Death is the lifeblood of the business run by Herb Ayres and his partners -- but not its focus.
Ayres likes to say that their Life Story Network, based in Portage and expanding inside and outside of Michigan, is about "taking funerals from death and caskets to life and memories."
The aptly-named Life Story Network teaches its client funeral home directors how to gather information on the dearly departed so professional writers, editors and graphic artists can turn that information into online and print stories and videos that take obituaries to a new level.
Life Story Network is a demonstration in how death and the digital age have collided, and the business is changing the way families and friends say their final goodbyes. Across the network, in Life Story Funeral Homes, the model is to make those goodbyes more celebratory than sad.
"There's nobody doing what we do," says Ayres, a partner in the network with Jon Durham and Jim Bauschke. "We're really a technology company that's based in the heart of the human story. Our clients tend to be more innovative. They see the handwriting on the wall -- that people are moving away from the organized type of funeral."
Life Story Network's clients are funeral homes and funeral directors in Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. Five are in the Kalamazoo area, including the original Life Story Funeral Home in Portage and one each in Kalamazoo, Vicksburg, Plainwell and Paw Paw.
Regionally, one is found in Saugatuck, three in Holland, three in Grand Rapids, one in Traverse City, and two in Alpena. Outside the state, there is one in Moresville, Ind. and one in Milwaukee, Wis.
Last week, Ayres was in Iowa to sign a new client. And recently a funeral home in Wisconsin became a client after a funeral director there saw a Life Story production. He was asked if he could do the same for someone's mother and had to say no. So he called Ayres.
"Our goal is to move regionally through the Great Lakes," Ayres says.
The business grew out of Ayres' and Durham's disenchantment in the 1990s with the direction funeral homes had taken. They wanted to focus more on "the life that was lived instead of the death that had occurred" by making the preservation of memories a bigger part of the business. They began writing and copyrighting the first versions of Life Stories, which became the centerpiece of the funerals.
About that time, they hit on exactly what they wanted to do. They saw an upbeat funeral for a much-loved couple who died while on a walk one evening. The couple's friends, primarily the employees of the couple's printing business, made booklets about their lives, including pictures. The friends and employees recalled happy times together, and remembered the couple at "a celebration of their lives."
Increasing access to high-speed Internet, and more affordable and user-friendly printing and video production made it possible for Ayres, Durham and Bauschke, who had come on board by now to launch Life Story Network as an official business in 2003.
"It changes the whole focus from buying stuff to 'You really are interested in my mother,'" Ayres says. "We believe if we don't capture your loved one's story now, it may never be captured, and we're capturing it for you and for future generations."
A Life Story story comes at no extra cost. It's part of whatever package of services -- whether it involves a funeral or not -- is provided by a Life Story Funeral Home.
The story is what sets Life Story funeral homes apart from others that offer memorials on websites, Ayers says. "What we do that's different is provide a totally professionally written story about a person's life. Our goal is to move from making the funeral home a business transaction to making it about life and memories."
It does take a little extra effort on the part of funeral home staffers and families.
To produce a Life Story, funeral directors are trained by the network in gathering the information during the typical "intake process," when families began making funeral plans.
"Families often have to provide biographical information, death certificate information, social security number. They're just facts and figures, like prisoner of war information, and it kind of rehashes the whole experience some families have already had at the hospital," Ayres says. "We develop a curriculum for talking to families about the memories and the personal details that make their mother or brother special. We teach the interviewers to do it in a very comfortable, sensitive atmosphere of engaging people in conversation."
That information is then loaded into the back-end of the network's website. At the same time, the family is asked to provide photos, 20 if possible, and usually by e-mail, that span a lifetime.
Within 12 hours, one of Life Story Network's 12 writers, including one Kalamazoo College graduate currently studying in China, have woven that information into a personal story. The writers are contracted and work remotely.
At the Life Story Network headquarters on Lovers Lane in Portage, there are 13 employees, including film editors, graphic designers, administrative assistants and IT staffers, producing on the back end of the
Life Story Network site, designed and written from scratch by the company's owners and employees. They load the stories and participate in the editing process with the funeral homes, families and writers.
The photos and words are designed into a pamphlet that comes in a printed version for funerals and memorial services -- if there is one -- or for a keepsake if there is not. A video is produced using the same information.
The story and video can be viewed on the website, which, in addition to the traditional information on how to send flowers and contributions and details on services that may be planned, offers extra features, including subsections called Memories and Thoughts, a guest book, and places for poetry and eulogies.
"This truly is a passion for us," Ayres says, " to change the way our culture handles the end of life."
Kim North Shine is a Detroit-area based freelance writer.Photos by Erik Holladay Herb Ayers runs Life Story Network in Portage, Mich. The company seeks to help funeral homes gather information on the dearly departed so that professional writers, editors and graphic artists can turn that information into online and print stories and videos that take obituaries to a new level.The unique environment created at Life Story Network allows employees to bring their dogs to work and to enjoy an occasional game of Foosball.Brandan Nillard creates a Life Story digital film.