- A family-owned Texas company has created and donated 19 customized coffins for victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
- Trey Ganem, founder of SoulShine Industries in Edna, Texas, said the company worked over Memorial Day weekend to make the caskets.
- Ganem met with victims’ family members to get information about the designs and themes for each casket.
Victims of the Robb Elementary School massacre are being put to rest with a personal touch.
As funeral services begin for the 19 children and two teachers killed in the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, Texas, most of them are being buried in customized coffins, displaying designs reflecting their hobbies and interests in life.
A Spiderman-themed casket was made for one child and a TikTok-themed one for another. The 18 customized caskets made for child victims and one for an adult were the work of SoulShine Industries in Edna, Texas, a city about 220 miles east of Uvalde and 100 miles southwest of Houston.
Company founder and artist Trey Ganem said SoulShine is donating the 19 caskets, a measure the family-operated custom casket maker has done before for victims of the 2017 mass shootings in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in Las Vegas.
“There were so many unique caskets that we did for these families,” Ganem told NBC DFW, channel 5, a Dallas Fort Worth TV station. “We did one with a dinosaur holding a flashlight and a pickle. And when the families are telling us, we’re like, ‘Wait did you just tell me of a flashlight, dinosaur and a pickle?’ and they giggle, but for whatever reason, it was very special to them.”
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The Texas Funeral Directors Association contacted Garem on the day of the shooting about making custom caskets for the victims, he told CNN.
SoulShine was “asked to help with the caskets and talk with the families,” Ganem posted on Facebook on May 24. “This is something no family should ever have to deal with. My love and emotions are already there.”
The caskets were ordered from a manufacturer in Georgia and a friend picked them up and delivered them early Friday, Garem told Buzzfeed News. He and his son, Billy, had about 30 volunteers helping them sand, paint and apply designs to the caskets, assist in other ways, and help transport them to Uvalde. They got little sleep over the Memorial Day weekend in efforts to have all the caskets sent to Uvalde Sunday, the outlet reported.
Two Texas businesses, SOLart Designs and The Graphix House, helped with graphics and decals for each casket, Garem told CNN.
SoulShine is providing the caskets, which typically cost $3,400 to $3,800, to the families free of charge. “We’re here to try to make a hard time a little easier,” Billy Ganem, 25, told BuzzFeed News. “There’s nothing we can really ever do to make it easier, but that’s our goal: to help the families … start their grieving and their healing and just try to make something special for them.”
Trey Ganem met with victims’ family members to gather information about their likes and passions to create the designs and themes for each casket.
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He called the process “heartbreaking,” but “it starts the healing process,” Garem told KENS 5, a CBS TV station in San Antonio. “They start talking about what (the victims) loved to do and bringing up stories. They stand around our caskets for hours talking about their loved one when they come to look at it before we deliver it.”
Parents’ faces light up “when they’re telling me that their son or daughter loved baseball or softball or TikTok,” Garem told Good Morning America. “They’re remembering the good things and the fun times that they had when they were alive and here, and we incorporate all that into the caskets.”
Garem used to customize and rebuild cars, but when a close friend died, he wished the casket had reflected his friend’s life, he told the Texas County Reporter in a 2016 interview posted on YouTube.
Customized caskets became his calling and passion, he said. “It’s the most important time of a family’s life, the most tragic, the most important and we try to make it as perfect and as personal as we can,” Garem said in the video interview. “It’s a blessing to see a family with a smile on their face at a tragic time.”
During the process, “we listen to what they have to say. We cry with them. We hug each other,” he told Good Morning America. “But in the end, we make the most beautiful creation and the last resting bed for their loved ones.”
After the crew had finished the last casket, Garem told Good Morning America, “we all just looked at each other and we started crying and when you’re hugging, it was like, ‘we did it and they all turned out beautiful.’ We did 19 caskets in three and a half days. But it was just a relief.”
As the story of SoulShine’s contribution made its way onto the news and social media, people expressed appreciation for Garem and the company’s creative contributions –and sorrow that the task was required.
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.