Testimonials and Memorials: 'I will never forget the afternoon we spent on your magnificent sailing yacht. Thanks to you, Ronnie is finally at rest.'
What is the community saying about Nature's Passage?
Dear Lars,
Thank you for honoring my son with such a warm and dignified memorial ceremony. It was a truly beautiful day. Thank you, Captain Lars for all your help. I think of you as a new and true family friend . As you know, tragically, Ronnie was taken from us when he was killed in a horrifying motorcycle accident. He was cremated. I chose to have your company spread his ashes at sea because Ron was a student of yours a few years ago and he always spoke highly of you. You were so kind to us. I will never forget the afternoon we spent on your magnificent sailing yacht. Thanks to you, Ronnie is finally at rest.
My family wishes you and yours well. God bless you.
Sincerely,
Mrs. P.A. Condracke
Long Island , NY
Dear Captain Lars,
We were very privileged having you as our leader at my mom's service. Your warmth and kindness made my mom's farewell less painful. The advise you gave to talk about her while we were heading back to shore.This was such a clever idea!!!! I heard from nephews and brothers beautiful and tender stories about mom. And then I felt she had completed her cycle by going back to nature.
Thanks Again,
Amparo Baron
Dear Captain Hedstrom,
I can't tell you how much I admire the work you do. Some weeks ago I spoke to you about a friend of my husband who committed suicide on Christmas day. He was alone. He was 64 years old, his wife died over a year ago; he was childless. His body lay unclaimed in the city morgue for weeks. When I saw your web-site and called, your crew went right to work. You claimed this poor soul's remains, arranged for his cremation and gave him a funeral at sea. Thank you for the pictures of the ceremony.
You are doing a great service. My husband and I were glad to pay the small fee you charged for the services your company provided. Helping as we did is the least we could do for a friend.
Although I have never met you, my husband and I have great respect and admiration for all you're doing to give 'unfortunates' like our friend a graceful portal to heaven. Bless you.
Sincerely,
Ms. Wanda Metcalf
Sacramento
Dear Captain Lars,
Thank you again for taking us out into the Sound yesterday with our friend Jerome. It was a perfect way to say goodbye, and I truly appreciated all that you did for each of us. The Barquette is a fine boat, and you are quite a guy.
Thanks again for everything. Best wishes to you and yours.
God Bless,
Mr. Dale Beverly
Woodstock, New York
Dear Captain Lars,
I cannot thank you enough for helping us to truly honor our friend Bran and his wishes to have his ashes scattered at sea. During our first conversation on the phone, I knew that I had found the right person to help us – and also someone that Bran would have liked very much.
Our special day for Bran could not have been more perfect. You put us at ease from the moment we arrived, and then took us on an unforgettable voyage – our last voyage with our friend. It was a time to talk, reminisce, laugh, cry, share stories, and finally, to say good-by.
Thank you for your kindness, consideration, and understanding in helping us to take this unique and memorable journey.
I find your commitment and devotion to this work to be truly remarkable.
Thank you again for taking such good care of us.
Thank you,
Mary Ellen Hostak
New York, New York
Dear Lars,
I want to extend my deepest appreciation for the wonderful job you did to help me carry out my mother’s wishes to be buried at sea. It was an unfamiliar path for me to take, but it lead me to you and for that I am forever grateful! You are a very sweet and compassionate person. You became part of my family that day. I know my mother was smiling with pride and joy. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me a peaceful ending and my mother a beautiful new beginning.
Sincerely,
Timora McCabe
Long Island, New York
Captain Lars,
Secretly, as a funeral director, I know I’m not supposed to talk to ‘competitors’, but I am a proud veteran first! As a veteran, I’m proud of the work you’re doing to preserve the tradition and honor of service to America by performing military burials at sea. I’ve conducted hundreds of funerals for our veterans, and when it comes to military funerals performed by the Department of Veterans Affairs at National Cemeteries, I’m sad to say they are routinely bland, often insulting to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Keep doing the work your doing! You truly represent the spirit of ‘God and Country’. May God bless your company and ‘may the wind always be at your back’.
PS. Please keep my name confidential.
God Bless,
A Thankful Texan
Captain Lars Hedstrom,
Great service you render. Burial at sea is a highly honored and respected service. God bless you as you serve our departed American Heroes.
