Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerNewark funeral director Carolyn Whigham gives closing remarks during Louise Agnes Nelson’s service at Heavenly Rest Memorial Park in East Hanover.
Remember the Whitney Houston funeral, the woman in the gold lamé Versace jacket, the Little Lord Fauntleroy shirt underneath, the cream-colored bell-bottom pants? Remember that regal walk when she led the funeral procession?
What the world saw on television, Carolyn Whigham has been doing for the last 26 years. Director of the funeral home her father passed down to her, she is famous for the elegant, resplendent way she sends the dead off to their maker. She’s done the services for the ordinary and the great: Emily Miles, a Newark fashion designer; the legendary Sarah Vaughan — overseeing 6,000 visitors to the funeral home — and Congressman Donald Payne, who died in March. Her style has been praised the world over and even caught the attention of a funeral director in Liberia, who wants her to start a branch in his country.
She is the queen of undertaking, and I doubt you have ever met anyone like her.
It’s a Saturday in April and Whigham, 63, is moving among three funerals. The last one is about to end and her back is to the casket, her hands holding it firmly just under the pulpit at Messiah Baptist Church in East Orange. The look on her face is stoic, an unforgettable somber stare as she follows the pastor up the center aisle. She bends at the knees, then rises gracefully into a slow, military kick step.
First the left leg, then the right. She looks like a soldier in the Russian army. Each step is as high and straight as the next. She leads the casket to the foyer, then outside to a white carriage attached to a team of Persian horses. She climbs in the front seat, riding high next to the driver.
But this is not a show for Whigham. Reverence is paramount, and you will not see her smiling, or as she says, “jaw-jacking,” and running her mouth while conducting a service.
Admirers say there is no one more in charge than Carolyn, no stickler can rival her, and no one has such a sense of joy in life even at death.
That includes the funeral decorations and attire. Traditional black, unless it’s jazzed up, is not her thing. Whigham and her staff wear colors that match the clothes of the deceased, or maybe their casket. It could be lilac, possibly a yellow or a mauve. Sometimes it’s a bubbly shade of blue to reflect the personality of the family. Pink recently paid tribute to one man’s wife, who died of cancer. Fur coats! She’s turned heads in both the red and blue on a winter day. Her limousines are gold, the hearse, too. You can’t miss the signature “W” in the window.
“Dressing all in black is not a form of celebration when we’re celebrating one’s life,” Whigham said. “We want to take it several steps above that.”
Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerNewark funeral director Carolyn Whigham is known for her unique spin on services for a clientele that ranges from neighborhood residents to the rich and famous.
THE LITTLE GENERAL
“She gives families what they need,” said Mark Alexander, a longtime limo driver. “I’ve driven for them all, and she gives you an A-1 funeral. She’s the best.”
It doesn’t matter if you’re a pauper or a celebrity, there’s order and protocol when the woman known as the “Little General” is on the go. The viewing for the first of three funerals that Saturday gets started at her place by 8:30 a.m. Whigham then drives across town to get the second service off the ground by 9:30. She heads to the church in East Orange, but detours back to her funeral home when she gets a call that a family member passed out. EMS is there. She checks on the family, mingles, then continues as planned. She’s so in control she orchestrates her staff with hand signals no one else would even notice.
It’s a practice passed down from her dad, the late Charles Whigham, who started the business in 1943. Whigham said her business savvy and stern demeanor come from him, a well-respected leader in the African-American community who also founded City National Bank, the first black-owned bank in New Jersey.
When she is working, she appears unapproachable, moving in an aura of professionalism that keeps everyone on point. She’s the chief executive officer, her daughter, Kara Whigham, and Terry Whigham, her domestic partner, are the funeral directors. The men drive the cars, open and close doors, place the casket into the hearse. There’s always a plan, and it says: Do what you’re told.
“She runs a tight ship,” said Terry, who has been at Whigham for about 15 years. “People take her confidence as arrogance, but she’s not. She knows her stuff. You can’t have people all out of control on a funeral.”
A LEGEND
People tell stories about the famous Whigham hook — how she fires people without effort, on the spot.
