Ruthann Disotell, of White Township, was born and raised in New Jersey. Ruthann’s father owned two funeral homes, one in Moorestown, the other in Lakehurst.

“We lived over Dad’s funeral homes. When schoolmates found out where I lived, their usual response was, ‘Aren’t you scared?’ I learned long ago, the only people who have ever hurt me were living!”

Living upstairs from the place in Lakehurst, she and her five siblings learned about being quiet when there were sad people downstairs. They learned empathy and respect. After attending a funeral at another location, she understood why people thought the dead looked creepy, noting “At our house, they were always beautiful.”

Growing up, she insisted she would never go into her father’s business. “Of course, I’ve since learned to never say never. I invested five years between schooling and apprenticeship,” she said.

After high school, Ruthann studied art in college with a focus on portraiture, and a minor in education. Her second semester fine arts curriculum took an unexpected turn. All subject areas pointed to “death” in one way or another. And then a Bible passage, concluding with “…Yes, a wise man thinks much of death, while the fool thinks only of having a good time now,” serendipitously caught her attention and steered her into funeral service.

Ruthann remarked, “Since then, I’ve learned much about why I am in this field. It’s home to me. I love the grieving family and feel privileged to carry their heart for them.”

She graduated from the Dallas Institute of Mortuary Science (now Dallas Institute of Funeral Service) in 1975, one of only five women in a class of 104 students, after which she experienced many challenges.

Forty-five years later, she speaks of the advances over that time: “There is more cremation than when I started. I think that has more to do with how transient we are, making it difficult to commit to a burial plot. Fortunately, a full-service funeral is available whether the final destination is a cemetery or crematory.”

Other changes? Professional licenses assure they are fully compensated for their skillsets; mortuary schools are now over 50 percent female; and there are more regulations and paperwork than ever before, she says.

After a series of automobile accidents and spinal surgeries, Ruthann needed to cut back her regular hours at the funeral home, especially the heavy lifting.

In the funeral home, she couldn’t just “turn her switch off,” so she became a Life Celebrant. Life celebrant or funeral celebrant, it’s a matter of semantics. Ruthann explained, “I celebrate the person’s life, not the funeral, so I created the title life celebrant to feel authentic about my work.”

Ruthann’s college studies as a portrait artist served her well during her years embalming, enabling her to capture the essence of a person. Now as a celebrant, she paints people with her words and creates a service to “look” like them.

It is possible to have a compelling funeral either with a full Gospel or no religious markers at all. Ruthann said thoughtfully, “I feel it disrespectful to rewrite someone’s life after they die. I want the service to be unique to who they were and how people remembered them. If they had a faith, I’m happy to include it. There are a lot of people with strong convictions, but do not attend services regularly. I tend to their grief without adding guilt on top of it. My goal is for everyone to walk away with what they need.”

She interviews every immediate family member, including children, and allows each person to talk as long as needed, so she can tell a personal life story about who died and why their life mattered. She wants to be authentic to who that person is, staying true to the life they lived and the people they touched.

Ruthann’s service, Celebration of a Lifetime, reflects that life. Everyone’s story is unique, so the words should be freshly written. “My ceremonies are about someone special to you. There is no one else like them, so the service must be unique and personal.” Ruthann’s philosophy is, “Everybody deserves their own show. If you can’t have it at your funeral, when do you get it?”

Ruthann was honored to be the first celebrant to officiate the Service of Remembrance for the National Funeral Directors Association Convention in Boston in 2009. “I was overjoyed to be a part of the evolution from a quiet Sunday afternoon religious service to a widely attended Tuesday morning ceremony welcoming all faiths,” she said. She will be addressing the national convention again this October, as a continuing education lecturer on the topic of the unique challenges of the grieving mortician.

She can’t imagine her life without funeral service. Stepping down from being an active funeral director after 44 years, Ruthann has redirected her efforts to educating others on funeral-related subjects. She has been travelling to offer lectures to various groups on funeral planning. She said, “Not being affiliated with a funeral home allows me to share information and sound advice without anyone feeling there’s something in it for me. I want to take the fear out of talking about a subject that will touch everybody at some time.” 

She serves funeral directors and families in a new way as founder of Oaktags, little oak leaf lapel pins that help identify family members who are remembering the one “who fell from the family tree” at a visitation or funeral service.

