By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 24, 2006; A01
On a recent gray day, the earth next to the Islamic Garden at National Memorial Park near Falls Church was upturned for expansion. There, deceased Muslims are often propped on one shoulder inside their coffins so they face Mecca.
Nearby, workers placed stones in a creek bed bordering the Asian Garden. Originally, the creek was going to be drained and filled in -- until sales manager Scott Sagman, who consults feng shui masters about each change to the section, put a stop to it. He knew running water is considered good energy.
"If they cover that, not so good," Quang Duc, one of the cemetery's feng shui consultants, said as he gazed at the creek. "We need water, and we need trees."
Inside the cemetery's funeral home, closets hold the white shrouds, Egyptian spray perfume and carbolic soap Muslims use to wash and dress the dead. In one room, incense ash from Buddhist funerals has left marks on the brown carpet.
As immigrants have transformed the way of life in the Washington region and across the nation, they also have influenced the way of death, adding customs to long-standing traditions. In recent decades, many cemeteries and mortuaries -- whose directors are mostly white -- have adapted services for a diversifying clientele, designing special burial sections, providing rooms for Muslims and others to wash the deceased and allowing mourners to participate in cremation, as Hindus and Buddhists often request.
"This is what people want: to observe their customs," said Robert M. Fells of the International Cemetery and Funeral Association. "If you say, on the one hand, 'What are you talking about?' or worse, 'We don't do that,' you're not serving the needs of the public. . . . That's not acceptable anymore."
Service Corp. International, which operates nearly 1,100 funeral homes nationally and owns National Memorial Park, recast 24 homes last year in Los Angeles, Chicago and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to cater to Hispanics. Heeding the advice of Latino focus groups, the funeral homes now offer 24-hour viewings and coffins bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Because Islamic tradition dictates that the washing be done by members of the same sex, National Memorial Park's funeral home manager, Rick Caillier, makes sure women are working on days female Muslims are washed in case an employee has to enter the prep room. He tries to hold Buddhist services in the funeral room farthest from the crematory so mourners have time to finish chanting while processing to the cremation.
In the basement of Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home, near the crosses for Christian services, a table holds bells, incense, a tea set and other necessities for Buddhist funerals. Michael H. Doherty, vice president of the family-owned business, said he is considering building a second chapel with removable pews so mourners can sit on the floor during funerals, as Hindus and Buddhists sometimes request.
For much of the past century, urban ethnic neighborhoods often had mortuaries that catered to their communities, said Gary Laderman, an Emory University associate professor of religion who wrote a book on U.S. funeral homes. But as new immigrant groups have arrived and spread out, traditional funeral homes have become more all-purpose, he said.
Funeral and cemetery directors say such adaptations come with the territory in a service-oriented business.
Huyen Le, a Fairfax resident and Vietnamese Buddhist, recalls planning funerals for her mother- and father-in-law in the 1990s. No funeral home she contacted knew anything about Buddhist services, she said.
"I was running around. I had to borrow. I went to the temple for the Buddha picture, the bell, everything," Le said.
In 1999, Le approached the new National Funeral Home and offered advice. Three years ago, Le drove by Fairfax Memorial Park and saw that it, too, had opened a funeral home. Inside, she approached funeral director Archer Harmon.
He told her, " 'You answered my prayers,' " Le recalled.
Harmon, who belongs to a Buddhist meditation group, had worked in funeral homes for several years. He had often seen Buddhists arrive with "carloads of stuff" because the home did not have what they needed.
Harmon and Doherty met with monks and nuns at Le's home, where, over tea and Vietnamese sweets, they learned about Buddhist funeral customs. Later, Le bought supplies and framed portraits of Buddha from a large temple in Houston and presented them to the home. She made a reference folder for funeral directors so they could advise second- and third-generation Vietnamese families that might be unsure of the rituals.
"You've got to have somebody to help you," Harmon said. "She recommended us to her temple and her people, and all of a sudden it took off."
About 15 years ago, All Dulles Area Muslim Society leaders met with Loudoun Funeral Chapel directors to discuss Muslim funeral rites. Now it is one of two funeral homes the Sterling mosque recommends on its Web site, and it hosts about 40 Muslim services a year, funeral director Bill McDonough said.
"It took me 20 years to set up all those things," Amar Nath Gupta, chief priest at Rajdhani Mandir temple in Chantilly, said about his efforts to educate funeral homes about Hindu traditions. He has worked closely with Arlington Funeral Home, which, he said, now offers discounts for Hindus and stores ashes until families can return to India to scatter them in the Ganges River.
As they have adapted, funeral directors have evolved into lay anthropologists, said Laderman, the Emory religion professor.
"These funeral directors, in addition to all these other things they provide, are sort of these . . . cultural repositories, in the sense that they know these traditions," Laderman said.
Even so, dying in the United States can require compromise on the part of immigrants.
Hindus and Muslims prefer to complete services within 24 hours. But getting a death certificate or a slot at the funeral home in that time is not always possible. Mohamed Magid, imam of the Sterling mosque, said many recent Muslim immigrants struggle to understand why they cannot take a body from a hospital to their home.
Scheduling also can be tricky for Buddhists, whose monks sometimes consult lunar calendars to select auspicious funeral dates -- which might not be available at a funeral home.
Facilities can be problematic, too. Both National Memorial and Fairfax Memorial get requests from Muslims and Hispanics for overnight visitations, which they do not provide -- although Caillier said National Memorial is considering it. Le said some mortuaries refuse to remove mirrors in service rooms, as some Asians want, and instead cover them with a cloth. Others, such as Fairfax Memorial, do not provide common rooms where Buddhists, whose funerals sometimes last several days, can gather to snack and chat.
National Memorial prohibits thick incense sticks during services because they can trigger fire alarms.
But more funeral homes and cemeteries seem willing to do what they can, Magid said -- even if only out of practicality.
"At the end of the day, it's business," he said. "If they don't accept us, I'm not going to send people to them."
Religious leaders say that although their communities are grateful for adaptations, some immigrants would prefer to run their own cemeteries and funeral homes.
One Northern Virginia group, the All Muslim Association of America, already does. About a decade ago, members bought a $36,000, five-acre parcel in Stafford County for a Muslim cemetery. There, graves point east, plots are free and burials always happen quickly, volunteer S. Javed said.
Gupta, the Hindu priest, said his temple hopes to build a center that would include a library, education center and funeral home.
On a Saturday morning last month, Great Falls resident Tung Yap, 39, distributed programs as family members in white Buddhist funeral clothing flowed into the chapel at Fairfax Memorial. The programs told the story of his late father, Chorn Yap, 82: a popular general-store owner in a Cambodian village, a father who toiled in Khmer Rouge labor camps and lived to have 27 grandchildren, a man with a fourth-grade education who raised doctors and accountants.
"Some Cambodian people went there before," Tung Yap said, explaining why his family chose Fairfax Memorial. "So they are familiar with our traditions."
Later, four monks swathed in orange led a procession into the crematory.
"Can we put the flowers in there?" asked Sovan Tun, president of Yap's Silver Spring temple, as funeral assistants Bryan Allison and Jennifer Thomas pushed the coffin into the large metal retort, or cremation chamber. The funeral home workers nodded, unfazed, as family members placed a cascade of yellow flowers, a plate of incense sticks and tiny sacks of rose-scented potpourri at the foot of the coffin.
If they had been in Cambodia, Yap's eldest son, Thong Kim Yap, 50, might have lighted his funeral pyre. Here, he pushed a green "Start Cycle" button on the side of the retort. A loud whir penetrated the room, and with that, the service was over.
Tung Yap said it was everything he had wanted for his father.