One Troy

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1:02Do you remember the first time you saw a dead body? How old were you? I was a kid. I couldn't even tell you the first time. I was a little girl. I mean, growing up around a funeral home for me, this is every day. Kendall Lindsay is a funeral director at the Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Her grandfather had the funeral home built almost 50 years ago, and the family has been in the funeral business ever since. We met her there a few months ago. What was it like to grow up in a family that owned a funeral home? I mean, when you were a little kid... Weird. It's weird. It is because your whole life, I had, my mother was here, my grandmother and grandfather were here, my aunt was here at that time, my cousins were here, Where did we go after school?

1:57The funeral home. Where did you come on Saturday? I had Girl Scouts down the block. I went from Girl Scouts to this building. It was my life. You can't plan trips because somebody has to be at the funeral home. When you were growing up, did the hearse ever come to pick you up from school? Yes, you only got to finish. The hearse came to pick us all up from school. When my mother was in school, the hearse picked her up from school, too. It's almost like a stepping stone for me and the funeral director's kid getting picked up in the house. Kendall showed me where she and the other kids in the family would play hide-and-seek.

2:32So in this room, when it was a reposing room, they had like, you know, you turn off the lights, you got little fold-up chairs, and you run around, hide in that room too. Most kids play at their parents' job. No different than you going to work with mom and dad and you got to keep yourself busy. We had to keep ourselves busy. What do you do after you're done doing homework and you ain't got nothing to do when you're a little kid? You play hard and go sick. So you've hidden all over this place? Yeah, I still walk through this building in the pitch black. It's not so funny. It's so natural for you to be around bodies where I'm thinking, Wow, weird.

3:05Like how, yeah. For me, this is every day. I mean, it's still a deceased person, but everybody has a date. Everybody has a time.

3:19One of our chapels is a lot smaller, but our newest chapel. Oh, this is the small chapel? Yeah. This is pretty big. Well, I mean, it's big compared to some other places, but it's small for us. This is our larger chapel. It doubles into that room as well. So on a good day, we open up both sides, and you can fit up to 500 people in here. Do you often have funerals that have 500? No, not always. Everybody's funeral is different. You can have a young person here where it could only be 20 people. We've had funerals where it was only two people. Most of our funerals range 20 to maybe 150. So it depends.

4:00If it's a funeral for violent crime and it's a young person, it's a lot of people. Kendall says she's helped out with a lot of funerals for victims of violent crime, and so has her mother and grandparents before her. She says that a lot of us think about the work that police and medical examiners do after someone has been killed. But that what takes place in a funeral home is also significant. A way to show care and respect and remember someone as they were. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:50Tell me about when a body is brought here, what is the process? From the moment a family arrives or from death, what happens? So at the time of passing, I tell everybody call 911. Don't call us first. Unless your loved one has been under hospice care, end-of-life care, don't call us first. Always call the police. Once the police have given us the clear to come get your loved one, or if they're not giving us the clear, sometimes the case may have to go to the medical examiner for whatever the case. If you have not been under a doctor's care in the last six months, you're going to the medical examiner.

5:28They have to find out what happened to you. After, if you go to the medical examiner or if you get released from the hospital, you go to the embalming facility. We no longer embalm on the premises. It's very carcinogenic. It's a health hazard. It smells up to high heaven. And got to get that done. I call it spa treatments. Come here. Have you embalmed bodies? In fact, become a funeral director, a part of the training we go through is we have to embalm. So, yes, I have been embalming. Not my favorite thing to do, honestly. It's a really physical thing, isn't it? This whole job is physical, though.

6:09You have to be able to lift up the human remains. and everybody's not liftable. But embalming is more so mental. You have to know where you're going. You have to know the human arterial system. You need to know where the veins go. The physical aspect is when they come here. And now we got to dress them. There is, you know, we all stand up and put on our clothes. My deceased can't stand up. We have to stand them up. We have to move you. We have to prop you up. We have to lift your legs. Everybody is not a size two. Right. Everybody's not even a size 10. So when you have a range of people you're dealing with, and I'm 4 '11".