Traditions have changed over time. Years ago, ubiquitous black veils and armbands identified the mourners in a funeral home, though a Jewish funeral service still utilizes the kriah, a black ribbon with a tear in it, symbolizing the tear in their heart. It identifies the bloodline and is worn in the funeral home to identify the family.

Ruthann thought, “It would be nice if every family was identified somehow. It should have no religious connotation, no ethnic identity and be something a woman or a man would be comfortable wearing.” The budding Oaktag would soon bloom.

After 12 years of searching for a symbol, Ruthann was walking by a funeral home in Lambertville, New Jersey. The street was lined with pin oak trees, their small leaves scattered all over the sidewalk after an overnight storm. She began picking them up and exclaimed, “One caught my eye. It looked like a hug!”

The family tree and the mighty oak were a perfect fit. The Oaktag is worn in memory of the one who fell from the family tree – a leaf has fallen, but the tree remembers.

She sells to funeral homes across the country, who share them with grieving families. Some pin the next of kin, some the whole family, including the deceased, some do the whole “tribe.” They’re a welcome gift to local bereavement groups. Some people wear their pins every day, others just on family occasions or special outings.

While creating Oaktag memorial pins, choosing the name and description proved harrowing. Ruthann described the process. “I enjoy reusing words and phrases for other purposes. Just as with the phrase that expressed an extravagant event, Celebration of a Lifetime is also an endearing eulogy to a life well-lived. Oaktag is a sturdy paper from which file folders are made. But in my context, we are tagging the members of the mighty oak.”

Describing it for trademark purposes was daunting. It began as a “pin for identification.” Later, Ruthann recalled, “we understood the pin was more about the deceased than the one who wears it. It’s a memorial pin and a grieving tool.” Each pin includes a short, but touching, poem.

When the time came to produce the little antique gold-finished leaves of legacy, Ruthann laughed, “God bless the internet. I was able to shop for a manufacturer and send them a scan of the perfect leaf I’d found.”

She hopes the Oaktag pin will become as distinctive as other well-known symbols, like the pink ribbon or the black kriah ribbon. When you see someone wearing an Oaktag, ask “who is your leaf?” Let them say that person’s name aloud.

Ruthann has enjoyed a remarkable career in all facets of funeral service and has gladly devoted her time to designing environments, services, and products for the care and comfort of the grieving. She is strongly connected as a resource for funeral homes who need a celebrant. Her work with Oaktags is on the rise, with inquiries from other countries. Both of her businesses, Celebration of a Lifetime and Oaktags LLC are home-based.

She advised young funeral professionals to keep learning. They’re both student and teacher, and people follow their lead. Speaking from experience, she warned, “Enjoy this wonderful profession. People may not thank you often, some may even be angry, but you are valuable and appreciated.”

Since leaving the home above her father’s funeral home, she has lived “all over the state, enjoying the different settings that no one would ever guess were New Jersey.”

In 2014, Ruthann and her husband, Tommy, moved into a “bucolic mountainside” abode in White Township, where she lives her life with humor, passion, and goodwill, alongside deer, foxes, bear, frogs, a blue heron, wild turkeys, and the occasional eagle.

She has built her life around service, not only as a funeral director and embalmer, life celebrant, and creator of the Oaktag memorial pin. She’s also an advocate for victims of domestic violence, developing a new level of appreciation for people who stay in tough relationships, understanding that sometimes leaving is scarier.

She is a founding Board Member of BW NICE (Business Women Networking Involving Charity & Education) Inc., which now has chapters in not only Warren County, but most of New Jersey and several other states. In 2010, she emceed the first Red Shoe, the organization’s major fundraiser to support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It was there she also served as the first Impact Speaker, sharing her journey and the challenges she faced in a relationship of control and violence. In 2019, BW NICE named her Warren County Businesswoman of the Year.

She serves as fundraising co-chair for the local Habitat for Humanity and has helped to raise over $150,000 to build homes in Warren County. This year, Habitat’s Beams & Dreams event will take place June 10-14 at www.warrenhabitat.org.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, Ruthann has also joined networking groups and become involved with some local support groups who help grieving families. She said, “I enjoy sharing my faith with those who need encouragement.”

www.oaktags.com
www.celebrationofalifetime.com
office: 908-475-1711
cell: 908-892-5827