The information contained in this column is a report of the actions taken by the board members who were present during the open public session portion of the meeting only. It is not a transcript of the official board minutes or an official record of attendance. It does not address board member attendance or actions taken during the executive session that typically follows the open session and is closed to the public.

April 7, 2026

Members Present

Charles F. Bechtold, CFSP, President; Bruce Van Tassel, Secretary; Gregory Aseltta; Peter Chubenko; Garrett C. Jones; Aladar Komjathy; Curtis Macysyn; Eleanor Rudolph; Kara Whigham.

Executive Staff Present

Quin Archer, Executive Director; Tom Giordano, State Investigator; Dan Roman, Deputy Attorney General; Nytaino Romulus, Regulatory Analyst.

Public

George R. Kelder Jr., CFSP, Samantha L. Link and Jonathan R. Bender, New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association, and five members of the public were present.

Executive Director’s Report

The Board received six complaints in March for a total of 15 complaints received in 2026.

Application

• Kira Barbosa: The Board voted to accept the application.

Approved Internships

• Sophia Colodner, Bergen Funeral International. LLC
• Shawn Douma, Carmen F. Spezzi Funeral Home
• Kathryn Einbinder, Freeman Manalapan-Marlboro Funeral Home
• Taylor Gaudreau-Diller, Silverton Memorial Funeral Home & Cremation Service, LLC
• Nicholas Merlino, Buklad Merlino Memorial Home
• Karen Milligan-Nardelli, M.J. Murphy Funeral Home
• Marnie Suscreba, Union Funeral Home, Lytwyn & Grillo
• Heather Tichy, Funeraria Alvarez Inc.
• Renita Wood, Smith Funeral Services LLC D/B/A Smith Funeral Manor

New Licensees

By Application

• Jordan Davenport
• Sara Haas
• Lisa Hayducka
• Laura Lavas
• Angelyna M. Scheck

By Credentials

• Nuria Gayer

Licensed by Application for 2026: 10
Licensed by Credentials for 2026: 1

New Funeral Home Registrations

There were no new funeral home registrations in March.

Total for 2026: 1

Continuing Education Report

The Board approved the courses listed on the meeting agenda, with several exceptions, and will post the approved courses on the Board’s website under the licensee tab.

Correspondence

• Lead Trust Administrator Marc Giorgiantonio informed the Board that notification letters were prepared for the purchasers of record regarding the closure of Aftercare Cremation located in East Brunswick.
• Lead Trust Administrator Marc Giorgiantonio informed the Board that notification letters were prepared for the purchasers of record regarding the closure of the Boylan Funeral Home located in New Brunswick.
• On March 10, 2026, the first reprint of Assembly Bill 4731 was introduced by the Legislature, directing professional and occupational board to promulgate rules for licensee use of generative artificial intelligence. A current version with amendments was reported on March 16, 2026. The Board voted to support this legislation.
• On March 10, 2026, the 222nd Legislature introduced Assembly Bill 4733, which prohibits advertising generative artificial intelligence as able to practice regulated profession or occupation. The Board voted to support this legislation.

Disciplinary Actions

There were no disciplinary actions taken in the month of March.

Public Comment

Samantha L. Link of the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association inquired about the status of the regulatory changes pertaining to the natural organic reduction law and the funeral licensing law. Board President Charles Bechtold advised that the Board has sent its proposed regulatory changes to the regulatory analyst and that they are just waiting for posting in the register.

Paul Horvath asked the Board if there have been changes to the continuing education in-person requirement. Executive Director Quin Archer explained that the in-person requirement for continuing education was waived during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Board voted to extend that waiver until that change can be codified in regulation. She also stated that the Board is trying to make it more convenient for licensees to obtain CEUs.

Next Board Meeting

The Board moved into Executive Session at 9:51 a.m. and noted that the next Board meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. via Zoom.

Cremation rates in Ireland are on the rise. The war in Iran is driving up the costs of funerals in the United Kingdom. And an Alabama funeral home raises eyebrows with an unusual Easter Sunday social media post. These stories and more are in the week in funeral news.

