ShareThisBy MIKE HARDEN
Don't bother telling Keith Davis about the Wendy's Classic Triple or the Hardee's Monster Thickburger (large Crispy Curls and extra gravy, please).
He already knows.
"We are supersizing ourselves right into Goliath Caskets," Davis said, speaking from the offices of the casket business in Lynn, Ind., that his father, Forest "Pee Wee" Davis, launched in a converted hog barn in 1985.
Pee Wee hung up his welder's mask, after 30 years with Spartan Casket, and walked out of the factory telling his co-workers, "Boys, I'm gonna go home and build oversize caskets that you would be proud to put your mother in."
Son Keith recalls, "He sat down at the kitchen table and designed an oversize casket that would have dignity and that looked like a traditional casket instead of a piano crate."
Pee Wee was a man ahead of his time, but not by much.
"It is a commentary on our society," said Dwayne R. Spence, owner of a Canal Winchester, Ohio, funeral home that bears his name, and the former head of the National Funeral directors Association. "American people are getting bigger, and standard-size caskets don't fit all the time."
Twenty percent of the funerals Spence handles each year in Central Ohio require a casket larger than the standard 22- to 24-inch width.
Funeral director Bob Spears, whose business is in Columbus, said his numbers are consistent with Spence's, noting of the larger burial boxes, "We try to keep two of them on hand at all times."
Joe Weigel, spokesman for Batesville Casket Co., said customers for years sent the company the same message: "Provide us with more models to offer families for the oversize market."
In 2004, Batesville, in Batesville, Ind., began rolling out the euphemistically christened Dimensions line with the motto, "Fitting the times."
"This is the casket that grandma is going to look more comfortable in," Spence said. "Using a Dimensions casket will allow them not to look like they are shoved in a can."
Goliath's Davis said part of the problem funeral directors face is that they often receive no caution from the family about the size of the deceased.
"The funeral director may not be sure that this person is really obese until they go to pick up the body and it is resting on two hospital beds," Davis said.
His company has crafted a casket 7 feet by 7 feet to bury a man who weighed 900 pounds.
"The load is distributed across the bottom by installing a truce-brace system, like a truss bridge would be built," Davis said.
He thinks it is the wave of the future.
"The volume of obesity has grown to epidemic proportion. We are a very indulgent society and we want to gratify every whim immediately, and food is one of those comfort items we use to do it."
Sometimes, he said, the combined weight of the deceased and the casket outsizes pallbearers, calling for unconventional means to assist in lifting, transporting and lowering.
"Fork lifts, front loaders," Davis said, "engine hoists. You've got to be creative."
While Batesville has increased width to 26 inches, Goliath has doubled that.
"Fifty-two inches," Davis said. "If you open up the tailgate of a Chevy S-10 pickup truck, that is how wide the casket is."
