By Bob Thompson, Mason, Ohio

Orval O. Burgess (1882-1969), a native of Petroleum, Indiana (near Bluffton), operated a licensed funeral home in Bowling Green from 1924 until he died in 1969. The funeral home began operation as the Burgess & Walker Funeral Home. It was most noted as being the firm that embalmed and transported the body of Floyd Collins after the 1925 Sand Cave entrapment.
Burgess’ first job came when he was 11 years old as an assistant driver of a “nitroglycerin wagon.” He worked only for a week or so, and the oil-well crew that replaced them was on their way to “shoot” a well. They had 200 quarts of glycerin in the wagon, and while crossing a creek, a wheel dropped into a hole in the solid rock bottom of the creek bed, “jarring” the wagon to such an extent that it ignited the glycerin. Nothing was ever found of the driver or the horses.
Burgess worked in the oil business in Indiana for 11 years before moving to Bowling Green in 1920. He already was a registered embalmer and undertaker for about 25 years in other states when he and R.E. Walker opened the Burgess & Walker Funeral Home on the corner of Main and Center streets on Sept. 6, 1924. Burgess was granted an embalming license in Kentucky in 1923.
After an unsuccessful attempt to bring Collins’ body out of Sand Cave in February 1925, at the request of Floyd’s brother, Homer, another attempt was made in April by William H. Hunt, a mining engineer from Central City, and his six-man work crew. Following the successful recovery of the body, the remains were taken to the J.T. Gerald’s Funeral Home in Cave City by the Burgess & Walker funeral car. The hearse left Bowling Green on April 23 at 5 a.m. and arrived at 9 a.m. to pick up the body.
Once Collins’ body arrived at the Gerald’s Funeral Home, it was taken inside to be embalmed by Burgess. According to Burgess, Floyd’s body was in bad shape, and embalming would be difficult. Restoration on the body included the replacement of the destroyed facial features—the eyes, nose and mouth. The body showed bruises on the left leg and a dislocated right shoulder. Cave crickets had eaten away parts of Collins’ face and ears, which had to be replaced with plaster.
Burgess had to embalm each limb and then the trunk separately. Collins’ hair, scraped from the front of the head, was replaced with hair from the back. The entire procedure took two days.
Collins’ funeral took place on April 26 at the Collins homestead on Flint Ridge. His body was transported to the homestead from the funeral home at Cave City by the Burgess & Walker funeral car. Burgess played a part in the funeral service as a pallbearer and stood at the rear of the casket.
Later, after Crystal Cave (Collins’ discovery) was sold and Collins’ remains were displayed in a casket within the cave, the body was stolen and thrown over the cliff at Pike Spring. After the remains were recovered, Burgess again had to “repair” Collins’ body. He mentioned that the fall broke off one of Collins’ legs and required some doing to get him patched back together.
Over the years, Burgess had several partners that resulted in funeral home name changes. These included a partnership with Otis C. Moody that lasted from 1954-67. The firm had several Bowling Green locations: 240 East Main Street, 826 State Street, 534 East Main Street and 512 East 12th Street. Newspaper advertisements for the firm mentioned amenities such as 24-hour service, air-conditioned and oxygen-equipped ambulance service, friendly courteous staff, personal direction, and dignified and thoughtful service. Shortly after Burgess’ death in 1969, the funeral home closed.
Brownsville historian Norman Warnell remembered seeing Burgess when he worked part time for the funeral home. “In 1965, when I enrolled at WKU [Western Kentucky University] in Bowling Green, Mr. Burgess had just sold the Burgess-Moody Funeral Home to Bert Gravil [July 1964]. Mr. Gravil’s brother and I graduated together from high school, and he let us and two other workers board in an apartment at the funeral home. I assisted in digging graves and running an ambulance. Mr. Burgess came up to the funeral home every day, and we became friends. One day, he related to me the story of Floyd Collins and how he embalmed him. He had a trunk with a lot of photographs, which were later given to Pat Thomas, another boy who worked part time at the funeral home. I never remember seeing Mr. Burgess without him wearing a suit and tie.”
Thomas became a Bowling Green police polygraph examiner. After Burgess died, his daughter gave Thomas a set of glass slides Burgess had bought that photographically detailed the events surrounding Collins’ death. Many of these slides were taken by photographer Wade Highbaugh, who was employed by William H. Hunt to take pictures of the recovery of the body in April 1925. These slides were the centerpiece of a personal collection of Collins memorabilia that Thomas occasionally presented to groups and clubs in the region before he passed away in 2016. Many of the original Highbaugh glass slides of the Collins event can be found today at the National Cave Museum at Diamond Caverns in Park City.
Prints of the glass slides can be seen in the 2017 book The Floyd Collins Tragedy at Sand Cave by John Benton, Bob Thompson and Bill Napper.