Funeral home offers local link to Titanic

Those Barnums of the burial biz are at it again.

For the last several years, Heritage Funeral Home has been luring big crowds for the Memorial Day weekend with free displays of collector cars, military memorabilia and brass band concerts.

But the real draw has been the replicas of caskets used by such celebrity corpses as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Bing Crosby.

Last year, Heritage set the extravaganza bar even higher when they hired a prop company to create an elaborate likeness of King Tut’s tomb. More than 1,600 people made a pilgrimage to the lush Heritage grounds at 508 N. Government Way to gawk at the gilded sarcophagi, hieroglyphics and fake camel.

Nothing builds an audience like a fake camel.

Silly me. I figured Dennis Murphy, the funeral home’s president and impresario of the Memorial Day theatrics, had topped himself with Tut.

Alas, I misjudged the man.

Setting his sights ever higher, the affable Murphy has turned his attention to that fabled April night in 1912, when death claimed 1,503 souls in the icy waters of the Atlantic.

Beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday (through 5 p.m. Monday), Heritage will pay homage to the most famed shipwreck of all with “Lost At Sea,” a tribute to – you guessed it – the Titanic.

Talk about putting the fun back in funerals.

“I want to reiterate that this is the place to mourn the dead, have a cup of coffee and a good chat and learn something,” says Murphy.

This Titanic installment may not boast any stars, like Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. But it does feature a weird-but-true Spokane link to the historic sinking.

We’ll get to the weirdness a bit later.

First, let’s check out what wonders await those who make Heritage Funeral Home their Memorial Day weekend getaway.

Murphy’s artisans are preparing a Southampton dock scene, from which the Titanic sailed, plus re-creations of a first-class dining room and the captain’s bridge.

White Star Line flag reproductions will hang all about the mortuary. There will be underwater scenes of the wreckage.

“To our credit, this place lends itself to this,” adds Murphy. “It’s not spooky. It’s just a big old lodge.”

Don’t think for a moment that Maestro Murphy would offer a Titanic spectacle without giving us an iceberg.

For the record, it’s a 300-pound iceberg. And visitors are encouraged to touch it.

Why? Murphy is only too happy to explain. Go ahead. Time how long you can stand to hold your hand on it. That, he says, is about as long as those doomed passengers lasted once they hit the drink.

Speaking of games for the kids, Murphy is putting a 30-foot inflatable Titanic slide on the Heritage front yard. The slide, he adds, is in the shape of the ship – going down.

“I’m king of the wooooooorld!”

This holiday’s featured casket will be made of wicker, which Murphy says was quite popular during the Titanic era. It will be surrounded with over-the-top floral sprays that were also in vogue back then.

And now for our local link to that Night to Remember.

Eight passengers were bound for Spokane when the RMS Titanic steamed out of port.

That fact was pretty much forgotten until a few years ago. Credit Spokane historian and author Tony Bamonte and his wife, Suzanne Schaeffer Bamonte, for unearthing the information while doing research for one of their books.

Here’s what they found:

• John H. Chapman, 36, was a gravedigger for Spokane’s Fairmount Cemetery in 1910. The following year, he returned to his native England to marry his childhood sweetheart, 28-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Lawry.

• After the death of her husband, William, a railroad worker, Margaret Rice, 39, moved her five sons from Hillyard back to Ireland. Her children were – Albert, 10, George, 8, Eric, 7, Arthur, 4, and Eugene, 2.

There is no indication Chapman and Rice knew each other. It’s likewise doubtful they brushed elbows on the ship.

The Chapmans were booked onto the ocean liner’s maiden voyage as second-class passengers. Rice, who listed her occupation as “housekeeper,” was in third class with her lads.

Destiny put them on the Titanic, headed back to Spokane.

Then came that pesky iceberg. Three hours later it didn’t matter what you paid for your ticket.

Of the eight, only the bodies of John Chapman and the widow Rice were recovered. Their bodies were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and buried in separate cemeteries. Halifax became the final resting place for many of the recovered Titanic victims.

Murphy notes that though the two were strangers, the paths of Chapman and Rice had apparently crossed once before.

He says it happened in Spokane – two years earlier. When Chapman dug the grave for Rice’s husband.