Aspiring Mortician
Sets To Work

Federal stimulus dollars were put to use this week at Howard K. Hill Funeral Home, where Akayla McKinnie learned to adorn a casket with a gold name plate.

Akayla (at left in photo), who’s 14, was one of 60 teens who started work this week as part of a job training program run by the Community Action Agency (CAA). The program, Manage Your Future, was one of several initiatives paid for by $1.5 million in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

CAA has also received another half-million dollars in stimulus money to coordinate an eight-week employment program this summer for 169 teens and 40 adults, the agency announced this week.

A rising high school sophomore, Akayla has long harbored an interest in anatomy. As a kid, she liked to catch lizards. In recent years, she got interested in mortuary science from watching forensic TV shows like CSI Miami. She wants to be a mortician. She was thrilled to land an internship at Howard K. Hill, working under a real-life undertaker for six weeks.

Akayla showed up for work Wednesday at 1287 Chapel St., where Howard Hill has built up a leading funeral parlor in six short years. On her first day, she got a look at the embalming process. On her second day, she set to work on an important task: Making a lasting label for an 82-year-old woman’s final resting place.

Orsella Cooper (at right in photo), the funeral parlor’s administrative manager, guided her through the steps to fashion a name plate for the woman’s casket. She took out a gold plaque. Cooper fished for the letters of the woman’s name. Akayla found the numbers for her year of birth — 1, 9, 2, 7 — and death — 2, 0, 1, 0. Together, they pressed them onto the plaque. Akayla added a sticky backing, so it could later be adhered to the casket.

Akayla trimmed the backing in order to fit the plaque into a gold-colored frame.

“Don’t worry,” Cooper encouraged. ​“Each one is different.”

The plaque clicked in place.

“Your first name plate!” Cooper declared, beaming at her protege.

Akayla, whose face had been serious with concentration, flashed a smile.

“Good girl,” Cooper said. She gave her another name plate — and a few words of advice.

The embalming process gets all the cinematic glory, she said, but the administrative work is the most important part of any funeral.

“The office is the nucleus, baby,” Cooper advised. ​“We’re the heart.”

“The body can look great,” she said, ​“but if you screw up their birthday, they’re always going to remember that.”

Akayla is set to continue working at Howard Hill for the next six weeks. The 60 teens in her program, ages 14 to 18, were placed at job sites according to their career aspirations, according to CAA’s Louis Hutcherson, who’s coordinating the program. Teens are shadowing serious professionals, he said, including a physical therapist, an architect, a social worker, and a veterinarian. Several landed spots at Yale. The teens get paid minimum wage, $8.25 per hour, for the 18-hour-per-week jobs..

Employers are encouraged to go beyond a normal internship and serve as a mentor to the kids, Hutcherson said.

The mentoring will build on a baseline of job readiness that the teens have been learning through a 16-week training course. The kids get paid for the hours they spend on the course, too. They started back in March, when they were still in school. They learn how to interview, write a resume, and balance a budget.

CAA partnered with NewAlliance Bank to teach the teens financial literacy. They’re required to open up an Individual Development Account and save $300. They also qualify for up to $500 in matching funds for every dollar they save for college.

The program is aimed at disadvantaged kids: To qualify, they have to be TANIF- eligible, which means their household income is 200 percent of the poverty rate. The program has a waiting list, Hutcherson said.

Now CAA will be able to serve more kids on that wait list: Last Friday, the agency learned that it has received another $500,000 in stimulus money to administer another summer job training program. The 8‑week program will provide jobs for 169 teens and 40 adults in New Haven and the lower Naugatuck Valley. CAA is coordinating the program, called the New Haven Employment Achievement Collaborative, along with five not-for-profits: Solar Youth, Youth Rights Media, Higher Heights, CT Children’s Museum, and Team Inc. in Derby.

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven put up $500,000 in matching funds to make the program possible, said CAA CEO Amos Smith (pictured). CAA has already selected the kids who will participate in the program, Smith said. They’ll be placed either at one of the five non-profits, or at another job site.

Smith said the stimulus grant represents a new beginning for his agency, which has long been dragged down by in-fighting, muddled accounting and political favor-giving.

Smith said for the first time in a decade, CAA has balanced its budget. It ended last year with a surplus, he said.

The federal grant is a sign of confidence, he said: ​“We’re being recognized for the leadership and the work that we’re allowed to bring.”

“We haven’t been leading in the last decade,” Smith said. ​“It’s a good sign that we’re beginning to lead again.”