6:47I'm very short. I'm the shortest person in this building. I have to be able to lift a person up to 200 pounds. I have to work out. One of my funeral directors, I've seen her lift people bigger than that. That's when it becomes physical. And is makeup applied after a body's dressed and in the casket? You never want to put makeup on a body before. Like, I know traditionally, we would put makeup on and then get dressed yet. No, no, no. Because of how we have to dress them, they have to be fully dressed. We put plastic on them to protect their clothing. Sometimes things happen. People, I hate to say it, they purge.

7:26You know, it's a part of the process. And you don't want their clothes to get messed up. You know, you want to make sure everything is perfect. That's the last time anybody is going to see this loved one. Kendall works at Lawrence H. Woodward with her mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay. Her aunt used to work there too. We're all mothers. So it's hard for us to have another mother in our situation and they've lost their child to a violent crime. It's really hard when you're dealing with anybody, even if it's not a mother. If you're dealing with a wife whose husband was walking down the street and something happened to him, he had nothing to do with it, but he got shot.

8:07What do I tell this person? That takes a lot. I don't think people understand when you're dealing with a victim who's been shot, whether they've been shot in their face or in their body, we see these things. It's a mental toll on the person that has to now look at this gunshot victim and put them back together. It really affects the people who do the job. She said, we see things that people in the hospital never see. Nobody thinks of having to work with putting this person back together who's been shot. Then I have to go back home to my child and cook dinner. If violent criminals had to sit in that room with us, putting these people back together, I think there would be less crime.

8:52I really wish people could come see what their guns are doing to people. After a person, I hate to say it, after a person has been shot, they got to go to the medical examiner. The medical examiner performs an autopsy. They don't always put you back together in the best way. You come from the medical examiner, you go to a funeral home. They have to now put you back together. They have to now go back where the medical examiner has gone, and they have to fix all of that. That is not easy. And to deal with it constantly. I had a baby here, and that was my case, and I had to get him dressed. In July 2020, one-year-old DeVell Gardner Jr.

9:38was shot and killed by a stray bullet while sitting in his stroller at a barbecue in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Two men had jumped out of an SUV and started shooting. Nice family. Too young. One years old. That hurt. Cocomelon casket. What do I tell a mother? And I got a baby, too. A teddy bear and an Elmo doll were placed on the casket during the service. Kendall says she often stays close with the family she works with, like the mother of Ahmaud Perkins, who was shot and killed on his 45th birthday. Everybody was prepared to celebrate a birthday. They weren't prepared to be here for a funeral. What was his funeral like?

10:24It was good. A lot of his friends came because he was from the neighborhood. A lot of his friends came. His mom was here. His kids were here. They showed a lot of love. They celebrated his life. I like celebrations of life because life is to be celebrated. But it was hard. But, you know, his mother, I still get calls from her like, yeah, why? Why? And it's not fair to these people. Now, nobody should have that question, why my child? Why my husband? Why my anything? We did Jasmine Figueroa. Who is she? A few months ago, a young lady was shot outside her building in front of her daughter. And her friend was shot as well.

11:15And the person that shot her killed himself. That was Ms. Jasmine. Her kid was so nice. Her family was so nice. Is it often the case that you're hearing about these people, Jasmine, on the news while their body is right here at the funeral home? So in Jasmine's case, I heard about it on the news before they came in to make arrangements. It wasn't until they came in to make arrangements and they were just asking questions. They didn't tell me no names. It wasn't until we sat down to do the paperwork that I'm getting a name. And then it's like, I'm so sorry. Well, what can I say? I'm so sorry. Like, we're hearing about it on the news.

11:59You're seeing the pictures. But you don't know. And again, outside of sorry, what do I have to offer you other than trying to make your loved one look good? No gunshot victim is, I hate to say, pretty That's not a pretty thing, you know It pulverizes You know, it doesn't matter where you get shot at If you get shot in your abdomen, your organs are destroyed If you get shot in your face That's a piece of, you know, depends on where If you get shot in the head, depends on what kind of weapon you get shot by They, it doesn't matter Whether it's a Glock 9, an AR, a shotgun, a gun is meant to harm people.

