The country’s only baby coffin manufacturer has received 19 urgent orders after shooting range in Uvalde, Texas.
“When we had Sandy Hook, it was another crazy day,” Mike Mims, CEO of Cherokee Caskets of Georgia, told The Daily Beast. “So we are tired. We get tired of doing these things.”
The Cherokee plant in Griffin, Georgia, runs full tilt for 20 consecutive hours Wednesday through Thursday. One difference between the two school massacres is the following 20 coffins Sandy Hook in 2012 went to see every funeral director in Connecticut. Funeral directors in Uvalde decided that all should go through a single coffin distributor and customizer, Trey Ganem of SoulShine Industries in Edna, Texas.
Ganem managed to handle most of the coffins for the 26 people who died in Mass shooting of Sutherlands Spring Church in 2017. Now he is required to provide the casket to 21 dead at Robb primary school in Uvalde, including two teachers.
“The funeral directors know who I am, and they say, ‘If someone can do it, you can. What will you help in Uvalde? ‘” Ganem told The Daily Beast. “I said, ‘100 percent.'”
Ganem added that he will cover the cost of the coffins, which are about $3,400 each. And he won’t charge for any customization.
Trey Ganem never wanted to make caskets for children. Now he has 19 to prepare.
Courteous Trey Ganem
The 19 child-sized coffins are expected to arrive at SoulShine at 2 a.m. Friday.
“We already have adults [coffins],” Ganem told The Daily Beast when he returned from buying more paint.
Ganem begins counseling with the Uvalde families on Wednesdays at the Civic Center and on Thursdays in their homes. He sought to determine which individuals they might want to touch.
“I would sit down with them and they would tell me all the stories about their loved ones — if they loved ponies, if they loved butterflies, art or softball,” Ganem told The Daily Beast. “And when they tell me these things about their loved ones, I can see them light up very specific things.”
He will combine it all into computer-generated images.
“Don’t call it a sticker, it’s really a big sticker,” says Ganem. “Now they call them wraps instead of patches, but it’s a giant one. It can go all the way around, you can heat it up, cut it, shape it however you want. ”
The family of one Uvalde victim told Ganem that their murdered daughter loved hiking.
“They sent us pictures of her hiking and in the mountains,” he reports. “And we actually put them in with the upholstery and we’re going to match the exterior colors to match that. So it would be like a giant photograph on top of the coffin. And it will be beautiful. ”
Ganem just wanted to handle adults when he first met the Mims of Cherokee at a trade show more than a decade ago. Mims met others in the industry who asked him why he stayed in the baby coffin business when sales plummeted along with child mortality due to improved health care, nutrition. and safe on the highway. But Ganem’s feeling about Mims’ niche has nothing to do with money.
“He saw me making caskets for children and he said, ‘Oh, I can’t be children,’ Mims recalls.
Ganem later told The Daily Beast, “The kids were tough for me. And that’s why I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.’
Not long after, Ganem finished dealing with his dead first child. Before that, he had customized the coffin of a famous adult musician with a replica of a dead man’s guitar. Now, he has prepared a Ninja Turtles themed coffin for the mutant teenager for the child, who is placed in a karate suit. The family invited him to the ceremony and he watched the boy’s friends arrive.
“All these little kids, his little friends come in and say, ‘Oh, mom, I want one!’ It took out its pain. “
His family came to him.
“They just hugged me and said, ‘You don’t know what you did for us just do this because now I see my little karate guy up there and he loves the turtle ninja.’
Ganem has a new quest.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want any kids left without a custom coffin,’ he recalls.
He has made many more caskets and finds himself gifted in divination as his family wishes.
“And you can picture it when they’re talking to you,” he said.
“I’m the one whispering in the coffin.”
On Thursday, he spoke to 10 of the Uvalde families.
“The others have yet to go to the funeral home,” he said. “Today they started to come and miss you, a lot of them didn’t get their children back. [The kids] at the medical examiner’s office. But some people already know who I am and have personally contacted me. “
He reported that none of the families he was associated with had declined his offer to customize the coffin.
“I told them if they wanted a simple coffin, they could,” he reported. “But, I’m probably pretty sure we won’t have any simple caskets.”
He said that including the family of at least one of the teachers, their coffins were among the six he had to deliver this weekend, and another 15 due next week. His team of five workers was ready to start work as soon as the coffin was delivered from Cherokee. His 25-year-old son, Billy, will apply the wraps on one and move on to the next step.
“Thank God I have a hot water paint booth,” says Ganem. “In 30 minutes the paint will dry. We’ll put two at the same time in there. “
He added, “We can do it. We just need to gather our hard times together. “
He reports that a lot of people have volunteered to help.
“They said, ‘We don’t have a lot of money, but we’re going to buy the sand, we’ll help with the delivery,’” he recounts.
Then he said, “It warms my heart to know that there are still great people in this country, in the world.”
