Sam Weller first forayed into the death care industry in 1984 when his public relations consultancy was asked by the National Association of Memorial Masons to raise the profile of the memorial masons in the UK. He founded and became the campaign director of the Memorial Advisory Bureau and over the past twenty years introduced a succession of initiatives in the death care industry. Sam’s effective organisation of seminars included the themes of inscriptions and designs, vandalism and public safety, profitability and product liability. He has given papers on all aspects of the death care industry throughout Europe and the USA.

Passionate about art, architecture, sculpture and beautiful and well-crafted memorials, Sam created the innovative Phoenix Awards Scheme Design Competition for burial grounds and memorials and this has enabled a succession of national and international architects and cemetery designers to contribute to increased public interest and care for burial grounds.

Sam has been the driving force behind the Association of Burial Authorities, which he founded in 1993 with its aim of fulfilling a need for a consumer-orientated organisation to co-ordinate the activities of burial grounds and provide a tangible link between them and the public. He succeeded in this, gaining on the way the respect of both central government and the Church of England. He realised that support, information, advice and guidance was required by the numerous, but often overlooked, smaller burial ground providers just as much as the larger, professional concerns. The result was a lot of practical, readily-available advice to municipal, local authority, private and parochial burial authorities on all matters relating to the disposal of the dead, from the planning of new burial grounds and the management of older ones to burial issues such as grave depths, reuse and memorial safety and he put in place an on-going programme of ‘Get Safe’ training seminars for groups of the smaller burial grounds authorities.

Sam immediately impressed the head of the Burials team, then under the auspices of the Home Office, with his deep interest in and understanding of all matters relating to burials and funerals, and was invited to become a member of the Burials and Cemeteries Advisory Group. From its inception, and still at the time he died, Sam was fully involved with the government’s Burial Law Reform programme, now managed by the Burials Team in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and made a great input to the recently published Local Government Ombudsman Special Report on Memorial safety in local authority cemeteries. The DCA regard Sam’s passing as a major loss to the burial and funeral community.

Publications include his Guide the to Management of Safety in Burial Grounds manual and The Daily Telegraph Guide to Funerals and Bereavement, a title that the books reviews editor at the Telegraph would not review as the subject was ‘too distressing’ for him to handle. As a result of the initiatives that he pursued during the last twenty years of his life, Sam Weller had a radical effect on the funeral service industry to the benefit of the bereaved, especially as far as memorial safety was concerned.

One of the kindest and most generous of individuals, Sam Weller also possessed the attributes of energy, vitality and creativity in abundance and it is for these and his kindness and generosity of spirit for which he will be most missed.

Sam Weller, founder and chairman of the Association of Burial Authorities, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (FCIPR) and Fellow of the British Association of Communicators in Business (FCB), was born in Ceylon, 4 June 1937 and died in London, 12 June 2006.

Sam's funeral took place on Wednesday 28 June 2006 at the Dissenters Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

With thanks to contributors Lionel Zetter FCIPR, Deborah Powton FCIPR, Dr Julian Litten, Dr Peter Jupp.

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