Over his 20 years in the business, Rex Bennett, Cotten Funeral Home’s managing director, has witnessed firsthand the changes that have taken place in public attitudes toward after-death arrangements and in the way funeral homes are maintained financially.
Bennett said the biggest shift he has seen is from a predominantly burial-based business to one that is largely concerned with cremation, which at one time was practically unthinkable in the United States. He said the change is driven by the perceived simplicity of cremation, financial concerns and the reality of today’s more transient society.
The history of Cotten Funeral Home in New Bern mirrors both the transformations that have taken place within the funeral business itself and the American public’s shifting attitudes about death over the last century.