THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 23, 1994                    TAG: 9406230471 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B4    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940623                                 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH 

BLACK AND WHITE MORTICIANS STAGE RARE JOINT EXHIBITION

But the two races took a small, almost accidental step together at the Virginia Beach Pavilion this week.

{REST} For the first time in Virginia and probably in the nation, a state white funeral directors' association and a state black funeral directors' association are holding a joint convention exhibition.

The two associations' conventions still are meeting in separate hotels here, but together they are sponsoring a funeral home supplies exhibition.

``It's a sign that all things change,'' said Joyce B. Tucker of Petersburg, president of the black Virginia Morticians Association.

Most states have separate black and white funeral directors' associations, and Tucker, who also is corporate secretary for the black National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association in Atlanta, said she had never heard of a joint exhibition.

Neither had John C. ``Joe'' Merritt of Wenatchee, Wash., president of the white National Funeral Directors Association.

When Tucker entered the business in 1969, she said, she never expected to see white and black funeral directors sharing an exhibition.

It came about partly by accident.

The predominantly white Virginia Funeral Directors Association is holding its 106th annual convention at the Cavalier Hotel this week, while the 66-year-old black Virginia Morticians' Association is meeting at the Radisson Hotel.

When the two organizations learned they were meeting in the same city at the same time, they agreed to have the joint exhibition, said Jim Singleton of Cedar Bluff, president of the Virginia Funeral Directors Association.

The exhibition is titled, descriptively enough, Joint Convention Exhibition. It began Monday and runs through today, with booths for lamps, burial vaults, caskets, organs, umbrellas, flag cases, hearses, candles, limousines, signs, embalming fluids, calendars, pedestals, insurance, computer software and urns.

More than 1,200 people have attended, including Bobby and Barbara Owen of Jarratt, who won the $15.6 million Virginia Lottery last week but plan to continue to operate Owen Funeral Home. He told the Independent-Messenger, a weekly paper in Emporia, ``I plan to serve as I always have and in the same manner.''

At one booth, Richard Martin Jr., a sales representative for Continental Computer Corp. of Jonesboro, Ark., was selling funeral home software. Once basic information on a person is entered, a push of a button prints out all needed forms, including death certificates, as well as obituaries.

Bill Simpson, president of Mastercraft Casket Co. of Graham, N.C., described The Williamsburg Walnut, a casket model that has a 3-inch walnut exterior, a copper lining, and a full length oval glass on top.

With infectious diseases, like AIDS, Simpson said, some people viewing the deceased might be uncomfortable without the glass seal, even though there is no danger of disease transmission from an embalmed body.

Robert Rouse, a sales representative for Clark Grave Vault Co. in Columbus, Ohio, dipped a toy vault into a small pool of water to demonstrate that air pressure keeps water out. Rouse, 69, used to put a lit cigarette in the vault to demonstrate the vault's dryness, but now he just has onlookers feel the dryness.

``As you can see,'' he said, ``it's dry as powder.'' by CNB