VCAA President Tom Crean in the News
VCAA President, Tom Crean, was in the Vancouver Sun a few days ago. Below is an excerpt from the article.
Keep up the Good Work Tom!!!
Life Among The Dead
Tom Crean reluctantly agreed to join the family funeral business and found a calling
By Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun, 17 March 2009
The undertaker steps outside a Vancouver church and to catch his breath as a priest inside begins a funeral mass for a deceased elderly woman.
He'd already performed the list of duties that have become part of his family's DNA: Arranging for the body to be cleaned, dressed and placed in a closed casket. Playing traffic cop for mourners looking for parking and leading the procession of the bereaved to their seats.
Tom Crean can now relax for a few minutes before he transports the body to a cemetery. He stands by a black hearse that bears his grandfather's name -- KEARNEY -- and goes over the details of another funeral: his own.
Crean will be buried in a redwood casket inside a crypt.
"I've pre-arranged my service," said Crean, a barrel-chested 52-year-old with a cherubic glint.
"I like the above-ground approach, a tomb with a view."
His grandfather, Thomas Kearney, the patriarch of the century-old Kearney Funeral Services, rests in the crypt. So does Crean's uncle Frank and his mother Ellen, the siblings who kept the firm alive in the decades after the Second World War.
Crean hopes that his children and grandchildren will visit his final resting place at Gethsemane Catholic Cemetery in Surrey, and that eventually his remains will be moved to make room for theirs and for future generations.
Read the rest of the article.