JW Embser & Sons Funeral Home and Sedan Ambulance Service.

       In about 2003, I went to Embser's Funeral Home with a bit of nervousness. The last time I had gone it was to preplan a funeral but this time it was looking for a story. Still, walking through those doors brings back memories of every time I entered the building. 
     This visit was interesting and made me feel better about every funeral ahead of me. Did you know that it was once Embser's Funeral Home and Ambulance Service?  They had an ambulance but also could hook up sirens and lights to the hearse if they needed to use that.  They drove people from accidents to the hospital and transferred patients from Jones to Buffalo or Rochester.
       At the time, Jones was the Jones Homestead, a Victorian house near the current site.  There was a dumbwaiter in the building that could be raised to the level of the ambulance/hearse making it easier to get people out of the vehicle.  Sometimes people called for a ride just because it was an available transportation from out of the hills into town.

WELLSVILLE, NY:  As a child growing up in Buffalo, I saw sleek, station wagons speed by, chasing cars to the side of the road with their flashing lights and screaming sirens. These wagons had a special function, not for soccer moms or grocery delivery but for medical purposes, they were the ambulances of the 1950s and ‘60s. Painted in varied designs and colors to indicate their operators, they were owned and operated by hospitals in Buffalo. At that same time, in small towns like Wellsville, funeral homes met that need. In Wellsville, one operator was JW Embser & Sons Funeral Home and Sedan Ambulance Service.
     Why connect a funeral home and an ambulance service? Well, both had vehicles that could accommodate a person needing to lie down in the back.