NEWS

Iran War Driving Up Funeral Costs in the United Kingdom
By Rupert Jones (The Guardian)
The war in Iran is pushing up the cost of living in the United Kingdom, but it is also driving up the “cost of dying” as higher gas prices feed through to funerals. A report has found the average cost of a funeral in Britain is running ahead of inflation, with the war seemingly partly to blame as it has pushed up the price of gas used in crematoriums. Read more here.

Crema­tions in Ireland on the Rise over Burial Costs
By Lynne Kelleher (Sunday Independent)
Funeral dir­ect­ors nation­wide in Ireland are report­ing a rise in crema­tions of about 5 percent a year due to the costs of buri­als. Jane Clarke, spokes­per­son for the Irish Asso­ci­ation of Funeral Dir­ect­ors, said their mem­bers are see­ing a year-on-year increase in crema­tions. Read more here.

Case Study: Should a Funeral Company Shift Its Business Model?
By Andres Cuneo, Marco Bertini and Jill Avery (Harvard Business Review)
The slides were on the screen when Javier Montoya walked into the glass-walled conference room on the top floor of Monteverde Memorial Group’s headquarters. But the CEO did not look at them. Instead, he walked to the window and gazed out over MMG’s flagship memorial park. From this height, the visitors moving slowly among the gravestones were weaving a geometry of loss. One woman knelt and straightened a bouquet as carefully as if it were a portrait on a living room wall. Read more here.

Maine Town to Allow Green Burials in Cemetery
By Jim Leonard (Midcoast Villager)
The town of Northport, ME, has updated its cemetery rules to formally allow green burials at Beech Ridge Cemetery, marking a notable step for an end-of-life practice that has been gaining traction in Maine. Read more here.

Alabama Funeral Home Raises Eyebrows with Announcement About “Unusual” Easter Service
By Alaina Bookman (AL.com)
Birmingham, AL, funeral director Arlillian Kate Bushelon made an ominous Facebook post on Monday about a “very unusual situation” that occurred during a service on Easter Sunday. “We would like to extend our sincere apologies for any confusion or distress caused following yesterday’s service. Please be assured that your Son was handled with the utmost care, dignity and respect throughout the entire process,” Bushelon Funeral Home Inc said in a Facebook post. Read more here.

Tennessee Funeral Home Owner Seeks Community Effort to Restore Historic Cemetery
By Don Dare (WATE)
There is a historic cemetery in West Knoxville, TN, that requires extensive rehabilitation. Part of the road around it is so deteriorated that family members can’t navigate it. Crestview Cemetery is the burial site of some of Knoxville’s most prominent Black Americans, as well as the final resting places of teachers, mechanics, clergymen, barbers, shopkeepers, cooks and gardeners. Read more here.

Registration for the New Jersey Funeral Service Education Corporation’s new Continuing Education On Demand webinar series is now live, allowing participants to earn continuing education credits toward relicensing on their own schedule.

The new format is a step forward in the delivery of continuing education. Registrants can take NJFSEC classes in mandatory continuing education topics such as Ethics, New Jersey Law, New Jersey Preneed and OSHA compliance at their leisure rather than at a set time. Courses also can be paused to accommodate for interruptions.

The courses available are:

• ETHICS: Honestly Dishonest: Funeral Directing Ethics  
• NJ LAW: The Funeral Licensing Law 
• NJ LAW: Natural Organic Reduction in New Jersey 
• NJ PRENEED: Prepaid Funerals Funded by an Insurance Assignment 
• NJ PRENEED: New Jersey Preneed in Perspective 
• OSHA: Bloodborne Pathogens  
• OSHA: Formaldehyde and Hazard Communication 

Once a registrant purchases a webinar, they have 72 hours to complete the one-hour course, after which one continuing education credit will be awarded. Your CEU report can be downloaded from the NJSFDA website.

Each of the webinars available will be provided at a discount for New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association members. Each nonrefundable course is available for $65 for NJSFDA members and $85 for non-members.

