The New Jersey Mission of Honor organization will hold its 40th interment ceremony at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery in Arneytown on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.

During the ceremony, the remains of 10 World War II veterans, six from the U.S. Army and four from the U.S. Navy, will be interred at the cemetery. The remains were located with the help of the Rutgers/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Anatomical Association.

The New Jersey Mission of Honor Program works with funeral directors and other groups involved in death care to find the cremated remains of military veterans that have been abandoned and provide dignified funeral services for those veterans. The first ceremony was held 17 years ago.

The organization is inviting those interested to attend the ceremony at Arneytown. Those wishing to go should arrive at the cemetery information center via the front entrance at 1:00 p.m. The committal service will take place at 1:30 p.m.

Anyone with questions may contact Judy Kapp at 732.232.3286.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has vetoed a bill that would have legalized natural organic reduction in the state.

Saying that legalizing NOR “raises questions about moral and human dignity that go beyond ordinary burial practices,” Stitt rejected House Bill 3660, which had passed both houses of the Oklahoma legislature in May 2026.

The bill, however, did not pass without objection. Representative Jim Shaw called the bill “shocking and revolting.” The House of Representatives passed the bill 58-35 and the Senate approved the measure 28-18. Oklahoma would have been the 15th state to legalize the process.

“In my view, this legislation moves too far toward treating the human body as material to be repurposed, rather than remains to be reverently laid to rest,” Stitt said in his veto message. “Human beings are made in God’s image, and our laws should reflect that dignity even in death.”

Natural organic reduction is the process of controlled supervised decomposition of a human body resulting in the conversion of human remains into a soil-like product. New Jersey legalized the process in 2025, and it is scheduled to become available to consumers in July 2026.

John A. Runge, a member of the Essex, Union and West Hudson County Funeral Directors Association, died on May 14, 2026. He was 73.

A lifelong resident of Glen Ridge, John obtained an associate’s degree from Post College and a bachelor’s degree from Quinnipiac College and graduated from the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service in New York City. He had been a licensed funeral director in New Jersey for 50 years.

John was the former manager of George Van Tassel’s Community Funeral Home in Bloomfield and the Preston Funeral Home in South Orange. He was the owner of John Espy Monument Works in Verona for more than 30 years and served as an on-call funeral director in several funeral homes, including Prout Funeral Home in Verona. John was also a member of the National Funeral Directors Association.

John was a member of several civic and fraternal organizations and was a lifelong member of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church.

Those wishing to honor John’s memory can make a donation to Friends of Glen Gray, 200 Midvale Mountain Road, Mahwah NJ 07430.

Thanexus licensed funeral home owners earned an average annual compensation of $128,903 in 2025, down slightly from the 2024 average of $133,596, according to a yearly report compiled by the nation’s first funeral practice management cooperative.

While owners annual compensation dipped, licensed non-owners saw a jump in their yearly salaries from $88,811 in 2024 to $90,102 in 2025, and newly licensed non-owners saw their average salaries rise significantly from $67,829 in 2024 to $75,913, an increase of almost 12 percent.

Clerical and administrative staff realized a jump in their average hourly wages from $24.42 in 2024 to $26.56 in 2025. Hourly wages for funeral attendants and interns also increased over the past year, according to the report.

New Jersey’s funeral service salaries remain higher than the national average, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national average salary of morticians, undertakers and funeral arrangers nationally stood at $59,420 per year in 2024, according to the BLS.

Thanexus gathers information that details average yearly compensation for employees of shareholders for whom Thanexus provides payroll and benefits services.

The cooperative uses actual W-2 wage data to calculate average and median salaries for several categories of employees, making it one of the most accurate barometers of funeral home employee compensation available.

In 2025, Thanexus shared employment with and administered benefits for the 792 employees of its 63 shareholders in 110 registered mortuaries across 94 worksites, for a combined annual payroll of $32 million. A total of 255 of those workers are licensed funeral directors.

The Thanexus retirement plan continues to post gains, according to the annual report. In 2025, the plan had total assets of $129.3 million, an increase of more than 5 percent from 2024. The average account balance for participants between the ages of 40 and 59 was $378,974 in 2025, an increase of more than 12 percent over 2024.

The average weighted expense ratio of the retirement plan is .275 percent, well below the national average, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Thanexus also declared $205,393 in patronage dividends in 2025, $154,045 of which will be returned to its shareholders is cash distributions with the remaining $51,348 allocated as member equity. In the past 25 years, Thanexus has declared more than $3.5 million in patronage dividends, and more than $2.17 million has been returned in cash distributions.

Those seeking more details concerning Thanexus can find the 2025 Thanexus State of the Industry report here.

Interested in learning more about the Thanexus advantage?

Contact Agency Manager Jonathan C. Krowicki, at 732.282.5117 for a confidential discussion about how Thanexus can help your funeral home with its benefit offerings and staff oversight.

In observance of Memorial Day, the office of the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association will be closed on Monday, May 25, 2026.

We remember and honor those military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.

The office will reopen at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 2026.

Two days after Memorial Day 2026, the cremated remains of 10 World War II veterans will be interred at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Arneytown.

The interment of these remains, discovered recently as part of the New Jersey Mission of Honor Program that finds abandoned veterans’ remains and provides them with dignified funeral services, is part of a dwindling tradition–military honors for the more than 16 million service men and women who were in uniform during the greatest conflict of the 20th century.

The National World War II Museum estimates that out of those 16.4 million, only about 45,000 are still living. Many are approaching 100, and veterans advocates believe the last of those Americans who fought in World War II will die within a decade. Already, most states have fewer than 1,000 living World War II veterans living in them, according to museum statistics. Alaska has no living veterans of the war, while California has the most with more than 5,000 living. New Jersey has just slightly more than 1,000 remaining.

While the need to honor these veterans is always present, especially around Memorial Day and Veterans Day, the push to memorialize those who served has taken on greater urgency. The museum and the Library of Congress have been gathering first-hand stories of the veterans’ service, while they can, a push that will continue as long as veterans live.

“Members of the generation that fought the war and prevailed will soon no longer be able to tell their own story,” Michael Bell, director of the museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, said in an article posted on the museum’s website. “It is our responsibility to preserve their memories and share their stories with the next generations.”

But the responsibility to honor their service goes beyond museums and libraries. It goes beyond the living veterans. Funeral homes play a role as well. From arranging military honors for eligible veterans to creating personalized tributes to the decedent, funeral homes can help make the history come alive, preserving the memory and lessons for future generations.

Photographs, memorabilia, even the decedent’s own words in an oral history, can give mourners a glimpse of a generation that is slipping away.

The help funeral directors provide can go beyond services after a veteran’s death. During preplanning, funeral professionals can also guide veterans and their families to the national museum, the Library of Congress and the Veterans Legacy Memorial, an online tribute to which families can contribute memories and pictures of a veteran’s service.

But arranging for military honors for eligible veterans will always be a visceral reminder of the sacrifice made and the recognition due for those who served. As the World War II generation slips away, the folded flag, the military guard and the playing of “Taps” provide us all with an opportunity to remember, ensuring that the cost of war and the contributions of those we love and admire are not forgotten.