FAYETTEVILLE — Grieving families, who sometimes must identify the bodies of relatives to authorities, will soon be going to a new coroner’s facility most other Arkansas counties don’t have.
“If we have to do a positive identification, this facility gives us a place to sit down with the family prior,” said Roger Morris, county coroner.
Morris and his staff will move equipment into the coroner’s new building in a couple weeks, if the building clears inspections next week. The new facility is on West Clydesdale Drive, close to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.
Morris operated out of a funeral home — and sometimes out his coroner’s truck — for the eight years he has been at his post.
The building’s cooler can handle storing 15 bodies. The new facility also has an area Morris or deputy coroners can clean up after responding to a call.
“It gives the guys a place where they can come and take a shower and put on some clean clothes,” Morris said. “We get wet. We get dirty. We do a lot of things other people will not do.”
Scott Berna directed a funeral home where Morris used to work. Morris worked out of the same room where funeral homes embalm bodies, he said.
“Sometimes there were real bad cases that didn’t need to be in that facility,” Morris said.
The county coroner was funded as a part-time position until 2009, though Morris will say his job has been full-time all along. He used to also work as a full-time embalmer with Berna.
Berna observed the biggest challenge Morris had in working out of a funeral home was juggling both jobs. Morris agreed.
Washington County’s coroner’s building is the third built for a county recently, said Leonard Krout, president of the Arkansas Coroner’s Association. Benton and Pulaski counties, both in central Arkansas, also have facilities.
“Some of us work out of garages with a cooler on the side, and maybe an exam room,” Krout said.
Building a coroner’s facility had been put on the back burner for several years by the county, Morris said. The growth in county population and the new full-time coroner position are major reasons the building was approved for construction, he said.
Members of the Washington County Quorum Court will tour the building during Monday’s Public Works Committee meeting. The building cost the county $274,322 to date. The Quorum Court approved $373,000 for the project earlier this year.