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March 27, 2017 Executive Profile

Muccino copes with CT's changing funeral industry

HBJ PHOTO | John Stearns Robert Muccino Jr., seen here at Funk Funeral Home in Bristol, says it can be challenging to leave the emotions of the job at work, but he enjoys helping people in times of emotional trial.
By John Stearns

Robert Muccino Jr. recalls advice he received in mortuary school from a man who had been an embalmer in World War II. Muccino asked how he kept his work on the battlefront from getting to him.

The man's response, “If you're ever going to make it in this business … you need to check in here at the funeral home and then when you leave you need to check out. Do not take that home with you.”

That's hard, especially when it involves children or other tragic deaths, said Muccino, a licensed funeral director/embalmer who is Northeast region director of support for Houston-based Carriage Services Inc., which owns 10 funeral homes in Connecticut, and 2017 president of the 220-member Connecticut Funeral Directors Association (CFDA).

“I always looked at things as being my job … to make it one step easier or better for the surviving family members, but you can't bring it home — and that's a very, very difficult thing for a lot of people,” he said during an interview at Funk Funeral Home in Bristol, a Carriage property, that included Christopher Duhaime, funeral director and managing partner there.

The lifelong Waterbury resident admits, though, to being emotionally impacted many times over his career. He attended the memorial service for six children killed in a Baltimore fire in January, services handled by a Carriage facility under his purview. He was there to assist with the service and lend personal support to that home's managing partner, a mother of two.

“It's not an easy thing,” he said of trying not to let others' grief overtake one's own life.

Muccino, 52, experienced tragedy in his own life when, at 10, his great-grandfather was killed in a Waterbury home invasion. His great-grandfather owned and lived in a six-unit apartment complex, collecting rent from other tenants, Muccino said.

“A few individuals broke in and they literally beat him up thinking that he had money in the house,” Muccino said, adding the intruders ransacked the home looking for cash. “They found nothing, essentially, but he was a frail 83-year-old man and it took one blow and … there were multiple blows, so I'm told.”

He and his older sister, 14, were the only two children allowed at the funeral and he remembers the support funeral directors provided his family.

The experience piqued his curiosity about death as a youth, he said. He considered a career in the funeral business in high school, but entered community college to pursue manufacturing and engineering. That wasn't his calling and he quit to attend mortuary school in Boston.

He rented a room in the basement of a funeral home near the airport to get work experience. He remembers rattled nerves the first night, awakened by a Concorde supersonic jet that flew at the time, sounds unlike anything he heard growing up in Waterbury.

He got his degree in mortuary science and apprenticed at John J. Ferry & Sons Funeral Home in Meriden, launching a career that included funeral director/embalmer and helping people do advance planning for funerals. He's more involved now in the overall business of funeral homes, collaborating with operators like Duhaime if consulted.

“He's been reliable to me,” Duhaime said, calling Muccino a man of integrity. “You can't waver from that, I've seen that in him — and he's a good friend.”

As president of CFDA, Muccino is promoting public awareness, education, advocacy and high ethical standards. Among issues he's tackling: fighting a proposal in the governor's budget to cut the indigent death benefit to $900, from $1,200. It was $1,800 a few years ago, he said, adding the new benefit doesn't cover funeral home and third-party costs.

Key, too, is educating a public that is conducting fewer traditional funerals and more cremations.

“We're not opposed to cremation,” but hope families consider visitation beforehand or a memorial service afterward, he said.

For his own release, Muccino enjoys riding motorcycles with his partner, Jodi, particularly touring the New England countryside and Florida. The scenery from a motorcycle can be stunning, offering a perspective not often seen from inside a car, he said.

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Executive Profile: Robert Muccino Jr.

Robert Muccino Jr.

Northeast region director of support, Carriage Services Inc.

Highest education: Associate degree in mortuary science at what was then the New England Institute of Mortuary Science, Boston, 1985.

Executive insights:

“Things have changed and we need to embrace the change that goes on with people’s lives. We can’t operate the same way that we did 30 and 40 and 50 years ago.”

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