Russellville Christian Church buys funeral home at auction
Doug Waters ~ Bowling Green's Daily News ~ 3/5/2006
RUSSELLVILLE - A church will soon occupy a beleaguered funeral home property in Logan County.
The property belonging to Tim Hanna, who's been charged with funeral-home fraud, was sold at a commissioner's auction late last month by Russellville Christian Church.
Pat Suiter, who is on the church's building committee, said the church, comprised of 60 to 65 people, previously met at the Women's Club building in Russellville.
"We didn't think about the controversy," Suiter said. "That was the best location and building we could find in Russellville."
Suiter said expansion needs trumped all other concerns, even though members were well aware of the funeral home's problems.
Hanna, 46, was arrested in October by Kentucky State Police and accused of stealing from clients who made prepaid funeral arrangements. Hanna faced more than 100 charges at his initial arraignment Feb. 16, including 16 counts of second-degree forgery for bogus death certificates to the state's Funeral Trust Fund.
Allegedly, some or all of the money for certain reservations never made went into the state's Funeral Trust Fund.
"It's a big, spacious building. It's a matter of personal feelings as to how you feel about a funeral home as a business or church home," said Charles Orange, the Logan-Todd commonwealth's attorney.
Three properties - Hanna and his wife's house, the funeral home and the LandMark Travel building they owned across the street from it - were sold along with furniture and other equipment, said Jay Joines, the Logan County Circuit Court master commissioner.
Stressing the sales were not connected to Hanna's criminal charges, Joines said they were based on a civil failure-to-pay-debt case. Rumors circulating that proceeds of the sales could go to funeral-fraud victims are not true, he said.
"It's a lawsuit by the bank to collect money owed to the bank," Joines said. "The judgment and the case and the lawsuit spells out correctly who gets the money. It doesn't have anything to do with operation of the funeral home or anything about that."
The funeral home sold for $246,100, the house sold for $82,390 and the LandMark Travel building sold for $7,490. Jesse L. Riley and Son Real Estate and Auction handled the sales, he said. About 100 to 150 people attended the auction, Joines said.
As for the criminal case against Hanna, Orange said Hanna is currently out on bond and his next hearing should be in early April. The sides are still poring through evidence in preparation for trial. Orange said trials normally take anywhere from three months to a year to resolve.
Central Kentucky bureau WINCHESTER - At 74, Juanita Mance runs funeral homes in two counties, operates a beauty shop and boasts that she does it all by herself.
Since 1979, Mrs. Mance's energies have been directed into yet another area: battling the state to keep her two funeral homes open.
She has tried - and failed - to overturn a state law that requires a full-time embalmer and director at each home. Mrs. Mance serves as director and embalmer at Haggard and Son in Winchester and at its branch home at Mount Sterling, which she said is used primarily as a chapel.
Now the state is telling her to obey the law or lose her license.
Mrs. Mance, twice widowed and once divorced, said she can easily handle the workload at both funeral homes, neither of which is doing a booming business.
But Donald Butler, chairman of the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, said the volume of business at a funeral home has no bearing on enforcement of the law.
Mrs. Mance doesn't deny that she's violating the board's regulations.
But she's quick to point out that the rules also give the board the power to make exceptions when warranted, and she thinks she's an exception. She plans to ask for a waiver when the embalmers' board meets next week. It will mark the first time she has made such a request.
Haggard and Son is one of two black-owned funeral homes in Winchester. Her branch home, which she opened in 1975, is the only black-owned home in Mount Sterling.
"I think that ought to carry some weight," Mrs. Mance said. "I feel I'm due a little bit of consideration."
Last year, the board suspended one funeral home operator's license for nine months for failure to staff a branch establishment with licensed personnel, said Mary Duvall, the embalming board's secretary. Two other funeral homes closed voluntarily because they didn't have the required licensed personnel, she said.
Mrs. Mance, who bubbles with pride when she talks of her two businesses, maintains she can't afford to hire an embalmer and funeral director for the Mount Sterling funeral home because it has so few funerals. In 1980, for example, it had just six funerals, she said.
"The Mount Sterling funeral home doesn't even have an embalming room," she said. "It's used primarily as a chapel. I do all my embalming work here (in Winchester)."
One option is to sell one of the funeral homes, but Mrs. Mance doesn't want to consider that.
"I like to work. I really don't want to sell," she said.
In 1979, with the state pressing her for compliance, Mrs. Mance filed suit in Clark Circuit Court to overturn the state law requiring licensed embalmers and directors at each funeral home.
She was known at the time as Juanita Chenault. She has since changed her name back to Mance after a divorce last month.
In a ruling a year ago, Clark Circuit Judge Charles T. WALTERS upheld the law, saying "...it is constitutionally permissible to expect a licensed embalmer and funeral director to be constantly present at the funeral home awaiting the unfortunate arrival of expired humans. That they might not arrive very often does not outweigh the resulting benefits."
Mrs. Mance appealed the decision to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. It affirmed the lower court's ruling in December.
Mrs. Mance, whose funeral home career began at age 51 in 1960, said she's baffled as to why the embalming board would crack down.
"I know a woman who's running three (funeral homes), and she doesn't have either license," Mrs. Mance said. "There's a whole lot doing worse than I am."
Butler denied that the board is handpicking the funeral homes for citations.
"Every complaint that comes before the board, we investigate," he said.
"I think the law is very fair," he said. "If a branch establishment doesn't make enough money to hire the personnel it needs, then they don't need it anyway."
Although she still maintains a beauty shop in Mount Sterling, Mrs. Mance said she depends primarily on her funeral homes to make a living.
"I have put a lot of money in these places," she said.
Mrs. Mance plans to ask the state embalming board Monday to delay any action until June.
That's when a woman who's serving an apprenticeship under Mrs. Mance is scheduled to take her state board examination. If she passes, Mrs. Mance hopes the woman will work for her.
"If I can just get by until June, I think I can make it," she said.
And if the board refuses to delay its action, Mrs. Mance has another plan in mind. She declined to elaborate but scoffed at the idea of closing one of her funeral homes.