Information on the courses and the presenters can be found here.

Those wishing to register for the courses can do so here.

Providing on-demand webinars is the next evolution in the continuing education funeral directors must have for relicensing. The State Board of Mortuary Science of New Jersey allowed for the online delivery of continuing education courses in mandatory topics during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Board kept the waiver in place as the pandemic eased.

The Board has since proposed revised regulations that would make online delivery a permanent fixture for funeral service.

Organ donations from decedents declined in 2025 for the first time in more than a decade, according to the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, a development that has raised alarm among OPOs, already embattled by federal investigations into their practices.

The number of decedent donations decreased by more than 2.5 percent, AOPO reported, with 16,550 donors recorded. In New Jersey, overall donation numbers for 2025 dropped as well. The New Jersey Sharing Network, a federally designated nonprofit dedicated to organ and tissue donation, reported that there were 269 in 2025, a 9 percent decrease from the 297 donors counted in 2024. Transplants dipped as well, with 693 recorded in 2025, a decrease from 743 in 2024.

It is the first time in seven years that the numbers of donations in New Jersey have dropped.

AOPO attributed the decrease to “widespread misinformation and confusion about how organ donation works,” which let to “tens of thousands of people removing themselves from donor registries.

There is little doubt that OPOs, including the New Jersey Sharing Network, are under fire. In 2025, the House Ways and Means Committee began investigating potential Medicare billing violations among OPOs in the United States. The committee demanded records from the New Jersey Sharing Network and outlined several allegations that the network had strong-armed a hospital into harvesting organs from a patient that still showed signs of life.

The committee alleged that network President and CEO Carolyn Welsh had skirted reporting rules, aggressively pushed for organ procurement in cases where donor status was unclear and covered up paperwork in a case where Welsh is alleged to have personally pushed for the harvesting of organs of a patient who had “reanimated.”

The committee also began investigating at least healthcare facilities for allegedly allowing foreign nationals to jump the wait list for organ transplants.

“Our committee is going to follow the math and the receipts, contracts, financials, transplant data, and if the facts show American patients were treated as second-class, then Congress has an obligation to step in and fix it,” committee Chairman David Schweikert (R-AZ) said at the time.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services in 2025 also outlined what it called “disturbing practices” by an OPO serving Kentucky and parts of Ohio and West Virginia, saying that at least 28 patients may not have been dead when organ procurement began. HHS demanded what it said were “strict corrective actions” for the OPO and threatened to decertify if it did not comply.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the allegations against the midwestern OPO were “horrifying” and that those committing abuses would be held accountable.

“The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves,” Kennedy said.

The interim CEO of the United Network for Organ Sharing argued that the “decrease in deceased donors needs to be better understood.”

“The system is built on trust, and UNOS will continue to be a partner in efforts to ensure a fair, effective and safe organ donation and transplant system, Interim CEO Mark Johnson said.

Despite the decrease in decedent donors, the overall number of organ transplants continued to rise, according to UNOS. More than 49,000 transplants were recorded in 2025, according to U.S. The number of transplants has increased every year since 2013, except in 2020, when numbers were driven lower by the COVID-19 pandemic.

George R. Kelder Jr., CFSP

Our New Jersey winter did more than it typically does, especially along the Jersey Shore. It dragged on longer than anyone wanted, tested everyone’s patience and left just about all of us a little worn down.

And if we are honest, for a lot of funeral directors, the weather wasn’t even the hardest part.

Now that the snow has finally melted, there is a moment to look up and take stock. Which is good because whether anyone feels ready or not, this industry is about to shift.

For years, we have been having the same conversations. We need more people. We need better-trained staff. We need flexibility in how people enter and move through the profession. We need change that actually means something.

Between the implementation of the new natural organic reduction law and the move toward two licenses, the structure of who can do what, and how they get there, is changing in a very real way. Not in theory. Not in a board room. In practice.

And right alongside that, there has been a quieter effort underway that deserves just as much attention.

