By:Elizabeth Sagarin
Fourth generation enters family mortuary business
Death is an aspect of life few choose to think about each day, but that's exactly what Lori Ann Vanella has decided to do. She recently graduated from a two-year program in mortuary science at Nassau Community College and is looking forward to being a funeral director alongside her father, Vincent Vanella III, owner and operator of Vanella's Funeral Chapel in Oceanside.
Lori Ann's decision marks the fourth generation of the Vanella family to enter into a business started in 1918 by her great-grandfather, Vincent Vanella, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It also marks a deviation from Lori Ann's original career plans.
Like her father, Lori Ann went to college at a four-year school and majored in a field geared toward public, broad - almost faceless - interaction. But her degree in communications from Fordham University didn't afford her the same type of intimate, private dialogue that being a funeral director demands.
After taking a job at a computer graphics firm upon graduation, Lori Ann realized she wasn't cut out for a detached, somewhat routine career. "I wanted more interaction with people," she said. "I enjoy helping people."
In a soft and measured tone, the 25-year-old conveys a high level of confidence in her decision to follow in her father's footsteps despite having never demonstrated an interest in the family business while growing up.
"It caught me by complete surprise," her father said.
"All I knew was that my father went to work in a suit," she said with a laugh about what she thought, as a child, of her father's profession.
He is, however, proud, he said. Recently, he took out a large ad in the Herald announcing his daughter's induction into the business.
As a teenager in Long Beach, Lori Ann eventually became better acquainted with the family business. Throughout her high school and college years, she worked at the front desk of the funeral home, in a strictly supplementary capacity. That wasn't enough, though. "Now, I'm not just sitting at the front desk," she said. "I'm more with the families from beginning to end, not just in the middle."
To qualify for such a duty, Lori Ann had to complete a residency and course work covering every aspect of the funeral process, including embalming. As a person who prefers to console the families at a time when, she said, "they're not at their best," Lori Ann plans to be up front instead of behind the scenes.
Playing that role did not result from fear or creepy feelings about dealing with corpses, she said. "I'm here for the people. I'm not here for any other reason."
Still, just the utterance of what she does sends chills down some spines. "I get very strange reactions," she said. "I don't know if they're frightened or ... some ask a million questions. Others start telling me personal stories."
Talking about life in the shadow of death, she said, is a part of the job that never gets old. "I don't find it tedious or boring." It does, she admitted, weigh heavy on her heart. "It's not exactly the happiest environment. Sometimes, that gets to me." Talking to her mother often quells the pain she takes on, especially when it involves a young person, she said. "It really hits home," she said.
Her father will also be there every step of the way. "I could never retire. I like to watch over their shoulders," he said of Lori Ann, the two other funeral directors and the rest of the crew at Vanella's.
Although he prefers to be so involved, dad lets Lori Ann develop her own style, she said. But her father's place in the Oceanside community since 1965 and Vanella's original location in Manhattan, which still exists, have played an integral part in building relationships with the community - an invaluable asset for a funeral home.
As a person who grew up in Oceanside and Long Beach, Lori Ann also has forged relationships with the community, but in a different context. A few times, she said, she's found herself conflicted between emotions of happiness to see a former classmate and the circumstances under which they are reuniting. However, her history in the community, she said, offers comfort to the grieving party.
Furthermore, the odd hours, the middle-of-the-night phone
calls that she'll take at home and the emotional tone that will permeate throughout each conversation with clients are tasks Lori Ann said do not turn her off.
"This is a job you have to give 110 percent every day," she said. "Just as long as I make some kind of an impact."
