Florida
Cremation, green burials and celebrations of life: how Florida’s funeral norms are changing
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/4APJMXQ7OZHFBFOV4B4V66PDE4.jpg?ssl=1 "Cremation, green burials and celebrations of life: how Florida’s funeral norms are changing")
Erica Fresh was 18 the first time she attended a funeral with an open casket. She remembers looking at her cousin’s lifeless body and feeling heavy with dread.
“I had these horrible nightmares that night,” said Fresh, now a 38-year-old Dunedin resident. “I thought to myself, ‘Nope, that is not what I want to happen to me.’”
Customs around death are changing in the U.S. Just 30 years ago, traditional burials accounted for almost 80% of all end-of-life arrangements.
Today, that number has dropped to fewer than 40%, with the majority of people choosing cremation for themselves or their loved ones.
Such choices vary dramatically by state. In Mississippi, for example, some 34% of people who died last year were cremated, compared to nearly 72% in Florida. But cremation rates across the country continue to rise.
Driving the change are things like cost, transient populations and shifting religious values.
And though choosing cremation doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing a service or placement in a cemetery, research has found that about one in four American households keep cremated remains at home, with no plans for scattering or permanent memorialization.
“People decide they want to be cremated but don’t specify what they want to happen after,” said Barbara Kemmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America.
[ DIRK SHADD | Times ]
Kemmis said she’s heard stories of people contacting funeral homes with three or four urns — the ashes of loved ones who passed years before — unsure of what to do with the ashes and fearful of inheriting more.
The good news, said Kemmis, is a bevy of newer end-of-life options offer possible solutions. The key is knowing they exist.
Shifting norms
It took a while for cremation to catch on.
The country’s first crematory opened in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1876. Almost 100 years later, in 1970, only 5% of people who had died nationwide were cremated.
But between 1970 and today, that percentage has skyrocketed. Last year, according to preliminary data, the national cremation rate was about 61%.
Kemmis said cremation is often the more cost-effective option for families. As budgets tighten, she said, people gravitate toward affordability.
Last year, a full-service burial in the U.S. cost an average of around $8,300, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Direct cremation — without a service — can ring up at about $1,000.
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Cultural shifts are also at play, Kemmis said. Fewer people today are religious, with more than a fourth of adults identifying as atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated. For those who are religious, traditions around death are evolving, too. In the 1960s, for example, the Catholic church ruled that cremation was an acceptable way to handle remains so long as the ashes were kept together, opening the option to congregants.
Today, families are more spread out than in the past, Kemmis said. People move from their hometowns, then move again. That can make choosing a final resting spot more difficult than in decades prior.
Cremation provides flexibility, Kemmis said, even for those who want to be memorialized in a cemetery.
“My father is buried in New York, and I’m going to be buried in the plot with him,” said JoAnn DeFrancesco, a 62-year-old Palm Harbor resident who moved south from Queens 22 years ago. “Shipping my body there would be astronomically expensive, so being cremated and then taken there is a lot easier.”
In a place like Florida, where 165,986 people were cremated last year — the second-most of all states — it’s an especially common story because of the transient population.
And in urban areas where land is limited, Kemmis said cremation helps extend the life of cemeteries. More cemeteries are offering options for cremated remains, such as the ability to entomb ashes or scatter them at designated sites.
Doing so at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, which was expected to run out of room by the mid-2050s, has extended the life of the cemetery by 150 years.
Meeting needs
Death care professionals have had to adjust to the changing desires of clients, Kemmis said, and more crematories have opened to keep up.
Still, backlogs are extremely uncommon. The normal wait time for a cremation is about 5 to 10 days, experts said, but that can vary depending on factors like delays in legal paperwork or a body being released to the care of a funeral home.
Arin Rudd, lead funeral director of Florida Mortuary Funeral & Cremation Services in Tampa, said cremation accounts for about 90% of the services completed by her parent company, Foundation Partners, which operates more than 260 funeral homes and crematories across the country.
Rudd, a 30-year industry veteran, said the shift from burials to cremations has been accompanied by changes in attitudes around death and end-of-life commemoration, too. When she first started in the field, she said, funerals were times of mourning: people clad in black, quiet and respectful.
“Now, instead of the classic funeral with the casket, people are leaning more toward celebrations of life,” Rudd said.
Rudd said that’s meant being more creative and flexible to ensure clients’ needs are met.
An infographic from the Cremation Association’s annual report, released earlier this year, also urged workers to be adaptive.
“Consumers want to create a celebration of a life lived and will do so with or without the help of a funeral professional,” the infographic read. “Are you equipped to host families and provide the experience they want?”
A personalized touch
Through her work, Rudd has seen it all: People gathered in the parking lot, tailgate style, cracking beers with friends and family while sharing stories of their loved one before a service; funny slideshows and bubbling champagne, and the descendants’ favorite cookie being passed around the room.