Chaplin Colonel Boyd Fallwell,
Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Thank you so very much,
I was delighted to see the beautiful presentation of my mother's memorial. It was more than I ever expected.
I can't recommend your services enough. You have been so kind to me through this process. I feel blessed to have found you to provide just the right services for my mother and to have done it in such a professional and caring way. Your patience with the delays and my indecisiveness have been truly a kindness. I am convinced that mother returning to her beloved sea is absolutely the right decision. You will know how much this has meant to me.
Again, thanks so much from the bottom of my heart.
Carol Solstad
Dear Captain Lars,
Thank you for helping me organize my father's burial at sea aboard a beautiful yacht off the coast of Southern California. The service included full military honors, flag ceremony and taps were sounded.
The para-military service went off like clockwork and was well beyond my expectations!
Thank you for your efforts. Your services were professional in every sense and I will gladly recommend your operations to others.
Sincerely,
Christopher Corlett - Torrance, California
Dear Captain,
On behalf of all the Klein family - from the 5 year old on up - I want to thank you and your crew for making our ceremony for my in-laws possible.
We greatly appreciate your empathy, helpfulness, and tact. The Celtic Quest was spotless and comfortable - and you certainly managed to get us magnificent weather!
It was a difficult day, but we all took comfort in knowing it was the loving, emotional, and bonding kind of day my in-laws wanted it to be.
Thanks again to you all.
Sincerely,
Manu Klein
Dear Captain,
I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to you, the crew aboard the Celtic Quest and especially to Chris Krause, the Director of your Operations Department, who was so patient with me as I must of asked a million questions and endless phone calls and emails. He was the key player on your team of extraordinary professionals. Many thanks, Chris! I really didn't know what to expect that day, but it was perfect! It was if my husband had planned the afternoon himself from heaven. I know he was looking down on us all smiling - with that special twinkle in his eye we all knew and loved. Thank you for taking such good care of us. Your warmth and kindness will always be remembered.
God Bless,
Kim Lien,
Carthage, NY
Greetings Captain Lars,
We left you with a feeling of peace and satisfaction. The simplicity and dignity of the service and the quiet beauty of the entire procedure left us content in the knowledge that his wishes had been carried out in a manner befitting his life." A satisfied client on Long Island
And here is the poem he carried for years in his wallet:
Cremation
It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
When I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
Is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame--besides I
am used to it,
I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life,
No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
We had great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes.
by Robinson Jeffers
You will remember that he had added the words "in the sea" to the final brief sentence on the copy of the poem he carried. Again, thank you for your help. Of course we will never forget the day--or your kindness and professionalism.
Sincerely,
Satisfied Client
Long Island, New York
Dear Lars,
A note to say that all went well on Saturday, and it was as nice as I expected. The captain was great and all in all we had a good trip and though a little choppy went exceedingly well. I would recommend Nature's Passage and thank you for a good experience.
Sincerely,
Elaine Smith
A Watery Repose
Originally from Obit Mag
By Joyce Gemperlein
Chris Krause hears from many people who say they want to be buried at sea, but especially remembers the e-mail from a fellow who described what he called a Viking funeral featuring a long boat set on fire offshore with his body aboard.
“I’m, like, OK! But then he never contacted me again,” says Krause wistfully.
“Even though people have cool ideas for funerals, we think their families talk them out of it,” says Krause, technology officer for Nature’s Passage, a two-year-old company that promises it can take on simple to difficult disposal tasks – from scattering cremains mailed to their Amityville, N.Y., headquarters into any ocean, to taking a party boat filled with friends, relatives and canapés to witness the scattering of the ashes of a dog who loved to play in the surf, to the sinking of the casket or weighted sailcloth shroud of an inveterate yachtsman 80 miles out at sea.
There’s no time like the present for resurrecting the ancient rite of burial at sea – what with aging hippies; a new emphasis on preplanning funerals, enabling people to get revenge on their relatives with wild disposal requests; a steady rise in cremation rates; and a loosening of adherence to religious guidelines.
The idea also goes hand-in-hand with Americans’ newfound skill at finding startling things to do with cremains. Remember the fireworks that accompanied gonzo writer Hunter Thompson’s ashes as they were fired from a cannon on a tower? Or the process that makes diamonds out of carbon recovered from human remains?
