I don't know for how long they've been in business, but it seems as if it has been forever, at…read moreleast to my memory. I grew up in the area and I can't remember a time when they didn't exist. The housing development standing behind their establishment now used to be a large empty field way back when. My grade school (Packanack) is just a stone's throw away, across Ratzer Rd. The Catholic Church my oldest friend had to attend as a kid is also directly across the street (when I briefly flirted with the idea of converting to Catholicism but had trouble with the idea of confessing my deepest transgressions and sins to a celibate priest I didn't know, I asked my friend what he used to confess to when he went to confession, and he said, "I made stuff up."). My 1st job at 13 was delivering Wayne Today newspapers up Ratzer Rd. in the opposite direction from Vander May (I was a scrawny nerd trying to maneuver my ramshackle bicycle up the heavily traveled roadway with a heavy canvas bag of newspapers on my shoulder in all kinds of bad weather).
Still, I've only been inside Vander May twice, and never had to arrange a funeral for one of my relatives here. When my oldest friend's mother died...a kind, sweet woman I had known all my life practically...her wake/funeral was held here. I hadn't had much experience with funeral homes at that point, but everything proceeded as it's supposed to, in a professional and respectful way. My main memory of that day is seeing my friend's mother in death, and maybe for the first time confronting the reality of mortality. People you grew up around and came to love weren't going to be here forever, no matter how much you wanted to deny that bitter fact, or retreat from it.
Years later, my friend's father passed, and his wake/funeral was also held at Vander May. I was older, my mother was dying torturously of cancer, and this was the man who had once referred to me as "his 3rd son," so maybe it hit me harder than it might have under different circumstances, but at his wake, I had to leave abruptly, as I started crying like a little kid. I rode up Ratzer Rd., past my old school, past where he had lived and raised his family, with tears streaming down.
He was a unique man, in my experience--- very tough, a man who had been hardened by life, but maintained a good heart and spirit in spite of all that. He once owned 3 bars in Paterson, and knew a wide variety of people: actors, politicians, policemen, mobsters. His opinions of them weren't always what you would expect-- he didn't like Lou Costello, was supportive of crooked political boss Joe Bozzo, and thought mob boss Willie Moretti was a good guy (in his younger years, he palled around with Moretti's nephew, and once told me that Moretti had built a dollhouse for his daughter that was "as big as the room we're sitting in right now."). He also knew FBI agent Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco, who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in NYC and was the subject of a movie starring Johnny Depp. In fact, Pistone arranged for my friend's father and his friend (my friend's godfather-- real godfather, not Mario Puzo's version) to have bit parts in the movie. (My friend's father grew impatient with the movie making process and didn't stick around, but my friend's godfather remained, and you can see him briefly in the scene where Depp and Mike Madsen walk through a room where flunkies are counting gambling proceeds.)
Because of the emotional turmoil I was going through at the time with my mother's situation and the death of my friend's father, I was in a bit of a daze, but I do remember that...once again...everything was handled in a professional and compassionate manner. I remember my friend giving the eulogy for his father, something I would never have had the grit or strength to do.
There's ample parking, and my last memory of Vander May is walking out to my car as we were to proceed to the cemetery. I remember seeing a familiar looking guy with sunglasses standing in the parking lot, and later, I asked my friend, "Was that guy in the parking lot who I thought it was?" "Yeah," my friend answered, "It was Pistone. He came to pay his respects."
I guess the bottom line is that if you're in business for as long as Vander May has been, you're obviously doing something right, whether you're running a store, a restaurant, or a funeral home. I would imagine that successfully running a funeral home can be uniquely daunting. In addition to conducting the nuts-and-bolts business aspects of it, you have to deal sensitively, compassionately and professionally with a wide variety of people facing the often unexpected, tragic loss of loved ones, the harsh reality and finality of death, the accompanying emotions of grief and despair, pain and trauma, good memories and bad ones.
My experiences with Vander May haven't been direct in the sense that I've had to arrange funerals here myself for loved ones, but I wouldn't hesitate in recommending them to anyone.