At one family’s request, she placed a man in a canoe instead of a casket for the viewing — he was an avid outdoorsman who hated tight spaces. Another, she said, had his ashes propped up on the seat of his golf cart during his memorial.
As norms change, Rudd said, the options available to families have greatly expanded.
Today, there are green burials and tree pod burials, in which a body is laid to rest under a tree and acts as a source of nutrients for plant growth. Cremated remains can be made into remembrance stones and eternal reefs. DNA can be preserved.
“There’s so much more than the classic funeral,” Rudd said.
Alie Shaw, a Palm Harbor native, said she hadn’t thought much about her arrangements until she had kids a few years ago. When she learned that cremated remains could be turned into jewelry, she got excited.
Shaw said she wants her ashes to be made into a ring or a bracelet — a family heirloom that can be passed down for generations.
“My parents have burial plots, so they’re going the traditional route,” said Shaw, 32. “Just turn me into something beautiful.”
Despina Collins, 21, said she wants to be cremated and for her tattoos to be preserved and framed like art for those left behind.
“I’m a tattoo artist and I think it would be super cool,” Collins said. “I wouldn’t want a bunch of money to be spent just to put me in the ground.”
And for Fresh, the Dunedin resident who wants to be cremated, her request is simple. She said she wants her ashes to be mixed with those of her husband and her dogs, then to be scattered in the Gulf.
“I’m a Florida girl, born and raised, and all I want is to be back in the water,” Fresh said.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/4DLXMJBS6JDU3N75Q6AVJCW4H4.jpeg?w=400&resize=400,240&ssl=1 "Rubio, Scott call fast-tracking of Florida state park golf course plan ‘ridiculous’")
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/4DLXMJBS6JDU3N75Q6AVJCW4H4.jpeg?w=80&resize=80,80&ssl=1 "Rubio, Scott call fast-tracking of Florida state park golf course plan ‘ridiculous’")
Cape Coral has one. So do Fort Myers, Bonita Springs and Naples.
And now it’s Fort Myers Beach’s turn to get its very own food truck park.
Access 26 Family Food Truck Park is expected to open early next year at 2500 Estero Blvd. and Beach Access 26. On June 8, Stevens Construction broke ground on the project, which will highlight five yet-to-be-announced food trucks, all with unique menus.
And there’s more. A bar with covered seating, Manny’s Scoops ice cream and retail area will be featured in a two-story, 3,000 square-foot structure. Storage, office space, restrooms, coolers, a freezer and a dumbwaiter system for beer kegs and supplies will take up the second floor.
A 569-square-foot comfort center with restrooms, storage and three outdoor showers is also planned, along with a curbside table rail, artificial turf play area, three shade canvas structures, guest parking lot and beach access.
And it’s designed with storms and hurricanes in mind — the building’s generator and mechanical equipment will be above flood level, metal flood panels and waterproof walls will help with storm surge and flooding, and the foundation’s design lets water flow through more easily.
Southwest Florida’s expanding food truck scene
Access 26 is the latest food truck park to join Southwest Florida’s growing eatertainment scene. Slipaway Food Truck Park & Marina opened a year ago on July 4 with food trucks, a large covered central bar, live music daily and more in Cape Coral.
Bay Street Yard first brought its vibrant food and entertainment concept to downtown Fort Myers in May 2024, while Backyard Social debuted its food trucks and family-fun daytime and 21-and-up nightlife format in south Fort Myers in October 2023.
Bonita Springs welcomed Rooftop at Riverside’s two-story, two-bar (one on the rooftop) open-air venue with food trucks in January 2024.
Naples’ Celebration Park — a waterfront destination with gourmet food trucks, bar and live music — led the way, opening in November 2018.
Robyn George is a food and dining reporter for The News-Press. Connect at rhgeorge@fortmyer.gannett.com
Please support local community journalism and stay informed about Southwest Florida news by subscribing to The News-Press and Naples Daily News; download the free News-Press or Naples Daily News app, and sign up for daily briefing email newsletter, food & dining and growth & development newsletters here and here.
NASA’s next great observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center aboard the agency’s massive Pegasus barge late Sunday morning.
The spacecraft was nestled inside its protective case, which NASA nicknamed the “Chariot” in keeping with the “Roman” theme. That said, telescope is named not for the ancient empire, but instead for NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman.
“She was a key person in our exploration of space. She understood that in order to better understand the universe, you have to go in space,” said Lucas Paganini, the program executive for Roman. “That’s why she’s called the ‘Mother of Hubble’ because she made Hubble possible.”