And then there’s the current onslaught of eco-this and eco-that products and conversations arguing against anyone controlling a 12-by-6-foot piece of lawn forever.
Research compiled for the Cremation Association of North America shows a rise in remains scattered on or cast into the sea. Now the ashes of nearly 60 percent of people cremated and up in or on water.
Logically, nonswimmers, people allergic to seafood and people who fear sharks or get seasick can’t abide the thought of a wet resting place. But proprietors of companies such as Nature’s Passage are gambling that there are enough environmentalists and people who love water sports or view the seas as tranquil to want to take those sentiments to the hereafter.
Lars Hedstrom, owner of Nature’s Passage, U.S. merchant marine captain and a retired Army colonel, says he has ships standing at the ready around the world to sink caskets or bodies in shrouds in the required minimum depth of 600 feet – that’s 65 to 80 miles off Long Island, a day’s trip one way by his reckoning. He says he is the only service in the country permitted to do so.
Perhaps because of the time – and so the cost -- involved, Nature’s Passage doesn’t perform very many full-body sea burials. Like most companies, most clients are cremated and scattered upon or sunk into the ocean. This can cost as little as $100.
(Members of the U.S. military, veterans and family members are eligible to be buried at sea or have their ashes strewn by the U.S. Navy, tasks wedged into other duties while ships are on the ocean.)
“In-ground burial is silly. I’m a soldier for the planet, first and foremost,” says Hedstrom, who appears to be alone in reminding AARP members of their age by offering them a 25 percent discount.
Hedstrom’s environmental angle on death is shared by many companies.
For example, George Frankel, CEO of Eternal Reefs, says his company has recently been bombarded with requests for information about becoming a dead environmental volunteer.
For between $2,500 and $6,500, Eternal Reefs incorporates the cremated remains of humans and/or their pets into the cement used to make reef balls, which are spheres with holes in them that are sunk in the ocean to encourage the growth of coral and fish populations and establish breakwaters.
So far, some 700 reef balls made with the remains of humans and pets are helping to fight the deterioration of underwater ecosystems, Frankel says. The reef ball bears the name of the loved one on a plaque.
In less fancy fashion, The Neptune Society has been cremating the deceased and scattering about half of those clients on the sea since 1973, says Steven Skiles, funeral director at the nonprofit society’s main office in Sherman Oaks, Ca.
Despite new competition, Skiles says that business has steadily climbed over the last decade, and the society now scatters about 100 parcels of ashes at sea every month.
This is not to say that The Neptune Society has been immune to looking for fresh ideas.
It has partnered with a diving attraction/art gallery/breakwater/marine research center/scrapbook/underwater cemetery that lies in the ocean 3.25 miles east of Key Biscayne, Fla.
The first phase of The Atlantic Reef Project, dubbed “A City for Eternity,” opened in February 2007. The brainchild of Gary Levine, an entrepreneur and scuba diver, it is his vision of the legendary and perhaps mythical lost city of Atlantis, described by Plato 2,000 years ago as a utopia of wealth, beauty and civilization.
The underwater city will be composed of a collection of bronze and concrete sculptures and arches that contain human ashes – or any other keepsake that a purchaser might deem worthy of saving.
Some watery gambits haven’t panned out.
A spokesperson for Gulfstream Burial at Sea of Jupiter, Fla., for example, concedes that its idea of placing the ashes of deceased inveterate travelers in motion around the globe via the swift Atlantic Ocean current hasn’t caught on despite a colorful map on the company’s website showing that loved ones would drift among the coral reefs of Belize before surfing on to the beaches of Portugal.
Of course, many people have neither the environment nor travel in mind when they entrust their relatives’ ashes to the sea.
Bob Klein’s parents, Ben and Edna, died within five months of each other. They were childhood sweethearts and had been married 73 years. They had told their son repeatedly that they wanted to be cremated, have their ashes combined and spread off a beach where they had spent every summer for more than 50 years.
On June 23, 2007, Bob Klein and friends and relatives of his parents boarded one of Hedstrom’s boats and watched as a container that dissolves was placed in Long Island Sound. Foods, drink, humorous and sentimental anecdotes about the couple were served up on that sunny but temperate day.
“It was a wonderful farewell,” says Klein, “deeply moving and done with great dignity.”
