A Modern-Day Mortician - Jordan Wegner brings a woman’s touch to the bereaved.

Jordan Wegner has questioned her choice of

profession only a couple of times. One was when she witnessed her first embalming; the other was when she faced moving a body, much larger than her own, alone.

“It wasn’t that I wouldn’t be able to move the body,” says Wegner, funeral director at Jandt-Fredrickson Funeral Home and Crematory in La Crosse. “But the physical demands required of this job can present challenges at times, even if I do use some tricks to do it. 

“But this is my life,” says Wegner about some of the curiosities that come with the job. “I really believe it was what I was meant to do.”

Called to comfort

When Wegner was in high school, her mother’s fiancé was killed in a car accident. “At the time I wanted to study music, but seeing the support my mom got after the accident made me start thinking seriously about how I could be a comfort to grieving people,” she says. However, it wasn’t until her family experienced a number of deaths that Wegner knew where her life was headed. “That’s when it hit me,” she says. “I remember telling my mom that being a funeral director was what I wanted to do.”

At first, Wegner’s mom was concerned that her daughter was experiencing a morbid reaction to the grieving their family had endured. “But once I shared that I felt it was more of a calling and not just a choice, she was okay with it,” says Wegner. “For this line of work, you really need to have a special place in your heart.”

A not-so-strange vocation

Until the Civil War, the care of the deceased was entrusted to women. As midwives and nurses, women were intimately familiar with life’s stages, making it natural that those who devoted a lifetime of care to loved ones should be the ones who prepared bodies for burial. 

However, due to the overwhelming number of soldiers who died far from their homes, families began to request that the bodies of their men be embalmed and transported from the battlefield.

Though initially viewed as an unorthodox practice, the realities of war made preservation acceptable, especially after the death of President Lincoln, whose body was embalmed and toured on a funeral train. 

Undertaking slowly became a commercial enterprise, leaving the family parlor empty and alienating women, who were now deemed unfit for this type of work.

Resurrection of a role

Since then, women have reemerged as funeral directors. According to Wegner, approximately 60 percent of the students in her mortuary science classes were female, a statistic supported by the National Funeral Directors Association.

“I think it’s because women are innately caring and compassionate that they are finding a suitable niche as funeral directors,” Wegner says. “We’re hard-wired to connect and build relationships, which is extremely important especially when families are asked to place their trust and faith in us.”

And for 25-year-old Wegner, it’s her care for the living as much as it is for the dead that keeps her grounded. “Yes, I’m a mortician,” she says. “But being there to help people get through the process is what matters. I like to know that they are going to be okay.”

Martha Keeffe lives and writes in La Crosse. She enjoyed visiting with

Wegner, who, contrary to stereotypes, is very personable and funny.