The 43-foot-tall observatory disembarked from the barge shortly after 7 p.m. EDT (2300 UTC), following a stream of thunderstorms that delayed its departure by about an hour. The spacecraft will travel to the south end of the KSC campus to a building called the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.
There it will undergo a roughly 70-day prelaunch campaign involving checkouts, fueling, and finally the encapsulation inside the payload fairing of a Falcon Heavy rocket. The observatory is set to launch from Launch Complex 39A no earlier than August 30, moved up from the original September launch date.
“A lot of credit to this great team. They’ve been able to accommodate schedules, to accelerate to be able to launch earlier,” Paganini said. “There’s a lot of things going on at the Cape and of course the team has been amazing.”
This was the second trip to Florida for the Pegasus barge this year after it dropped off the propellant tank section of the core stage for the Artemis 3 Space Launch System rocket back in late April. While the spacecraft arrived safely, Neil Patel, the Roman mechanical engineer who traveled with the observatory, said it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing after leaving from Massachusetts.
“We do have a tight temperature tolerance on the observatory. We need to stay below 74 degrees. We have two cooling units: we had a primary and a redundant unit and they just weren’t getting the job done down here, so we had to make a stop, add additional rental units,” Patel said.
“Again, it was an amazing effort to have a team come down on an emergency basis. Basically, a MacGyver crew came in and we added additional units and those units did maintain the temperature quite well.”
Roman is designed to operate near a fixed point in space called Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million km away from the Earth on the side opposite the Sun. It’s designed to operate there for a minimum of five years, but Paganini said with the propellant onboard, it will likely last for 10 years or more.
The telescope is+ equipped with a 300 megapixel camera called the Wide Field Instrument, which features 18 detectors. It was developed by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace).
“It’s going to allow us to observe at least 100 times wider field of view than what we can do with Hubble. Same resolution, but a wider area, 1000 times faster,” Paganini said. “So what takes Roman a year to observe, it would take Hubble thousands of years. So it’s definitely much more efficient.”
The observatory also features a chronograph instrument, developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will allow Roman to observe the faint light of exoplanets near their stars.
Paganini said Roman will also help scientists better understand dark matter and dark energy, the combination of which he calls the “dark universe”.
“100 years ago, we discovered that the universe was expanding. 25 years ago, we discovered that it was expanding at an accelerated pace and that’s what led to a Nobel Prize,” Paganini said. “What we don’t quite know yet is if that acceleration is changing in ways. We don’t know if it’s actually dark energy, what is producing it, or is it simply that we don’t understand gravity at all.
“So eventually, we’ll see if the laws of physics that we use these days are the right ones for what we are observing. But at the end is, we’re trying to understand a very human question, which is where do we come from and where are wea heading in this universe that is our neighborhood?”
Uncrowded towns on Florida’s Emerald Coast are hard to come by—unless you know where to look. With kids off from school, summertime brings the added challenge of even larger crowds. Nonetheless, you can still find underrated, less-frequented vacation spots in Florida that are worth considering. In Blue Mountain Beach, a quiet morning might look like paddling past lily pads on a coastal dune. The endless stretches of sand and pier views in Navarre Beach will inevitably make you want to slow down to take a daily breather. Overshadowed, yet no less striking, each of the towns in this article promises crowd-free summer fun.
Blue Mountain Beach
Blue Mountain Beach is a best-kept secret of Florida’s Scenic Highway 30A. Locals say the community got its name from sailors who mistook the flower-covered dunes for mountains. Today, these 65-foot sandy hills remain a stunning centerpiece of Blue Mountain Beach. Still, even in the summertime, a residential atmosphere keeps this towering beach town laid-back and uncrowded.
Blue Mountain Regional Beach Access features spectacular access to the Emerald Coast. Nearby, Red Fish Taco pairs authentic Mexican food with refreshing margaritas after your time in the sand. For more outdoor fun with even smaller crowds, the town also has 3 rare coastal dune lakes. Draper, Little Redfish, and Big Redfish Lake are all epic recreation spots for kayaking, paddleboarding, and fishing.
Navarre Beach
Santa Rosa Island is home to Navarre Beach, “Florida’s Most Relaxing Place.” Much like Blue Mountain Beach, this Emerald Coast suburb is a dream for introverted beachgoers. With zoning laws in place to prevent overdevelopment, Navarre Beach is less commercialized and less crowded than other resort towns.
Summer vacationers can snorkel and dive the artificial reefs at Navarre Beach Marine Park. Back above water, the 1,500-foot Navarre Beach Fishing Pier is a sweet spot for ocean views and angling. Capping its entrance, Windjammers on the Pier is a family-friendly restaurant and bar serving delicious seafood and tropical cocktails. On either side of this sightseeing haven, sunseekers can also sink their toes into the town’s white sands.
