October 31, 2001
Casket crafters carve out livelihood
Hall family runs business out of their basement
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
There's nothing morbid, spooky or scary about having an array of caskets in your basement and a few dozen more out in the pole barn.
At least not to Tom and Jan Hall, proprietors of the Interlochen Casket Company. A casket builder for 32 years, Tom Hall said it is just another business.
"Nobody wants to buy a casket, I build them and I don't want them," said Hall, who can make a wooden cloth-covered casket in 12-15 hours. "But you get satisfaction out of doing something for people and I feel it is a good thing."
The family-based business includes their three sons, who cut out wood pieces, assemble the caskets and help to carry the 150-pound finished product up from the basement into the family's delivery van.
"To them and their friends it is normal, they grew up with it," Tom Hall said.
The Halls began working at their home 20 years ago when they felt the competitive pinch of modern manufacturing and sales. In business since 1974, at their peak they had 8 employees and both worked full time in the business.
As the 80s rolled into the 90s, large casket manufacturers bought up funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums. Small manufacturers and wholesalers like the Halls could no longer compete. Even many independently-owned funeral homes signed agreements to carry only caskets from the big three companies in the industry, cutting off another distribution source.
The Halls regrouped, found outside employment for themselves and continued to make caskets part time.
Now the only remaining independent cloth-covered casket maker in Michigan, the Halls began selling directly to the public three years ago. A few funeral homes still carry their caskets and, combined with private sales, they make around 120 caskets a year.
"Whenever things go global it hurts the local economy," Tom Hall said. "People talk about that now but it happened in the casket companies beginning 30 years ago."
Modern business challenges aside, the Halls point proudly to Interlochen Casket Company's roots, which stretch back to 1924. Back when most Michigan towns with more than 5,000 people sported a casket maker, three men founded the Grand Traverse Metal Casket Company.
One of the founders, J.A. Raymond of Chicago, had helped manufacture the world's first metal casket while in Chicago. He brought this technology north and partnered with brothers Lud and Charles Garthe of Northport in this venture.
Within a year the company bought a building on Ninth and Lake, now occupied by McGough's. The company began turning out 20 metal caskets a day plus urns, biers and casket fixtures. They became known as a high-quality casket maker that offered innovative interior options.
Beginning with five employees, the Grand Traverse Metal Casket Company had a staff of 40 by 1963. According to former Record-Eagle columnist Ken Parker, the company even sponsored a float in a long-ago Cherry Festival Parade.
The company folded in 1963 when it could no longer compete with modern manufacturing methods. Despite their premier reputation, the company's methods of hand craftsmanship were too costly and time-consuming to allow a profit.
"After World War II, companies were set up for war production and some just retooled for caskets," Hall said.
An employee, C. Dean Gauthier, bought the company. Gauthier renamed it the Great Northern Casket Company and moved it to Greilickville. There the company made wooden coffins and soon attracted the attention of a young Tom Hall, who lived next door on Carter Road.
While this new company morbidly repelled other neighborhood kids, who dared each other to walk by the facility, Hall was intrigued. He apprenticed as a casket maker and began working full time for the company when he was 19, declining to join his father's greenhouse business.
Shortly after he married Jan in 1974, they purchased the company and it became their family business. Jan was trained by one of the former employees in the specialized shirring sewing techniques used to make the interior cloth linings. She has all the old pattern books from the Grand Traverse Metal Casket Company at her house.
Jan Hall can sew a complete lining for a casket in 90 minutes, using one of a variety of fabrics she has on hand. Tom requires another 90 minutes to install this lining in the casket, though he no longer uses the old-fashioned tack-spitting methods he learned as an apprentice: with number 4 tacks in his right cheek, number 6s on the left and number 8s under his tongue.
Despite the setbacks over the years, the Halls plan to continue building caskets. Both strongly believe they are standing for local business and the local economy, providing a service to families around the region.
"We don't quit doing something because we can't do it the way we used to," Tom Hall said. "The business has been here 75 years and we'll still be here building caskets. We're kind of hoping that one of our kids will take over."