By the time firefighters arrived, the blaze had spread to the funeral home's attic. This was bad. When the newly bereaved are thinking about their loved one and eternity, they do not want to smell smoke. Those questions didn't bother Mike Baty, director of funeral operations at Blount, Curry and Roel. He sounded cheerful.
Salvage can be a touchy, secretive business.
Blount, Curry and Roel's insurance company is one of those secretive sellers. It asked not to be named in this story, but it's okay to tell you that it's a large company, one whose name you've heard on TV, and one that encounters problems like this all the time. Once, it would have turned to someone like Charlie Wilson's dad, an old-line salvage broker, the kind who traveled to factory explosions to see whether the pieces of twisted steel might be something he could sell. An old-line salvage guy might buy an insurance company's salvage outright, paying pennies on the dollar, or he might arrange to sell it for the company in exchange for half the proceeds. Charlie grew up in the business.