Gulf Breeze
Gulf Breeze is an ideal town for zen vacationers and families. Since it is mainly a suburb and retirement haven, life here moves at a slower pace. Opposite Gulf Breeze, Pensacola Beach is a resort-style town and tourist magnet. By comparison, Gulf Breeze is the laid-back neighbor you visit if you want to relax.
Gulf Breeze beaches are not only less crowded, but naturally calmer. At the Naval Live Oaks Nature Preserve, the shores are shielded by Santa Rosa Island. This natural buffer accounts for the calm waters that families and novice swimmers love. The same applies to Deadman’s Island, a gorgeous place to kayak, snorkel, and sunbathe on Pensacola Bay. Afterward, the Gulf Breeze Zoo is a hit with all ages. Nearby, Florida seafood is a treat at Dave’s Oyster Bar and Grill.
Inlet Beach
Back on Florida’s Scenic Highway 30A, Inlet Beach is another underrated beach town. Since the community is mainly residential, many will drive straight through to Rosemary Beach, a busier town with resort amenities. But if you avoid judging a book by its cover, this suburban seaside has a ton to offer, including the area’s largest public beach access.
The public shores in Inlet Beach have 3 boardwalks and plenty of sand to go around. Offshore, snorkelers and divers can also explore a unique fish-shaped artificial reef rich with marine life. On the eastern shore of Inlet Beach, Camp Helen State Park has even more to offer. Home to Gulf beaches and Lake Powell, the park is a serene place to swim, sunbathe, and beachcomb.
Niceville
Niceville is a Choctawhatchee Bay town with striking waterfronts. With no beaches of its own, it is often eclipsed by nearby Destin; even so, this solitude is far from a flaw. The little bay town is one of the best places in the Sunshine State to experience Old Florida at its most authentic.
Its diverse shores anchor Niceville’s best sites. Turkey Creek Park is a peaceful place to cool off in the summer, whether swimming, canoeing, or walking the boardwalk. Elsewhere, the Rocky Bayou is a centerpiece of Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park. Boating and hiking are a few of the best pastimes here, crowned with breathtaking Panhandle sunsets. Alternatively, head to The Locals Eatery for Boggy Bayou sunsets and award-winning food.
Freeport
30 minutes east of Niceville, Freeport is another laid-back place to cool down in the summer. Bordering Choctawhatchee Bay, nature lovers prefer the town for its unspoiled outdoors and unfussy attractions. You won’t find high-rise resorts or rowdy boardwalks here, which is just how Freeport locals like it.
Harry A. Laird Park is a great first stop for a boardwalk stroll along Four Mile Creek. Elsewhere, Grady Brown Park hugs the northern edge of Choctawhatchee Bay. The wide, scenic green space features picnic tables, a kayak launch, fishing piers, and a bayside beach. Just north of there, hungry parkgoers can find authentic bites at Mi Alma Taqueria Food Truck.
Mexico Beach
Mexico Beach flies under the radar despite its postcard shores. Located along Florida’s Gulf Coast Scenic Drive, the town’s sugar sands and emerald waters embody the best of the Emerald Coast. To the surprise of many, Mexico Beach lacks the congestion of other towns on this route—but you won’t find beachgoers complaining.
Mexico Beach is home to nearly 5 miles of beachfront and plenty of public access points. The shores stand out for their stark white color, attributed to quartz-crystal sands from the Appalachian Mountains. There are also plenty of restaurants within walking distance of the waterfront. At Caribbean Coffee & Cafe, you can recharge with sandwiches and island-inspired brews. Further east, Killer Seafood serves fresh and flavorful favorites like shrimp po’ boys and tuna tacos.
Seagrove Beach
Coastal bliss extends to Seagrove Beach, another uncrowded stop on Highway 30A. Since this seaside suburb is mainly residential, it is less well known to vacationers. Even so, the public beaches and seafood restaurants in Seagrove Beach are well worth the stop.
As of 2026, the new Seagrove Regional Beach Access is open with a 100-foot public beachfront. Nearly 9 years in the making, this addition makes Seagrove Beach more accessible than ever. Once you’ve had your fill of fun in the sand, Seagrove’s commercial sites are another must. The Seagrove Village Market has thrived here since 1949, serving as both a seafood restaurant and a souvenir shop. Right next door, Surfing Deer is a more upscale seafood restaurant with patio dining.
Explore Florida’s Uncrowded Emerald Coast
Summer heightens tourist congestion on most of the Emerald Coast. But if your heart is set on this Panhandle stretch, these 8 uncrowded towns are the exception. In Blue Mountain Beach, Gulf-facing shores are sprawling and spacious, while the town’s coastal dune lakes are even less crowded. In Freeport, Choctawhatchee Bay views are never obstructed at Grady Brown Park. All in all, these 8 Emerald Coast towns prove obscurity has a silver lining.
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