NEWS AND EVENTS

By Todd C. Frankel
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/09/2008

Clayton — At 10 a.m. on the nose, a dozen people squeezed into two elevators. It was a race to the fifth floor and an unusual bargain sale.

Everything on the top floors of this upscale office building was to be sold on Tuesday. These avid shoppers would not find a depressing mix of junky computer chairs and cubicle desks. This was top-notch stuff. The spoils of success for a once high-flying firm. Rich leather office chairs. Solid wood desks. Detailed armoires. Plush custom-made rugs of hunter greens and deep reds. Framed oil paintings of little children and hunting dogs. Flat-screen TVs.

'Kind of reminds me of an old Victorian lodge,' said one shopper, Mishaal Taqui, while surveying the goods.

This well-appointed space and its eclectic furnishings belonged to Forever Enterprises, a company once celebrated for its ambition to become the Microsoft of death care. The office stylings reflected those dreams.

'Opulence at its best,' said one browser in disgusted wonder.

But the enterprise crashed a few months ago. The firm and its affiliated companies — run by the secretive Cassity family trust of St. Louis — had dabbled in funeral homes, cemeteries and, most lucratively and risky, prepaid funeral plans. In April, insurance regulators seized control of the prepaid funerals seller and two related insurance companies.

'Hazardous financial condition,' they said.

The FBI is interested. Funeral homes across the nation wonder if they will be forced to pay for tens of thousands of funerals. Authorities are tracing the various fates of $500 million in prepaid funeral funds.

So everything must go.

The day's sales would not make the slightest dent in the balance sheet. The total appraised value was less than $50,000. But there was a symbolic value here — a chance to dispose of what some considered ill-gotten gains.

The shoppers had differing reasons for being here. Some were curious, like the schoolteacher with the summer off who was drawn by the newspaper ad promising a 'TAG SALE!!!' Others were unlikely bargain hunters — attorneys in dark suits and professionals in the khaki-slacked business casual looking to outfit offices of their own. Some showed up for just a taste of revenge — these were the funeral directors who had trusted Cassity-owned National Prearranged Services to handle their prepaid accounts.

'National Prearranged Furniture,' one shopper joked.

They moved fast, dashing down hallways and into offices so pristine that, except for the absence of papers, it looked like the staff could return to work any moment. The shoppers ignored the framed newspaper and magazine articles celebrating Forever Enterprises' successes. They bee-lined for the big-ticket items.

'I got a $3,000 desk for $200,' one man said excitedly to the woman next to him. She had been busy, too: One of her arms was covered in white price stickers she had peeled off furniture, claiming them as her own.

The man on a shopping spree was Tad Edwards, a 52-year-old descendent of A.G. Edwards, whose eponymous brokerage was bought by Wachovia Corp. last year. He recently left the family company to open his own brokerage — in the same Heritage Building where the sale was being held.

The lure of a short move attracted lawyer Mike Cohan, too. He snagged two 24-inch computer monitors for $250 each, half what he expected to pay, and a $150 chest of drawers for his office in the building's basement.

'I was drooling over this desk,' Cohan said, referring to a wide executive's tableau, 'but I was thinking there was no way it'll fit into my office.'

Cohan walked into a sprawling office with a stunning view of Shaw Park across the street. Sitting beneath a window was an antique wicker casket — so unique that appraisers failed to come up with a price for it. This office was for J. Douglas Cassity. He is the man widely credited with turning Forever into a funeral-industry juggernaut, but whose criminal history meant his name appeared on nothing. His son, Brent Cassity, was company president, yet occupied a smaller office next door.

Cohan walked past several pastoral oil paintings.

'They sure were into horses,' he said.

The sale had been ordered by a special receiver appointed by regulators in Texas, where the two Forever-related insurance companies were technically based. But most of the work had occurred in Clayton.

On the sixth floor, a 28-foot conference table was offered at $1,000. A steal. But no takers. Walking nearby was Cindy Buchholz, funeral director at Buchholz Math Hermann Mortuaries, which holds about $1 million in prepaid funeral policies with NPS. They are waiting to see if they will ever be paid.

She was not shopping so much as gawking.

'I came to see where all the money went,' she said.

Her relatives Jim and Tom Buchholz, both mortuary executives, showed up minutes later.

Jim Buchholz found a blown-up photo of an adult Brent Cassity posing with Santa Claus. It struck him as the perfect memento for what has become a nightmare for him and hundreds of other funeral homes.

But there was no price sticker.

'What's the price on this?' Jim Buchholz asked the man running the sale for regulators.

No price tag meant he could bid any price.

Jim Buchholz wrote his bid down on a sheet of yellow paper and handed it off.

It was for 25 cents. He felt that was a fair price.

But considering everything, he felt he should have gotten it for free.

tfrankel@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8110