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Jim Burchfiel
Hatteberg's People
Reporter: Larry Hatteberg
| October 31, 2004 - The night was dark and devilish too, but that’s a Halloween story. This story skirts the edge of Halloween to something every human faces…. death. A Wichita man is giving folks a choice. Either going to the great beyond in a plain brown wrapper, or do you go your way? James Burchfiel gives us a choice. |
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Outside his garage it’s late. Autumn leaves, an old car, and a Kansas wind give the evening that Halloween feel that doesn’t bother James at all. Why would it….just because he’s painting a casket.
“I get the occasional – ‘You’re a sick man for doing that.’ Or that’s ‘morbid’. But I just look back at them and say, it’s only morbid if there is a body in it while I’m doing it.”
James started a part-time business called Last Ride Caskets. He began when a friend died. James thought his casket was just too plain.
“As I was sitting there, the thought came to me that he needed a customized casket. Because the lived his life around custom cars and hot
rods |
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. And I just couldn’t see that anything was really right in the funeral industry because everything is so cookie-cutter.”
So he began painting custom caskets, like this one complete with flames for those who loved hot rods.
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“I get ‘that’s cool’, I’ve got a lot of ‘that’s different’ and ‘You’re strange.’”
He paints solid colors too, but they are not the subdued kind you seen at most funeral homes.
“Just about any color of the rainbow, I can paint the casket.” |
One of my favorites might fit a person who loved farming. You have to admit, they do make you smile don’t they.
“The enjoyment for me is knowing that the deceased will forever rest in something that they lived their life around.” |
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He calls himself a self-professed ‘gear head’ who loves the motorcycle lifestyle. He began by painting bones in his own motorcycle.
“I would have to say that it’s more fun that work because it is very, very relaxing.
Around his garage are other items he paints, toolboxes, bowling pins, but caskets he believes are his future. |
| “Maybe all the struggles I’ve had in my life because I’ve been nothing but a truck driver until the point that I started painting. It made me feel like someone is actually going to recognize me for what I do.” |
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One local casket company has ordered several and it appears some California funeral homes are going to be his next customers.
“It’s almost a personal gratification to me to be able to give a family something they want in their dire time of need.” |
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