The Future Cemetery

Five years ago, Garry and Deborah Blesie, both in their 60s, struck upon an idea that was literally buried in the ground, reminding us at Portfolio.com that innovation and entrepreneurship aren’t reserved just for the young. Their idea? Use underground utility-tracking technology to transmit information about the dead to generations to come.

The tracking technology has been around for over 50 years as a means to mark the location of splices in underground water, electricity, sewer, and gas mains. The devices are known as RFID tags and are basically barcodes on steroids, capable of being detected from as far as 20 feet away using a specialized handheld display.

Mr. Blesie, now retired from GTE, had been using the technology for years, when his wife came home from a job of her own, using ground-penetrating radar to help the city determine whether a buried object was a human body or something else entirely.

“She told the city she didn’t know what it was, but that they should have used a system like the one I used at GTE,” Mr. Blesie said.

And so, with their imaginations kindled, the couple set to working out the details of a new company, Memorial Markers, LLC, dedicated to transmitting such information about the dead as their name, date of interment, and specific location in the cemetery—typically 2,000 bytes of data or less.

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Memorial Marker’s RFID tags come in either disks or balls for $20 and $25, respectively, and Blesie said he has sold thousands of them in the U.S. and Canada—including to several cemeteries owned by what he calls the largest company in the United States—and is currently in negotiations with his first potential client overseas, based in the United Kingdom.

“Our expansion is slow,” said Mr. Blesie. “It’s difficult to get cemeteries involved—they don’t like change.” But he is optimistic about the growth of his company, not only citing benefits to the families of the interred, but to the cemeteries themselves, which he said save money on insurance thanks to the devices.

But Paul Dunbar, operations manager at Hippensteel Funeral Services in Lafayette, Indiana, which provides green burial options, told us he had a different reason altogether for purchasing the devices.

“We wanted to cover every base that opponents of green burials could think of.” Green burials, it turns out, are quite controversial in the funeral industry, with many detractors in legacy companies that argue rodents will eat unprotected bodies, and future generations won’t be able to find them.

But Dunbar said Blesie’s Memorial Markers give Hippensteel a rebuttal to both arguments by providing information on how deep the bodies are buried, as well as markers giving detailed information about who is buried there.

And, according to Blesie, that’s where the next phase of innovation will likely pick up. Although current markers have limited data-storage capabilities, he said future cemetery offices can pretty easily offer full audio or video presentations.

Did someone say tombstone appcessory?

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Michael del Castillo is a freelance reporter for Portfolio.com.