She once stopped a funeral procession she was leading to can a limousine driver who kept breaking the single-line car formation. Co-workers said Whigham, who had been riding up front, stopped the procession, walked back to her limousine, slid over the hood, opened the car door and told the driver to get out and catch the bus. She took the wheel and the procession continued. On another job, Whigham said she quickly dismissed four guys who had their foot on the limousine bumper while smoking cigarettes and eating fried chicken from a box on the trunk. She found replacements in the church and didn’t miss a beat.
“I don’t care,” Whigham said. “I’ll do it again.”
Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerA member of the Nelson family member gives Carolyn Whigham a hug after funeral service for Louise Agnes Nelson at Messiah Baptist Church in East Orange.
You can’t even get a job application at Whigham’s if you’re not appropriately dressed. She takes her work seriously, because the funeral business to her is a ministry, not just a job she’s mastered after taking over in 1986. Whigham says a funeral is unlike any other event in the course of a life. It’s not a birthday or anniversary where, if you mess up, you get another chance. You get one shot to get it right.
“When you’re dealing with death, there’s a compassion that you have to have,” Whigham said. “When you step on that side of the page, you have to feel what they’re feeling. I don’t care what’s going on in my life.”
Louella Jamison never forgets Whigham’s personal touch when her “Nana” and father died. She said Whigham listened patiently about how Nana snacked in the middle of the night, waking up the grandkids to eat.
At the funeral, Jamison asked Whigham if she could discreetly place a ham and cheese sandwich with mayonnaise in the casket. It was toasted and wrapped in aluminum foil. With her dad, Jamison said she couldn’t bear to leave him in the hospital morgue when she had to go out of town. She said Whigham told her to get on the plane, that she or Terry would get her father and bring him to the funeral home.
“I know dead is dead, but if I have to be dead, I want to be dead here,” Jamison said.
SHE DOES IT ALL
Her career has comes with sacrifice. Whigham said she missed most, if not all, of her kids’ basketball games and track meets when they were growing up. She’s cut vacations short, left meals at the restaurant. It’s a 24/7 gig, and she can’t just say somebody else is on the way when the phone rings.
“They want to see a Whigham,” she said. “Families want that comfortability and confidence that somebody is going to get Mama, either from out of the house or from the hospital, and that they are going to take good care of her.”
All the bodies she handles get taken care of better than some people probably take care of themselves. Terry said they are bathed and rubbed down in their own lotion and their hair is shampooed. At the viewing, families can smell Mother’s perfume, Daddy’s cologne.
Pandora Jones was floored when that happened for a close family friend she helped with funeral arrangements.
Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerCarolyn Whigham leads the recession after the funeral service for Louise Agnes Nelson at Messiah Baptist Church in East Orange on April 28.
“I never heard of that before,” Jones said. “I changed my funeral to here after dealing with Carolyn.”
Whigham is credited with certain innovations.
At the cemetery no one walks a long way to the grave, because she has cars drive up in a double file. People can choose to have the viewing and funeral in one day, something Whigham takes credit for starting several years ago. Sympathy cards, notes and funeral programs are neatly tied up and placed in a gold gift bag that she signs.
Little things like that catch your eye. Others just hit you directly. The funeral home has an Egyptian theme, Whigham’s tribute to the first embalmers. There are all kinds of statues — large ones like Tutankhamun and smaller ones of Nefertiti and the ancient pyramids. Gospel music plays softly through the sound system, subtle fragrances soothe your senses. There’s a chandelier in the foyer, a wall honoring families she’s buried.
Whigham shows no signs of letting up. Not even the death of her parents slowed her down. She handled their funerals from start to finish, including embalming them, dressing them and placing them in the casket.
“I wouldn’t let nobody touch my parents,” she said. “No, no. My dad taught me everything I know.”
He knew the business but her mother, the late Marie Whigham, had style, presentation and the decorum of a regal lady. Everything matched, from her Ultrasuede shoes to her Ultrasuede dress, bag and hat. Whigham said her mother was a fabulous dresser, the person she credits with her fashion chops and creative flair in what she does now.