12:47So anytime somebody has been a victim of that weapon, the skin around there is damaged. The emotional trauma, especially if it's a facial wound, we can try and fix it, but that don't mean it's going to be perfect. You're never going to look the way you did before. Right? And I really, I hate to say it, but I really wish people that have killed somebody could see what their person looked like. I really do. They need to see the damage of what they've done to these people. In 2016, a 23-year-old named Imani Miller was found dead in Canarsie, Brooklyn. He'd been shot in the head, and he also had multiple cuts.

13:34There were two W's that had been carved into his left cheek and lip. Amani's mother brought his body to Lawrence H. Woodward and asked them, just make him look like himself. I want people to remember him the way he lived, not the way he died. I know the family personally, so it was hard because it was a few people who was involved. So they really wanted to disfigure him so he could not be viewable. This is Simona Ross, who prepared Amani Miller's body. But of course, I worked for days so that the family can have their final view and see him. And it was not only one type of inflection. It was different types of, well, a gun or a knife or different types of things.

14:30but they really tried to mutilate him. And I had to bring that back to give closure to that family. And it took you days? Took me about a couple days. It took my time. You know, sometimes you may see something like this, okay, I don't like that. I didn't want to go back and keep rebuilding. You don't want to rush into anything like this. You want to make sure it takes the time to get it done. And it's not always easy. But like I said, do the best I can to get as close as possible. When a reporter asked Kendall's mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay, about the case, she said, Death is never pretty, and often people die looking their worst.

15:12We'll never replace him, but it's a chance for a mother to see her son die with dignity.

15:21What do you do to make a gunshot wound disappear on someone so that it isn't noticeable? What are the steps? Every case is different. So it's also about using restoring waxes, molds. If it's really deep, you have to go in with netting to try to, you know, sew off and, you know, close up. and then, you know, using molds to try to, like, flesh tone to bring it back, to give back the look, and then also now adding color, you know, to match and come close to their complexion. So it can take a, there's multiple, multiple steps. You really want to try your best to get as close as possible. If you always ask for photos so I can see what I'm doing, then try to make sure I get hit those marks.

16:11Every case is different. Every case is different. Well, what's the most important thing to you when someone comes in here who has been a victim of violence? You know, what do you see as your obligation to them, the things that you want to get right? You want to make them feel that you've found a place where someone cares enough that we're going to care for you. Kendall's mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay. Secondly, we're going to care for your loved one. And many a time, you get families in where the death occurred and the person has been so maimed or disfigured that they go, oh, no, we're going to close the casket.

17:09We're going to close the casket. And we said, well, let us see what we can do. And I have to say, 95 % of the time, we are able to bring that person back. And the families are so grateful. They're thankful that somebody took the time. And they may not know, yeah, it took three days because you can only do but so much and then you have to step aside. Then you have to come back to it because it's mentally draining to do that type of work and just like, stay at it. that you got to get away from it because sometimes you look and you're perplexed as to, hmm, what's my next step? There's no book on how we're going to fix this because you have to care that you want to do this not just for the family, but it gives you a self-satisfaction that I was able to help a family.

18:27it's bad enough that he's gone or she's gone. But at least they've had an opportunity to grieve. You know, that they're looking at someone that looks like the person that they knew. You don't want their last look to be sloppy. You don't want their last look to be uncomfortable. Kendall Lindsay. We, this firm, prefers our descendants to go out looking like they're asleep. You don't want to see somebody that looks angry. And sometimes people do sleep angry. I'm one of them. But you don't want to see that in the casket. If you come and you're here to visit mom, you want mom to look like she's comfortable, that she's restful, that whatever her problem was leading up to this time, it don't exist no more.

19:31We'll be right back.

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20:50camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. The Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home opened in Bed-Stuy more than 100 years ago in 1923. After its original owner died in 1961, it was taken over by Melvin D. Thompson, Kendall's grandfather. Kendall told us that at the time, there weren't a lot of black people in the funeral industry and that Melvin saw a need. He asked his wife to go to mortuary school, too. At the time, she was the only woman in her class.

