The American Folklife Center is proud to announce that Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic from Last Responders is now available for research at the Library of Congress’ website. The collection, created by Gran Enterprises — comprised of Anita Grant, Joél Maldonado, and Jasmine Johnson (with assistance from Dr. Marla F. Frederick) — features interviews with 19 funeral professionals from across the United States. The interviews detail the experiences of embalmers, funeral home owners, and morticians, who worked tirelessly to give decedent care and provide end-of-life ceremonies, while navigating the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grant, Maldonado, and Johnson conducted the interviews between 2023 and 2024, after receiving a contract from the American Folklife Center as part of the COVID-19 American History Project.
Funeral Service Education Department at Northeast Texas Community College, as part of their collection for the COVID-19 American History Project.
This collection is important because it provides a window into the often-overlooked, but vital, role of funeral professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their work — to care for COVID-infected bodies, to inter the deceased, and to provide spaces to honor the dead — was not as recognized as the work of frontline medical professionals. As interviewee Lance Arnold eloquently said, “People always talk about first responders in the medical field. We respect them for everything they did during the COVID-19 pandemic. But, I would say [that funeral professionals] were the last responders too. I don’t think the media gave enough attention to that. Once they had all these cases . . . those loved ones that passed, they went somewhere. They came to family-owned firms or conglomerate firms . . . and we had to handle that.”
This collection is also unique because interviewers Anita Grant and Joél Maldonado are licensed funeral professionals. For many research collections, interviewers share an affinity for the work of their interviewees, but rarely do they hold the same professional credentials as their interviewees. Grant and Maldonado’s professional experience clearly informed the questions they asked of their colleagues and the impressive roster of interviewees — including Dr. Hari P. Close (Board Chairman for the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association) and William “Bill” Harris (the first U.S. funeral home owner to be featured in a reality television series titled, Funeral Boss) — in this collection. Learn more about Grant and Maldonado in this Folklife Today post.
Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic from Last Responders is the third collection of the COVID-19 American History Project to be published online. The first collection, Pandemic Stories from New Orleans-Area Service and Hospitality Workers, features twenty interviews with working-class New Orleans residents about their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, It Takes a Village: Rural Central Appalachian Childcare Providers’ COVID-19 Experiences, features twenty-five interviews with working-class, Appalachian female educators about their experiences during the pandemic. If you would like to add your pandemic story to the COVID-19 American History Project, visit the Archive Activation page. By following the page’s prompts, you can record your COVID-19 story. All recordings collected through the Archive Activate page will be archived in the collections of the Library of Congress.
We congratulate Anita Grant, Joél Maldonado, Jasmine Johnson, and Dr. Marla F. Frederick for their work, and thank all the interviewees who shared their stories with the COVID-19 American History Project.