It came through with a flourish when her mothered died in 2006. Whigham set up the funeral home like a museum, showcasing her mother’s life. Behind the ropes were her mother’s clothes, shoes, furniture, the last book she read on a night table. Her jewelry was under a glass case. The casket at the front of the viewing room was closed and a picture of her late father hung on the wall, overlooking his wife. Mourners then saw the exit sign to leave, but it led them to another room where Mrs. Whigham was lying in her own bed, dressed in her nightgown. She was 83 and gorgeous. The pictures don’t lie.
“People picked up their cell phone, saying you’ve got to see this,” Whigham said.
Whigham’s own life is just as colorful. She’s been married twice, having lived in Los Angeles for 10 years as a successful property manager featured in Black Enterprise magazine. In 1986, she came back to Newark and joined the family business she’s always wanted to be a part of as a kid.
Back then, Whigham said, her dad only let her answer phones and do paperwork, because he didn’t want his teenage daughter to follow in his footsteps. Whigham, then 15, came up with an idea that would change his mind forever. One day when her dad came back from a funeral, he was getting ready to embalm a body.
There was no need, his daughter proudly announced. She had already done it, just like him.
“He said ‘I guess I need to shut my mouth,’ “ Whigham recalls.
Whigham has two grown children, and she’s been in a domestic relationship for the past 22 years with Terry.
When she can, Whigham loves to read courtroom novels and plant flowers in the spring to relax. It’s a passion cultivated on acres of farmland in Hackettstown, where her family retreated during the summers when she was a kid. They had chickens, horses and enough land to hunt deer and pheasants. She cut grass there, drove a tractor, and learned how to steer her daddy’s 1954 truck. The two pieces of 4-by-4 he tied to the bottom of her shoes helped her reach the clutch and gas pedals.
Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerPallbearers listen as Carolyn Whigham gives them detailed instructions about the removal of the casket from the horse-drawn carriage in Newark.
“There’s a side of me people have no idea,” Whigham said.
She does light plumbing, a little Sheetrock, some electrical, too, at her home in Livingston and at the funeral home, where she lives on the second floor. You’ll never see her at the gambling table, because she loves clothes and shoes too much. In her closet, there are 400 pairs.
She celebrates her birthday with the homeless, inviting several to dinner. She is a funny lady with a big laugh, a raspy cackle that lets you know she doesn’t bite. She’ll unwind with a cigarette and a glass of Dewars scotch, ice packed tight in the glass, with a splash of water and a piece of lemon.
‘UNIQUE’
We close now by giving you the whole Carolyn as she was on this day of three funerals.
Her suit jacket is velvet and black and laced with gray specks. It’s tailor-made like most of her clothes, and this dapper design doesn’t fail to wrap her in an air of regalia. Her shirt is white and crisp, the top button open at the collar, letting a black ascot peek through. Silver and black cufflinks fasten at the sleeves.
The grey slacks she wears have black stripes down each leg. They are neatly creased, tapered just so to fall over her black suede loafers. Each shoe, right at the tip, has a fancy gold, red and white king’s crown stitched into the fabric. Her look is striking, and so are the tightly layered curls spiraling through her silver-white hair. Sparkles of fine jewelry frame this ensemble, and they flicker in the sunlight from her earlobes, wrist and manicured fingers.
Is this any way for a funeral director to dress?
“I’ll tell ya, honey, I’m unique,” she said.
Whigham is always planning her next funeral, thinking of ways to top what’s she already done.
There is one laid out in a file she checks from time to time. The songs and clothes have been picked, the place for the repass reserved.
This celebration is her own.
“It’s going to be something like you have never seen or imagined,” Whigham said, smiling. “It’s going to be so off the chain (tremendous) that I’ll probably sit up and applaud.”
Related coverage:
• Newark funeral home handling Whitney Houston’s service has dealt with famous people, and ordinary folks
• Owner of funeral home that handled Whitney Houston’s service denies selling leaked photo of late singer
Article source: http://blog.nj.com/njv_barry_carter/2012/05/carter_from_whitney_houston_to.html
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