Since 1928, Benta’s Funeral Home has serviced Harlem, New York. But throughout the decades, the family business has yet to experience what has occurred during the global pandemic.
At press time, New York has 142,432 cases of COVID-19 and 10,977 deaths.
As the president and co-owner of Benta’s Funeral Home, Jason A. Benta has witnessed how the global pandemic has ravaged the city and changed the way he does business. Benta took time out of his busy schedule to provide insight on what it’s like to run a funeral home during a global pandemic.
The global pandemic caught a lot of Americans by surprise. When did you notice a change in terms of deceased individuals due to COVID-19?
About three or four days after the state initially announced the stay-at-home order, the scene was unimaginable. It was pretty daunting, the number of calls that we received from families and their stories.
New York dealt with 911. But other than that, have you seen anything similar to what’s happening now?
No. I don’t [think] the United States [has] seen anything like this since the Spanish Flu in 1918. During 911, we obviously helped out several families during that time period. But right now, there’s an issue with being able to handle capacity.
What adjustments did you all have to make as a business?
We were inundated with phone calls and we couldn’t answer them all. Also, we didn’t want to have individuals coming into the funeral home to stay in line with the board of health in terms of capacity. So we decided to redraft our site and have zoom conferences with the families. That was just our way of trying to just mitigate our exposure to families.
Second, we also have the webcasting so that families could be able to do that separately.
One of our biggest issues is trying to secure PPE’s for our staff. Obviously, the first responders will need to have PPE’s because they are the first line of defense. However, we’re obviously dealing with families and their loved ones. So trying to protect our staff has been a huge challenge.
There’s a bottleneck from all sides whether it’s the cemeteries, crematories, and even casket companies. The United States was not ready to handle this capacity.
What’s the morale of the citizens in New York right now?
It’s scary. Everyone’s pretty fearful, but we kind of manage it. There is danger, but fear is kind of what you can control and that’s an internal emotion so we try to shut that off. We all have been affected by it. I think that makes it a little bit more real.
It’s disproportionately affecting Black people. I have staff members who have lost several members of their family. We’re not taking max capacity because we want to keep our staff members safe. It’s difficult turning down theses families. We’ve had to recommend other funeral homes or put some on a waiting list. It’s an awful feeling.