The Northeast Funeral Service Partnership has been investing its time and money where it actually matters, training and certifying both employees and employers. Not in a way that sounds good in a meeting, but in a way that translates to the day-to-day reality inside a funeral home. How people communicate. How they are managed. How expectations are set and met.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth: Licensing changes don’t automatically create better professionals. They just create different pathways into the profession.

What happens after that still comes down to the environment people walk into. That’s where the real work is.

And that’s also where the next step comes in. The rollout of our New Jersey Funeral Service Education Corporation Learning Management System with round-the-clock CEU availability isn’t flashy, but it removes one of the industry’s favorite excuses. Access to continuing education is no longer limited by geography, scheduling or whether someone “can get away for a day” because now it’s always there.

Which means the question shifts from “Why isn’t this available?” to “Why aren’t we using it?”

None of this guarantees improvement. Tools never do. We’ve all seen good ideas sit on shelves long enough to collect dust. But it does change the landscape.

The combination of new licensing structures, focused training efforts and accessible continuing education creates something funeral directors haven’t had in a long time: alignment. Not perfect alignment, but real movement in the same direction.

The floor has the potential to rise, not just the ceiling. And that matters more than we sometimes like to admit.

Because the future of this industry isn’t going to be determined by the handful of firms that are already doing everything right. It’s going to be shaped by what becomes standard everywhere else.

So, yes, a hard winter is behind us. And for a lot of people, that’s a huge relief.

But the next few months are where we find out what all those conversations we have been having were really worth.

We asked for change. Now we have it.

The only question left is what are we going to do with it?

Ryan Buckland, President

There is a kind of grace that shows up in the most difficult rooms of human life. It does not arrive loudly or announce itself with ceremony. It moves quietly through the grief, through the silence, through the tears that fall without permission.

That grace is called dignity, and it belongs to every person who walks through the door of loss, whether as the one who mourns or the one who serves. In the funeral profession, we are entrusted with something far beyond logistics. We are entrusted with people, and people deserve to be treated with the highest level of respect, beginning with the respect we first extend to ourselves.

Maya Angelou, one of the most luminous voices of the American literary tradition, once wrote, “That each person deserves a day in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.” She understood that restoration is not a luxury but a necessity. Those of us who work in funeral service carry extraordinary weight. We witness families at their most exposed. We hold space for grief that has no language. And we do this, often, without pausing to acknowledge what it costs us.

Self-respect, in this context, is not selfishness. It is the foundation from which all genuine service flows. When we honor our own humanity, our emotional limits, our need for rest and renewal, we become more fully present for those who need us most.

James Baldwin, whose words cut through pretense with the precision of a surgeon, reminded us that, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Respecting yourself means facing the truth of who you are and what you carry. It means refusing to perform strength when you are weary. It means setting boundaries not because you do not care, but because you care enough to sustain your capacity to serve over the long road of a life dedicated to others. In funeral service, longevity of compassion depends upon the honest acknowledgment of your own needs.

Respecting others flows naturally from that same well. Howard Thurman, a theologian, once wrote that, “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.” That genuine place is where true human connection begins. When we approach a grieving family, we are not approaching a transaction. We are approaching sacred ground. The mother who lost her son, the husband who cannot yet say his wife's name without breaking, the child who does not fully understand why the house feels so different now, each of them is carrying something holy. To treat them with anything less than full, unhurried dignity is to miss the purpose of this work entirely.

Toni Morrison, who bore witness to the fullness and complexity of life in America, wrote that “If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” In our profession, we hold a particular kind of power. We shape the final memory a family will carry of their loved one's passage from this life. That is not a small thing. Exercising that power with respect means listening before speaking, asking before assuming, and slowing down even when the pace of the work tempts us toward efficiency over empathy. It means treating every family as if they are the only family in the world, because in that moment, for them, they are.

Respect is not simply a professional courtesy. It is a moral commitment, one that begins the moment you choose this vocation and renews itself every single day you show up to serve. It is the thread that connects how you care for yourself to how you care for others. Dignity, offered freely in both directions, is the truest gift this profession can give.