The business also created children’s suitcases after Sandy Hook.
GRIFIN, Georgia - Funerals are underway in Uvalde, Texas after last week’s shooting at an elementary school. A piece of Georgia will be there.
Hundreds of people are gathering to pay tribute to the two teachers and 19 children who were killed at Rob Elementary School on May 24. Each suitcase for young children is customized and shipped from Cherokee Child Casket Company in Griffin, Georgia.
The family business has been in business since 1941, and Michael Mims took office in 2005. He said he had heard of the tragedy on the radio and quickly turned his grief into action.
“I immediately sent a message to my son and told him‘ all hands on deck tomorrow morning ’, which would be on Wednesday,” Mims explained.
He contacted Trey Ganem of Soulshine Industries, based in Edina, Texas, to help coordinate adaptation and transportation for each child’s final resting place. Soulshine Industries is known for adding a personal touch to coffins and honoring lives with artistic design with respect.
Mims first met Ganem at a funeral director’s trade meeting and said Ganem was reluctant to adjust the coffins for the children, calling the task “too heartbreaking.”
“After years of friendship, we sent him suitcases for years,” Mims said. “He is a very artistic, very nice gentleman,” he added, adding that there was no better person to team up with to make this devastating project a reality.
The owner of the company said that Ganem helped coordinate the details and that the Cherokee Child Casket Company managed to make 17 boxes for some of the youngest victims of the school massacre.
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Mims said he sent custom-made suitcases to Texas. Most of them are white, but he and his 25-year-old son also sent a red, blue and green suitcase and several suitcases with color shades so that Ganem could help them reflect the children who will lie in them.
“That’s his only purpose - to take suitcases like me and make them a little more enjoyable for that individual child,” Mims said of Ganem’s work. “We feel that our children deserve a beautiful (from) coffin, if not more beautiful, than our adults.
This is an idea that he consolidated after December 14, 2012, when an armed attacker opened fire on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Mims said he gave away some of the suitcases even then.
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“He is approaching in 10 years,” Mims said. “We delivered the suitcases that weekend.
Mims said that when the business first started about 81 years ago, more children died, adding that the child mortality rate was much higher decades ago.
“Due to better health care, prenatal care, immunization and safety issues, the infant mortality rate has dropped over the years - which is a good thing,” he said.
However, he added that the need for his job is greater when there are mass casualties, and over the years there are fewer and fewer entrepreneurs involved in burying children.
“I have to say that my job is hard,” he said. “But the job of an undertaker is harder than ours.
This time the coffins will not arrive empty. The Cherokee Child Casket also includes a flyer to help grieving families find community.
“Compassionate friends are an organization, an international organization, and there are branches in every state and in almost every community,” Mims said.
He explained that the leaflet is a small way to help grieving families find support from others who have suffered a similar loss.
“Mothers should not bury their children,” he said. “But it’s their time to grieve.”