Funeral Services Student Channels Grief Into Her Calling

Northampton Community College (NCC) student, Samantha Tripi-McGorray, lost her mother to cancer two days before her 14th birthday. It’s been 16 years, but the memories are still fresh, in particular the way surgeries altered her mother’s face. During the funeral, Tripi-McGorray saw not the mother she knew in the hospital, but the mother with whom she knew and loved at home.  

Today, Tripi-McGorray, 30, herself a mother to two small children, has her sights set on a career in funeral services specializing in facial reconstruction, and it was, perhaps, destiny that brought her to the program at NCC.  

^{Tripi-McGorray with family}

“I had a bad experience when my mom was in the hospital.  I didn’t want to be in healthcare, but I wanted to help people,” Tripi-McGorray says about contemplating her future. In high school, she took a course called death and dying, which introduced her to funeral services.  

Circumstances can get in the way of life, and Tripi-McGorray put her dream aside to pursue a business degree. Funeral services “didn’t seem in the cards for me,” she says.  

Her husband’s job brought her to Bethlehem, and she was living a stone’s throw away from the College campus. “For fun,” she says, she looked up available courses. To her surprise, NCC had a funeral services program—a rarity in the country, even though, death is a part of life that’s inevitable. 

Tripi-McGorray took the online prerequisite courses, a life-saver, she says, because of the flexibility. Thanks to where her and her family were living, she was granted community pricing for the program, which made it accessible for her.   

The funeral services student is blown away by the program’s integrity: “It’s held to a very high standard,” she says, noting funeral services students need at least 80 percent to pass coursework. 

The professors “challenge us and expect a lot of from us. They’re preparing us for what we’re going to see [in the real world].” 

Tripi-McGorray was a little anxious before her first clinical course, which included embalming. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond to that kind of work,” she says. The work is done on cadavers. “But I was surprised at how educational it felt…Death is never easy, but I could turn it around in my mind and realize this is helping this person’s family and caring for the deceased.”  

Tripi-McGorray finds herself with like-minded individuals in her courses. Death, she acknowledges, is a field for which not everyone is cut out. But other classmates are pursuing this line of work because of their personal experiences.  

“It’s neat to learn from others' experiences, both personal and professional, and find out what has worked and what hasn’t,” she says.  

Upon her graduation, Tripi-McGorray plans to take her board exams and start a yearlong internship. Ultimately, she hopes to work in a funeral home. She’s open to the possibility of starting her own funeral home to bring peace to grieving families. 

“This is my calling,” she says. “It’s a very important thing for people to be able to see their deceased loved ones after death. It’s a healthy thing…It was so special to see my mom. I want to be able to provide that to people, that last experience to say goodbye. Providing closure to surviving family and dignity and respect to the deceased.”  

If you're interested in learning more about NCC's funeral services program, find information here.