Dan Purkapile stands next to a casket he built from cherry wood that is a replica of one he made out of walnut for his mother. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
Dan Purkapile of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton was looking for the next step in his woodworking career in 2020. His mother was dying of cancer at the time, and that sparked an idea: casket making.
For the 34-year-old former seminarian, it was a simple choice, a natural progression. After he traded theology books at The St. Paul Seminary for power tools, he watched his mother, Mary, battle colon cancer for five years. As she reached the final stage in summer 2020, he began contemplating the idea of making caskets. He decided hers would be the first.
By that time, he had honed his woodworking craft to the point of feeling confident he could create a fitting burial container for his mother. And, he had honed his spiritual life to the point of knowing what Scripture verses and images to engrave on the walnut boards he had hand-picked for this farewell gift. He knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to honor his mother, with whom he had built a gradual bond during his adult years.
“There’s a lot of things we shared in common,” said Purkapile, who was raised in Marshfield, Wisconsin. “She was the organist at our parish, and I got into music at a fairly young age. So, I was in musicals in high school, and in the choir, and I played guitar. Music was definitely the main thing that we bonded over, and I think that was a really big part of our relationship.”
Up until that time, he primarily had been making cabinets, the mainstay of his New Brighton business, Capstone Woodworking, which he started in 2016. But, his head was filled with artistic architectural designs he had seen firsthand while enrolled in the University of St. Thomas Catholic Studies Rome program during his undergraduate years at UST and St. John Vianney College Seminary. He also had been reflecting on Catholic and Christian theology about the meaning of burial practices.
It added up to a project in which he invested heart, soul and elbow grease.
“It was by far the most challenging and emotional project I’ve ever worked on,” he said. “Just thinking about your own mortality and thinking about my mom’s situation — just the struggle to deal with death, especially with somebody that you care a lot about.”
On top of that, he and his wife, Robyn, were expecting their second child, and they weren’t certain if Mary would live long enough to see their daughter, Eliza, now 1. Fortunately, Mary lived two more weeks after Eliza was born, and got to see and hold her.
Purkapile struggled with how to talk to his mother about making the casket, not knowing how she would react, especially being so close to the end of her life. But, he was strongly encouraged in the project by his father, and he eventually told his mother and even showed her the blueprints, though she never got to see the finished casket.
For him, the most meaningful part was the artwork he engraved on the sides and the lid with a special machine in his shop called a CNC router. He placed lambs on the sides, and a Scripture verse on top along with an image of Jesus. On the inside of the lid are the words of Psalm 23, which begin: “The Lord is my Shepherd … .” These types of words and images are what he had in mind when he first contemplated making caskets.
“I thought introducing artwork into caskets would be a beautiful way of honoring the person that has passed,” he said, “but also as a means of evangelization of the family members, to really bring home our mortality and the questions of eternal life.”
It took about a week for Purkapile to complete his mother’s casket, which he began about two months before she died. He also made an exact duplicate out of cherry wood that he hopes to sell to someone looking for a similar Catholic-themed burial container. Beyond that, he is readying himself for more casket orders in the coming years, with plans for custom building rather than offering pre-made caskets.
He also recognizes that an increasing number of people are choosing cremation, which makes urns another possible avenue for his woodworking skills. Another idea is caskets for infants, which he has crafted a few times and thinks could be a possibility in the future. If this part of his business grows, he hopes to find ways to offer charitable donations such as infant caskets.
Regardless of how casket making goes in the days and years ahead, Purkapile will always treasure the opportunity he had to carry out one of the seven corporal works of mercy for his mother.
“It was an honor to be able to do that for my mom,” he said. “It was a good experience for me, going through that process of building a casket. … For men, especially, it’s something that resonates with us. When we see a need, we want to provide, we want to do what we can. For me, that was a way that I could give something to, really, my whole family.”
He just hopes for one small thing in return, “that hopefully, she would see me making that casket as a gift of love.”
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