        John Embser remembers riding along with his dad in their ambulance. For John, those rides had all the drama a kid could want with the pulsing red light on the roof and the wailing siren behind the grill. John especially remembers one trip to Scio to take an eight-year-old boy to the hospital. John, about the same age, sat in the back with the boy to hold a cloth against his bleeding forehead. This was all before the days of EMTs, biohazard fears or even seat belts.
            David Gardner, John’s uncle, remembers the ambulance days differently. His memories are of the responsibility of transporting injured or ill people at all times of the day and night. He said that sometimes they’d sit down to eat dinner and the phone would ring and someone would call out, “Well, there goes Dad again.”
            The passengers in David Gardner’s ambulance went to an early version of the Jones Memorial Hospital. While most people went to Jones in a private car, people without cars or those with serious illness or injury would call Embser’s for transportation. 
            These trips were tough work when people needed to be carried down steep, narrow stairs on a stretcher. Generally, David Gardner would call someone to ride along and help. Often it was a car mechanic interested in earning a few extra dollars. Sometimes it was a friend willing to get up at two in the morning and drive across the county to help carry a heavy person.
            Occasionally the drive was a scheduled event, bringing someone to Buffalo or Rochester but more often it was a sudden event. It was meant to be discontinued when actually ambulances available through the fire department or through an ambulance service but when older customers called Emser’s to ask for a ride to an appointment with a specialist, they were never turned down. Courtesy has always been a pillar of the Embser family.
            The Embser Funeral Home and Sedan Ambulance Service grew from a business started in 1913 when JW Embser left his job at Rauber’s Furniture and Undertaking to begin his own funeral service. At the time, furniture builders supplemented their income with the construction of caskets. They also had the extra chairs one would need during a wake. The connection between funeral service and furniture was common for a long while. An Allegany County Directory from 1905 shows 18 funeral homes with 12 of them also listed as furniture stores.
     JW’s first hearse was drawn by horses, flanked by lanterns with stylish drapes over the side windows, and filled with all that was needed.  JW had learned embalming as he worked for his employer. People generally died of illness or accident, usually at home. Maybe a doctor would be there, maybe not. The family would call the undertaker and he would “under take” the arrangements for home, church and cemetery.
     In the bedroom, the body would be washed and prepared. A gravity feed system would drain the body and siphon the embalming fluid (a formaldehyde solution to control moisture and, one must say, odor) into the body. The fluids removed from the body would be carried by bucket to the privy for disposal. Afterward, the deceased would be washed and dressed.
     The next big task was to prepare the parlor. JW had a service wagon in addition to his hearse. The service wagon carried drapes for covering the windows, satchels with a crucifix and candles, and a special table to hold the casket. Chairs were carried in the service wagon, packed in canvas, six to a bag. When the room was properly arranged with all in place, the mourners would arrive.
     A religious service was generally carried out at home but often there was a second service in a church. The horse-drawn hearse transported the body there and, while the clergy comforted the mourners, JW would go to the cemetery and erect a tent over the hole, paying $3 to the hole diggers. JW arranged chairs there, too, and installed the apparatus for lowering the coffin.    
     Afterwards, JW returned to the home to remove the service table, chairs and drapes, reclaim things from the cemetery and tackle the paper work of death.  All of his efforts brought him $20.
     The first service performed by J.W. was for an infant, Pearl Van Kuran. Pearl lived from August 26 to September 6, 1913 and was buried at York’s Corners. Paging through the old book shows that business was slow at first but by 1917, the influenza epidemic had his funeral service bustling. Gravediggers were earning $13 and casket makers asked for $100.
     Eventually, the horse-drawn wagon and hearse went into long-term storage and JW purchased a new, gasoline engine hearse. This hearse maintained some of the style elements of the old horse-drawn buggy with faux pillars along the side windows and the same stylish curtains over side windows.
The new hearse strained the business financially because, while a wagon could be traded for another wagon, it wasn’t something that the automobile dealer was interested in.
     The second generation of Embsers in the business, brothers Walter and Richard, worked in a different world. They learned their trade through formal classes as well as experience. Walter and Richard expanded the operation by introducing the sedan ambulance service.
David Gardner ushered in the third generation after he earned certification as a funeral home director, through formal education  in 1962 and John Embser joined later.
     Generation four, Walter Gardner, earned one degree at SUNY Canton and another at SUNY in Utica. Canton’s program offers a Bachelor of Technology degree in Health Services Management:  Mortuary Science. The program, including a full year of internship, shares several courses with nursing students so that funeral home directors are now more knowledgeable about anatomy than ambulance drivers were a generation ago.
     Earning a degree isn’t the end of it, either. Funeral directors must participate in continuing education seminars and renew their licenses every two years. They develop and maintain proficiency in the embalming process as well as with aspects of business, rules and laws.
     alking with multiple generations of practitioners makes it easy to see how the profession has changed. The embalming and the ceremonies have moved from the home of the deceased to the funeral parlor. The caskets are no longer standard items but are available in virtually unlimited materials, designs, colors and themes. The cost has changed too. Rather than having one flat fee, there are itemized charges for each service, many of which simply pass over the funeral director’s desk. For example, the charge for opening a grave goes directly to another agency. The job, once costing $3, now fetches $350.
            A major change seems to be the option to preplan a funeral. The planning can be done at any time and with any amount of detail. The advantage is that a person can make their wishes known, state their preferences, and remove stressful decision making for family members. All of this can be done leisurely, without the huge, emotional impact of death.
            The whole funeral scenario is serious business but checking some of the coffin styles offered over the Internet shows that some people put creativity into the situation. One website offers a casket painted to look like a set of golf clubs.  Others were painted with sport or religious themes. There are standard models in a wide range of colors. I also found a not-so-standard model that comes outfitted with shelves. It can be used as a bookcase until needed as a coffin. The shelves come out and a liner with pillow pops in.
         Of course, for those who choose cremation, there is a world of urns including those privately made by potters or other artisans who make the item for a specific person.

     The thing that seems to have remained the same in this business over the years is the emotional impact of dealing so regularly with death. All of these funeral agents feel that it is hardest to work with the families and bodies of children. Some of the preparations that they have made haunt them. Sometimes one of them, overcome by emotions, has had to call for help. At other times, dealing with a long-time friend, they feel that their work is an act of kindness that gives them comfort as they work as carefully and respectfully as they can.
     At the time of this essay, Ember’s was nearing their 90^th year of operation. It is on West State Street in what was once the home of JW and Agnes Embser. Their hours are simply any time you need them. them.  
 
      For more on the history of the Jones Memorial Hospital: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/MediaLibraries/URMCMedia/jones-memorial/services/images/JMH-History-booklet_1.pdf
      For more on the creation of the modern paramedic program listen here: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-222-the-paramedics-6-8-2023