Early August in Michigan

The first Monday of the month took Reflections to Cobo Hall in Detroit for the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association Annual National Convention. Reflections was specifically the guest of the 100 Black Women in Funeral Service. It is always great to do a show indoors where guests will not be deterred by bad weather, and in this case was especially great since hundreds of people were in attendance for multiple events and educational sessions.


Cobo is a massive space right down town - the truck matched it pretty well in scale!



About a week after the rewarding few days at Cobo, Reflections headed a little way west to the charming historic town of Chelsea, Michigan, where it was the guest of Cole Funeral Home. As we have seen in so many other communities, Cole is a very active presence in Chelsea, and hosted an open house to let everyone learn a little more of what they are about. They also had on display two beautiful antique hearses to add to the sense of history in the culture of funeral customs.

Chelsea, Michigan is also home to the famous Purple Rose Theater, founded by Michigan's own Jeff Daniels. The play they are currently putting on, called Wake, features a mortician as the main character! Several of the event attendees visited Reflections and then headed over to the theater. The lucky ones also stopped at Chelsea's famous Common Grille for dinner.

Wake is in its world premier run and is on through August 22nd at the Purple Rose Theater.

http://www.purplerosetheatre.org/plays/wake.shtml

Fraser and Fowlerville, MI

On July 19th, Reflections was a feature of the City of Fraser Annual Picnic & Parade. Fallman & Walsh Funeral Home has been a participant in the Fraser community for many years, and made arrangements to have Reflections out at the event to celebrate their corner of southeast Michigan. Jim Walsh of Fallman & Walsh Funeral Home was there with his vintage 36 Auburn Funeral Coach, and dressed in period clothes of that time. With Jim as our added attraction we had lots of interest in the exhibit.
The trailer, with its impressive graphic wrap, became a favorite backdrop for other participants in the parade to have their picture taken. Jim was always standing proudly by!

When the parade began, Jim led the way distributing flags to families along the parade route.

After the parade, the exhibit was parked and opened to the public. Many visitors came through in a few short hours, and Jim had a chance too share some of the historic and educational aspects his profession with the community.

The weekend after the Fraser event, Reflections was down the road to the west at the Fowlerville Family Fair for the fair's Veterans and Government Day. Amidst the musical acts and animals, the Reflections exhibit gave people a place to pause and reflect on the ways that we honor those who served our country.

Although Reflections was only out at the Fair for one day, and a bit of a rainy one at that, a lot of excitement and interest was shown by visitors.

Reflections Celebrates Independence

Michigan likes to start celebrating early, so Reflections' Independence Day engagements began the last weekend in June with 3 days and over 3,000 visitors at the Stars and Stripes Festival in historic downtown Mt. Clemens, MI. Once again, Traci Lee was at the event, and provided this report:

"The Reflections trailer was set up on Thursday morning just outside of the main food court area and across the street from one of the main restaurants in downtown Mt. Clemens. We were also close to one of the smaller music stages.
The event was very well-attended. From what the festival organizer said, there was 150,000 people on Friday and he had expected about 500,000 people to attend the event over the entire weekend.
Because our location was in a very good spot, we saw a lot of people throughout the festival. We had a very wide variety of people of all ages that came through the exhibit. A few WWII veterans, who had just come back from Washington DC, came through the exhibit and they enjoyed it. Since we have had many events in the area, we had a lot of people come through that had already seen the exhibit and spoke of seeing it at Kaul's funeral home or in the Grosse Pointe area.

As the weekend progressed, we had people come in telling us that they had heard that the exhibit was very cool (and not just because of the air conditioning)!"

For the actual 4th of July, Reflections was on display in Wyandotte, MI. This downriver community has a real small-town feel, with a true sense of community. Their Independence Day Parade took place at 10am, and Reflections was parked right along the parade route for visitors to view before, during, and after the parade.

Even with a brief show, Reflections saw over 300 visitors in Wyandotte.

A very family-oriented event, the parade was a great location for Reflections, and since it was early in the day, the drivers had time to see some fireworks that evening!

Erie, PA

Reflections was hosted by the Western Pennsylvania Funeral Directors' Association at their annual conference in Erie, PA. MRA employee Traci Lee, who has worked with Reflections on many previous events, had this report:

"We arrived to find that everyone was very excited for our arrival and we were soon put in place in front of the Bel Aire Convention Center.
We were set up right in front of the hotel with our entrance doors in line with the side doors of the hotel, which was the main entrance into the exhibit area. We were surrounded by different limo cars and hearses, as well as a old fashioned horse drawn hearse.

The Reflections exhibit was open from 9am - 5pm and we believe that the majority, if not all, of the exhibit attendees came through the exhibit, in addition to a few members of the public.
The organizing committee was extremely hospitable and we were welcomed to breakfast and lunch during the conference.

Many attendees, and the organizing committee, came out to specifically thank us for coming and adding something different to their convention in their 101st year. "

Lynch & Sons, Brighton, MI

Reflections was fortunate to participate in several festivals and events in southeast Michigan leading up to the 4th of July. On June 13th, Lynch & Sons Funeral Home hosted Reflections at their location in Brighton, MI. The president and senior partner of the firm is Thomas Lynch, who wrote the book The Undertaking; the film of the same name is featured on Reflections.
The event was a rededication of the funeral home, with an open house that invited the community to learn more about the work of the funeral home.

Ceremonies included speeches, a flag raising, and a 5 gun salute.

It was truly an honor for Reflections to help their firm educate and serve the public with our free exhibit.

Busy Summer For Reflections

The Reflections Tour has been very busy this summer, with several of the MRA staff pitching in on successful stops around Michigan and beyond. As the schedule for the fall starts filling out, it is great to look back on all the miles traveled and visitors educated in the last year of touring. We have been fortunate that several of our summer stops have been close to MRA's home base in southeast Michigan, giving us a chance to feel like we are really participating in giving something back to our local community, and as always, paying tribute to the funeral professionals who play a sometimes unsung role in the functioning of our communities.

Shortly after the Ohio Convention in May, Reflections had a very special Memorial Day show at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

Always a beautiful location, in this case the education of the exhibit was enhanced by the emotion of the ceremony, which took place on the lawn of the War Memorial leading down to Lake St. Clair.

After the ceremony, many of the veterans and many other guests toured the exhibit, and expressed how they were happy to see such an important subject on view.

After the War Memorial, the two days after Memorial Day were spent at the Guardian Angel Cemetery in Rochester, MI. As people came to pay respects to relatives in the cemetery, they were also able to tour the exhibit, and learn more about the history and culture of mourning.