21:30Eventually, she worked with Melvin and became manager of the funeral home. In the 1970s, he designed and built a new building for the funeral home near the original one, which is where we visited. We are the family funeral home. For a lot of this community, especially since this building has been around. The building is on a tree-lined street across from a huge parking lot. It's all brick and almost looks like it could be a school, except there are very few windows. It's so well known that its address, one Troy, is in song lyrics and is a shorthand reference in the area for a funeral home. You may not know us as Lawrence H.

22:12Woodridge in a home, but you know one Troy. We've buried grandmothers. We buried mothers, we buried aunts, uncles, the whole family. And we are a central point. Everything else around us may be changing, but this building has not. People can come in here and say, yeah, those are the same bricks from 1970, whatever. The parking lot, same parking lot. Nothing in this neighborhood has stayed the same. Nothing. We are steady. So for us, it's a staple. Everybody knows this building. When the funeral was being built, I was in high school. I was already in high school. Linda Thompson-Lindsey remembers her father deciding to build the new funeral home.

22:56He said, look, I'm building this building, and I think it would be a good idea for you to get your license. And so I said, okay. and he would bring the plans he would bring the plans home and he would lay them across him and my mom's bed to like come here take a look because I mean we don't we lived in a house but we didn't have a whole lot of space so he spread it all out and he's like and so this is the plans and da da da and he's like that's going to be that I'm going to have an office and that's going to be the large chapels for the funerals, which so gave us the ability to have space for six viewings, which in the 80s we utilized a lot.

23:54Why? Because of AIDS, because of the crack epidemic, there were a lot of deaths, and people needed a space. It really was a lot of traffic. We were here till 9 o 'clock at night, even mortuary school. In mortuary school, I would come from Manhattan, and he said, well, you know, what time can you get here, 4 o 'clock? Okay, so you can answer the phones. Come on, answer the phones, and I'd be there till 8.30, nine o 'clock. It was a new facility, so everybody wanted to come to the new facility. So you had deaths immediately. You had, we had a lot of police officers who were shot. We had five victims.

24:53You had murders. You had all sorts of things, and continuous, continuous. Continuous. Right now, the big thing here is this fentanyl, and that's been around for quite some time. We know about it because it comes in on the toxicology on a lot of pending death certificates. When the toxins come back, and they'll show you that the person had fentanyl, heroin, cocaine. All those things still going on. Is there any difference, I mean, of course not in the type of service that a family is given, but doing this for as long as you have, dealing with the family of a victim of crime as opposed to an illness, in the way that they're processing, in the way that you are having to speak with them?

25:51Well, I would say, first of all, no one expects someone to die violently. That violence brings a lot of anger, a lot of why.

26:15also I think

26:20sometimes guilt sometimes you're guilty because you meant to do this or you meant to not but I think that happens now in a lot of deaths period they meant to do this they were going to do that and they didn't do that And so then when you wind up, a lot is unsaid. You're in many circumstances the last person that this person will spend real time with. And a lot of families take it out on us because we are the last people. Funeral director Simona Ross. And so sometimes their grief and their anger comes out at us because we are the last ones. And they don't want to be here. So sometimes whatever they're feeling, they'll take it out on us usually.

27:14You know, so I've been yelled at, cursed at many times. It's okay. There is no class to deal with angry clients who want to yell at you. Kendall Lindsay. People aren't so nice lately. There's a lot of anger out here. And I don't know if this is from COVID or if it's just emotions are running high. I know everything's expensive as all get out. So that could be it. Inflation. But it's a lot of anger. And sometimes it translates, if you're suffering from a death and you really like this person, you don't realize how angry you are being to other people. And a lot of times we get that anger. I was even thinking about this yesterday.

27:54You know, during COVID, we thanked a lot of our medical personnel. And I'm all for that. I think they did a fabulous job. A lot of people are here because of them. But what about the sanitation workers? your grocery store people. Everybody had to get up and go to work still that didn't get no accolades for it. Or the funeral directors. Or the funeral directors. We was in those trailers. You know, the morgue techs, they had to load those trailers up. We didn't get acknowledged like the medical staff did. Kendall says that sometimes it feels like people don't see funeral directors as normal people.