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DUK10079768_019
FEATURE - Elvisimitator ist auch ein Bestatter
August 8, 2017 - St. Louis, Missouri, United States: Mourners, including KQQZ radio talk show host Bob Romanik (right), enter Michel Funeral Home for a service for homeless Vietnam veteran John Beard on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017 on The Hill. Beard died in July from brain and lung cancer. Since 1992, Calvin Whitaker has been called to the aftermath of some of the city’s most violent acts to takes bodies to the morgue after police is called: suicides, natural deaths, overdoses and homicides. Among his more notable transports are the body of Michael Brown, killed in a police shooting in Ferguson, as well as a woman who died of an overdose at the August Busch IV home. He also help causes he believes in: burial of homeless veterans, exhumation of an unidentified murdered child’s remains for forensic analysis, restoration of an overgrown cemetery. About a year ago, Whitaker and his wife, fellow funeral director Chris Whitaker, 38, moved to St. Louis in a house that was for 70 years a funeral home. They fixed it up and are open for business. The funeral home was open to the public for their second annual Halloween party. Chris Whitaker’s love for the profession began when she attended her grandmother’s funeral at 13. She admired how lifelike her grandmother looked in the casket and thought she could someday master makeup for the deceased. She was working at a funeral home where the father of one of Calvin’s friends was laid out. He came to pay his final respects when Chris caught his eye. He offered her a job working with him to collect and deliver bodies to the city’s morgue. Three months after they met, they got married at a funeral home. That was 10 years ago. Though they were inspired to go into the death business when they were young, the Whitakers have taken a different approach to the career than their mentors. There are neatly pressed shirts and black suits in Calvin’s closet, but they hang alongside equally meticulously maintained Elvis jumpsuits, feathe *** Local Cap
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