HARTFORD CITY, Ind. (AP) — Think of a funeral director and, somehow, you don’t think of Karissa Hyatt.
Though dressed in requisite black, the attractive 20-year-old blonde looks like she would be more at home hanging out with her girlfriends at the mall.
Here in the stately confines of Waters Funeral Home, however, Hyatt is the future.
“We were here a lot,” she explained of visiting the place that her grandfather, Ted Waters, bought in 1981, raising five kids with his wife, Kay, in the living area upstairs.
Still, the young woman’s ascendance to the family business wasn’t a foregone conclusion, The Star Press of Muncie reports (http://tspne.ws/R4VOKn ).
“I didn’t start getting interested in it until I took anatomy my junior year of high school,” said Hyatt, who after graduation headed off to Vincennes University as a funeral service education major, graduating last May.
Now she is in her mandatory one-year internship which, once it is completed and she has passed her state board tests, will lead to her licensing as a full-fledged funeral director.
That’s a happy prospect for her family.
“I think everyone was pretty surprised,” said Hyatt, whose husband Paul is a former Marine and full-time student at Ball State University, of her career decision.
“And grandma and grandpa were very pleased,” added Waters, a five-term Blackford County coroner whose sons Tod and Brian followed him into the family business, and whose three daughters include Lyn Whitesell, the creative director at CS Kern Inc. and Hyatt’s mother.
In her university training, Hyatt’s education included classes focusing on science, like physiology and micro-biology, as well as psychology, sociology and the sort of personal skills that funeral directors employ to help families through the toughest times they will ever face.
“It’s a focus on family dynamics and helping them out,” said the young woman, who also works at her family’s other mortuary, Pitman-Richman Funeral Home in Eaton.
As for the other tough tasks inherent in the job, like embalming bodies, Waters had no doubt his quiet, diminutive granddaughter would be up for that challenge. An athlete back in Blackford County High School, she is also fishes and is a hunter with one deer bagged to her credit.
Besides, he recalled, when she was a little girl she watched, unfazed, as her great-grandfather field dressed a turtle that was headed for the dinner table.
In working at this quietly imposing old house, Hyatt helps keep spirits light.
“She keeps it lively around here with her wit and sense of humor,” Waters said, leading his granddaughter to note that, off-duty, a favored form of conversation around the place is quoting lines from movies.
Meanwhile, she is also developing a firsthand familiarity with the responsibilities and privileges inherent in the job.
“More people know me than I know them,” admitted Hyatt, who enjoys meeting others, when asked about the automatic status that her job lends her in a place like Hartford City.
On the other hand, she will have to go without sleep some nights, because when a call comes in, the folks from the funeral home are duty-bound to answer it.
The same goes for scheduling personal time around services and such. Recently, she had to miss an alumni high school softball game she was looking forward to because of her job.
“Better luck next year, I guess,” she said with a laugh.
There’s a physical challenge inherent in her work, too.
“Her only weakness is lifting,” Waters said, noting that moving a casket can be a lot easier than moving — pardon the pun — dead weight.
“To get ahold of a body can be tricky,” Kay Waters confirmed.
Still, none of that has discouraged the future funeral director.
“I can’t really think of anything else I’d rather be doing,” Hyatt said.
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Information from: The Star Press, http://www.thestarpress.com
