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<text id=89TT0450>
<title>
Feb. 13, 1989: Freeze-Dried Memories
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Feb. 13, 1989 James Baker:The Velvet Hammer
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
AMERICAN SCENE, Page 16
Pinellas Park, Florida
Freeze-Dried Memories
</hdr><body>
<p>A service for pet owners means never having to say goodbye
</p>
<p>By Pat Jordan
</p>
<p> Jeff Weber, beaming, holds up a calico cat in the palm of
his hand. "It's almost done," he says. He hefts the cat a few
times to show how light it is. The cat lies curled in a circle
in Weber's hand, the way cats do when lounging. Its unblinking
yellow eyes are fixed for eternity on its tail. Weber gestures
with the cat toward a circular cat bed, hollowed out in the
center like a large doughnut. "The owner wanted it the way he
always remembered it," Weber says. He lowers the cat to its
bed. "See!" he says, still beaming. "A perfect fit! It's
something else, isn't it? Have I got an idea or what?"
</p>
<p> Jeff Weber, 35, an ex-furniture salesman, ex-convenience
store clerk, ex-satellite dish salesman, has spent his life
chasing his dream: "An oddball business that will make me
money, so I won't ever have to work for anyone," he says. The
pursuit of that dream has often put Weber in conflict with his
wife Mary, a barber at an old-fashioned men's barbershop.
</p>
<p> "I haven't been fond of some of Jeff's ideas," she says.
"But I kinda like this one. My customers don't, though. They
think it's yucky. They think they'll have to keep their pets in
the freezer."
</p>
<p> "Only when they first die," Jeff says. "They keep 'em in the
fridge until they ship 'em to me. Then I freeze-dry 'em before
they thaw out." Jeff gazes proudly at his model 48104 freeze-dry
chamber that he purchased for $30,000 from a company in
Minnesota. The cylindrical chamber, 4 ft. by 9 ft., is the sole
possession of Jeff's Preservation Specialties, Inc., the company
he operates out of a bare room in an industrial mall in Pinellas
Park, Fla. The hulking chamber, with a glass window at one end,
resembles those gadgets in science fiction movies that hold
spacemen in a state of suspended animation while they hurtle
toward distant galaxies light-years from earth. The chamber
doesn't work that way, however. What it does is draw the
moisture from dead organisms until they are mummified in a
perfectly preserved state.
</p>
<p> Jeff will freeze-dry just about anything. But most of his
business is in freeze-drying the deceased pets of distraught
owners. Cats. Dogs. Birds. Snakes. Lizards. Hamsters. Even
alligators. Presently, he has about 30 such pets in his chamber,
undergoing a freeze-dry process that will take from three to six
months, depending on the size of the pet. Jeff charges about
$400 to freeze-dry small pets and about $1,800 for large pets
like the two Doberman pinschers sitting perfectly still in the
softly humming chamber. The dogs are bathed in a mysterious
yellow light and surrounded by a Noah's ark menagerie of other
perfectly serene-looking pets, all of which would probably be
at one another's throats if still alive. A chipmunk, its tiny
paws held out as if to receive a nut, is standing in front of
a cat, which in turn is crouched beside one of the Dobermans.
Farther back in the chamber the second Doberman is surrounded
by some small dogs and dozens of cats, cockatiels, cockatoos,
snakes and lizards. In their freeze-dried state, all the animals
look eerily alive in their natural poses, except that they are
stock-still and their wide eyes are unblinking.
</p>
<p> "When the pets are done," Jeff says, "they'll outlast the
life of their owner. They retain natural characteristics no
taxidermist could ever duplicate. That's why owners bring them
to me. I can mold their pets into positions the owners remember
from life. One owner wanted his cat lying so he could put it on
his VCR, where the cat always lay. He moves the cat around the
house throughout the day, just like when it was alive. Another
puts out water for her freeze-dried dog. One guy had his Husky
freeze-dried in a sitting position so he could put him beside
the easy chair and pet his head while he watched television,
just like he used to."
</p>
<p> Jeff is an ordinary-looking man with blow-dried hair, a trim
mustache, and thick-lensed eyeglasses that make his eyes look
constantly startled, like those of the pets he freeze-dries.
Most of Jeff's customers are serious about their pets. They have
trouble accepting the death of their loved ones -- Jeff calls
it "denying the grieving process" -- so they bring them to him.
</p>
<p> "I started my business in Florida," he says, "because I
thought I'd make a lot of money from old people who were
attached to their pets. But they're mostly into cremation and
burial. They're afraid of new ideas. Most of my customers are
younger, in their 20s, with no kids, from the Midwest."
</p>
<p> Old people have an adverse reaction to Jeff's bizarre
service for a number of other reasons too. They prefer to bury
or cremate their pets, he thinks, because they don't want to be
reminded that their own deaths are looming closer. Jeff's
natural customers seem to be yuppie types who not only prefer to
deny death, but would also like to deny all that is unpleasant
in life. Most of those people have heard about Jeff's service
through stories done on him in newspapers from as far away as
Britain, and on television and radio shows.
</p>
<p> "Still, business hasn't been that good," Jeff says. "I've
only done about 200 freeze-dryings in two years. If business
doesn't pick up, I might have to sell my machine to a funeral
parlor. I've been negotiating with one that's thinking of using
my machines in the human sector. It has this idea for
`perpetual viewing chapels.' "
</p>
<p> Perpetual viewing chapels would contain row after row of
glass-fronted coffins, either filed away in drawers like
precious jewelry, waiting only to pulled out and viewed; or
propped up on end side by side, behind one vast glass
partition, like a gigantic human butterfly collection. Each
corpse would be freeze-dried exactly as the deceased would like
to be remembered by its living loved ones.
</p>
<p> Freeze-drying human bodies, however, would be an expensive
proposition -- about $15,000 to $18,000 apiece. Since there is
no law in Florida against freeze-drying humans, however, all it
would take for such a perpetual viewing chapel to take root, so
to speak, would be a mortuary license, a corpse, someone living
willing to shell out $15,000 to $18,000, and, of course, one of
the machines.
</p>
<p> Strangely enough, those people who have called Jeff to
inquire about freeze-drying a human being have been asking not
about a beloved, deceased relative but about themselves. They
are people who are less interested in avoiding conventional
burial and cremation than they are in striving for immortality.
</p>
<p> Jeff says he would never be freeze-dried himself, or buried
conventionally, when he dies. He prefers cremation. "I couldn't
bear to be buried in that little bitty box in the ground," he
says. Until such a distant time, however, he will continue to
pursue his dream: a money-making gimmick no one has ever
thought of before. He's already latched on to one in the far
reaches of his imagination.
</p>
<p> "Drug-sniffing dogs for the private sector," he says,
beaming. "Parents could rent 'em to sniff out their kids' rooms
to see if they're hiding drugs. Big businesses could use them to
sniff out the desks of employees they suspect are using drugs.
That would avoid all those constitutional questions about urine
testing and lie detector tests." Jeff's eyes open wide and
unblinking behind his thick-lensed glasses. "Whaddaya think?"
</p>
</body></article>
</text>