Memorials
Dorothy Elizabeth Wahlstrom Hickingbotham Wahl
Dorothy as a baby
October 27, 1922 - December 27, 2004
Dorothy loved the ocean, particularly The Great South Bay of Long Island. She spent much of her youth walking its beaches. The daughter of Carl Knut Wahlstrom of Stockholm, Sweden and Florence Cooke of Rock Ferry, England, she was a child and grandchild of seafaring people. Her father Carl was a Merchant Mariner and later a United States Coast Guardsman. Her mother Florence arrived at Ellis Island with her mother and other family. Dorothy's grandfather had been a sea captain. Dorothy's brother was in the Navy during World War II and later served as a chief rigger on the nuclear submarines at Groton, CT.
Until Dorothy was an adult she spent every year of her life within a few miles of the coast. It is fitting that at long last she goes home to the Great South Bay.
Dorothy (right) and her brother Donald (left)
Born in New York City to recent immigrants, she attended New York City's public schools and Jackson High School where excelled in math and music. She was a gifted mezzo soprano. She grew up in Yorkville and often joked that she could cook in ten languages specializing in Swedish, English, Italian and German foods. She also could make a tasty borsht.
She shared many memories with her family of life in New York City attending street fairs, listening to concerts, visiting art museums, and playing in Central Park. During the depression she worked to help support her family in a textile store and as a telephone operator.
The Wahlstroms moved to Long Island at the end of the depression residing in Roosevelt and Hempstead. Once the war began, Dorothy worked making bomb sights at the Sperry Gyroscope on Long Island. It was while she was at Sperry that she met her future husband Lt. Ray Curtis Hickingbotham, Jr. A friend wanted to attend her fiancé’s graduation ceremony from Officer Candidate School at Fort Monmouth, NJ. The only way her parents would allow her to attend was if she had a chaperone. Dorothy volunteered. At the graduation she met handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Ray, a native of McGehee, Arkansas.
A year-long, very long distance courtship followed and the two young people from distinctly different worlds were married in St. Louis, MO. on August 12, 1943.
Dorothy and Ray
The war was to often separate them and shortly after their daughter Carol's birth in 1945, Ray was sent with a VHF radio team to China. The team was stationed at what was then called Chungking.
After the war Ray studied law and worked at a New York City law firm. In 1946 Ray was recalled to active duty for the Army Security Agency where he worked as a Radio Intelligence Officer at Vint Hill Farms Station and Arlington Hall Station in northern Virginia.
In October 1947 Ray disappeared without a trace. Despite a great deal of effort by Dorothy and Carol, Ray's whereabouts are still unknown to any member of his family. The search for Ray Hickingbotham was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in 1990 and then in reruns of the popular television show.
During her retirement years Dorothy resided in Lawton, OK near the home of her daughter and son-in-law. She passed away at Comanche County Memorial Hospital from complications from pneumonia. Memorial services were held at Becker Funeral Home, Lawton, OK.
Dorothy worked in retail, design and import-export. She was a writer, active volunteer for the American Red Cross and Campfire. She was also a member of the Sons of Norway, the Vasa Lodge, and the Ellis Island Foundation. She was a lifetime Lutheran.
Dorothy, Ray and their daughter Carol
Dorothy is remembered by friends and family as a person who had overcome many obstacles including great sadness and loss. She had a wry sense of humor, loved nature, her pets, reading, music and her country. She was proud of her immigrant roots, but was a proud American. She was a devoted daughter and cared for her parents in their later years. She was a loving mother and grandmother who could even make the smallest event special.
She is survived by her daughter Carol and son-in-law Dr. Kenneth Solstad of St. Louis, MO, grandsons Ian Hickingbotham Solstad of Tulsa, OK, and Rev. Steven Solstad and his wife Courtney Thompson Solstad of Ballwin, MO, a granddaughter Anne Elisabeth Solstad of New York, New York, two great granddaughters Chloe Paige and Emma Grace Solstad of Ballwin, MO.
Dorothy's passing reunites her with her parents, her brother Donald and other loved ones including pets Blackie, Sheep, Nicky, Sandy, Flicka, Pawnee, McDuff, Rusty and Easter.
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
~ Marcel Proust
Nature's Passage Burial at Sea Service
Performing burials and 'military' memorial services at sea.
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Phone: 1-888-551-1277
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