way families can personalize a service — is changing to better serve clients. So Byars is accustomed to "stepping outside the box to help people," he said.

In this case, he's taking off his suit jacket to raise money for breast cancer patients.

His blond hair graying only slightly at the temples, Byars looks more like a hunky HBO "Six Feet Under" mortician than a sallow Uncle Fester. But he's experienced what he called "the black eye" of the business.

His wife wouldn't date him for three months because his job scared her. His funeral home, an impeccably clean building that smells of fresh cotton-scented candles, terrifies his father.

The calendar, due out in October, has elicited mixed reviews. Byars' clients loved the idea, he said. But Bryant Hightower at the Georgia Funeral Directors Association said he found the idea of posing at a cemetery inappropriate.

Zavier Moses, a director at Young Funeral Home in Atlanta, didn't approve.

"To be posing in tank tops, how would families look at us?" he asked. "This wouldn't be something I'd be interested in."

Several retailers doubted the calendar would fly. "Is this real?" asked Vivian Harrell, co-owner of Personal Touch Hallmark Shop in Atlanta. Her store wouldn't carry it, she said. "It just sounds a little too peculiar."

Inspired by hunk-of-the-month calendars at the mall, the project's creator, funeral director Kenneth McKenzie of Long Beach, Calif., drew his first sketch of the calendar on a cocktail napkin. Months later, he's spent $90,000 on the project.

He said he thinks people will purchase the calendar because it's unique. Managers at the Perimeter Mall Spencer's and Brushstrokes in Midtown said their clients might buy it as a kitschy novelty.

"People come in for Chippendales calendars," said Ron Webster at Spencer's. "They go for whatever's new."

For the two-day photo shoot in California, McKenzie gave the men rock star treatment. Photographers shot the competitive body builder from Iowa changing a flat tire on a hearse. One man posed on a yacht handing a cremation urn to a widow. Byars, the Southeast's only model, wore conservative blue scrubs and posed in an embalming room like the one in his basement.

In true beefcake calendar style, the cover features the whole shirtless group. More unconventionally, the photo captures them by a casket in a pristine graveyard, holding shovels and wearing black slacks and dress shoes.

Hightower said that while the calendar will raise eyebrows, it at least demonstrates that not all funeral directors are morbid, dark or sinister.

"We're the guys coaching the soccer team," he said. "We're the guys working the concession stand at the football game or the president of the PTA. Maybe these fellows are trying to show that we do care for the living.

Very distasteful!

My word, maybe its a great idea as far as wanting to help the cause. But the cover and I can only imagine the monthly photos, are very distasteful. Couldn't they have posed in a better setting? Beach, park, fake scenery backdrops?