Death A Way Of Life In Small, Southeastern Indiana Town

BATESVILLE, Ind. - No Chamber of Commerce sign welcomes visitors to the Casket Capital of the World. There's no Graveyard Inn, with special rates for undertakers. Around the bar at Charlie's Hide-a-way, the regulars aren't given to jokes about embalming fluid.

You see, in Batesville, death is just a way of life.

"That's never occurred to me," said Harold Gardner, a retired newspaperman who covers events in Batesville and nearby Oldenburg in a weekly newsletter. "I can't explain it, except people here accept it as their craft. They make useful things, and it just so happens it's used to bury the dead."

This is the home of the Batesville Casket, part of Hillenbrand IndustriesInc., a publicly traded $4 billion company. It's the nation's largest casket maker, writing paychecks for 3,700 people who build caskets, cremation products and hospital beds, and sell so-called preneed funeral insurance.

OK, Mayor Bill Abplanalp has a little fun with all of this.

Dropping his bearish figure into an office chair, he flashes a goateed grin at the mention of his desk pen set. Resting on the base beside a standard-issue ballpoint pen is a six-inch model of a pecan-colored wooden casket.

"It's a hell of a conversation piece," says the mayor. "I wish the lid would open. That'd be a great place to put your business card. Everybody notices it."

In this southeastern Indiana town of 5,000, caskets have been part of the furniture since 19th century Germans settled amid forests of oak, cherry and walnut.

The cleared timber gave birth to Batesville Coffin, a moribund enterprise when John A.Hillenbrand, the son of a German immigrant, bought it in 1906.

As the company steadily grew, Hillenbrand money transformed nearly every street corner in town.

"If it wasn't for Hillenbrand, there wouldn't be any Batesville," said Mike Moll, a craftsman of caskets and cremation urns for 20 years. At least not a Batesville that Moll could recognize.

His four children were born at Margaret Mary Community Hospital, which the John A. Hillenbrand Foundation bailed out of financial woes in 1966. His 18-year-old daughter teaches swimming at the YMCA built with Hillenbrand money.

The three younger children swim at the Batesville public pool and check out books from the 40,000-volume public library - both built with Hillenbrand donations.

The Moll kids attend Batesville public schools, where Hillenbrand contributions helped wire classrooms for the Internet.

When the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra plays its annual concert at Hillenbrand-supported Liberty Park, the Molls can attend free of charge, the tab picked up by the Hillenbrand-funded Rural Alliance for the Arts.

That's not to mention the country club, the downtown German restaurant and hotel, even a housing subdivision - all owned or developed with Hillenbrand money.

"There isn't a spot in town they didn't put their hand on," said former mayor Victor Kaiser.

Gus Hillenbrand, the corporation's courtly chairman and CEO, offers this explanation.

"This is our home and has been our home since the mid-1880s. Batesville is not only where we do business, it is also where we live, raise our children, attend church and have friendships."

A friendly warning greets motorists following a Batesville Casket semi-trailer truck. "Please drive safely. Heaven can wait."

Batesville Casket can afford to be patient, too. While a few clever or larcenous souls may escape taxes, the other inevitability bears down. The number of deaths in the United States has been holding steady at 2.3 million a year since the mid-1980s, but there's a demographic silver (satin?) lining for folks in the burial industry. Grim reality will reap more and more sales as baby boomers age.

In 2011, the first boomers, born in 1946, will turn 65. And the nation's fastest-growing population segment? The over-85 age group. By 2015 an increasingly creaky U.S. population will be yielding up an estimated 3.2 million dearly departed a year.

And life will go on in Batesville.