The Roswell Report: Case Closed

or dress inspection where the doctors came in and examined the body to
make sure everything was right. You had another inspection to make sure
their dog tags, make sure all the medals and everything ...
They always had two crews of inspectors. The doctors were only
involved in the cause of death or the autopsies or identification process, dental
charts and all that. After they did their work, then a doctor would always come
in and make sure the body was embalmed because [they] know more about it
than the other people. But they were involved before. You know.
Q: The reason they contacted you was because Burt Ballard's
funeral home up here had a contract with the base, right?
A: Yeah.
Q: You worked for Burt for a lot of years, didn't you?
A: Yeah, a long time.
Q: When did you first go to work for him?
A: I went to work for him, I was hanging around the funeral
home when I was like a freshman in high school. I'd want to make some
extra money. "I'll give you 50 cents to wash the hearse." I knew his
daughter real well. We were all in school together. That's where I really
got involved in the funeral home. I just kind of worked my way in it.
Q: He basically taught you the trade and all that.
A: Oh, yeah. My folks weren't in the funeral business.
Q: The reason I was curious about it was because when I went
back... I'm one of these guys that goes to Washington and then gets fed
up and leaves and swears I'm never going to go back, and then I go back
anyway. But the last time I went back and did that, I shared a townhouse
with a guy for awhile who was a mortician from Michigan. But he had to
go through all this formal training and all this rigmarole ...
A: No. That started in (inaudible). Maybe you don't want to
hear this, but I was in the 9th grade, and this teacher was going around and
wanted us to write a composition on what we wanted to be when we
graduated from school. What were our future plans. I was kind of a wise
guy, I guess I must have been, but I said undertaker, and I don't even know
why. All the girls squealed, so I got a little attention. Then she said okay,
if that's what you want to do then you've got a week, you bring me your
composition. I want to know why you want to be an undertaker.
So I went to the funeral home. They didn't have any books in those
days or anything, but that's where I went. That's why I got involved in it, started.
Q: How long were you in that business before you... I know you
ran the Wortley Hotel up in Lincoln [N.M.].
A: Oh, that was after I retired.
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