At President Jimmy Carter's funeral: underneath the flag, a casket made in Graham - alamancenews.com

Feb 19, 2025

Flags across the U.S. are flying at half-staff today in memory of former President Jim-my Carter, who died a week ago Sunday at the age of 100.

Yet, this National Day of Mourning has been particularly poignant for one area company, which had a rather intimate role in the final arrangements of the late Commander in Chief.

Located just off of North Main Street in Graham, the Master-craft Casket Company actually made the flag-draped receptacle that has borne Carter’s body since his funeral procession set out from Plains, Georgia on Saturday.

Kelley Lamphere, Mastercraft’s general manager, recalls that she was working on the shop floor when the company was commissioned to make a casket for the nation’s 39th President.

“We got that order years and years ago,” Lamphere acknowledged in an interview Monday. “We were asked to do two caskets – one for him and another for the first lady.”

According to Bill Simpson, Master-craft’s long-time proprietor, Lamphere was the very staff member who sculpted the elegant “Lincoln Walnut” casket that now holds Jimmy Carter’s mortal remains.

But it was Simpson himself who had the signal honor of working through the details of this particular job with the genial ex-President and his devoted spouse.

“I met with President and Mrs. Carter on three occasions,” Simpson recounted in a conversation on Tuesday. “They were exactly what you see on television: humble, down-to-earth. Country folks – and I mean that as the highest compliment.”

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who passed away in 2023, aren’t the only illustrious clients who’ve entrusted their postmortem accommodations to Mastercraft. In fact, Lamphere’s spontaneous account of past orders reads like a Who’s Who of the dearly departed – from news anchor Tim Russert and actor Heath Ledger to Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Conner and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The fact that so many prominent individuals have patronized this independent mom-and-pop business is no great puzzle to Simpson.

“We’re, by design, the smallest casket company in the country,” he explained. “The big boys mass produce hundreds and hundreds of caskets a day. We attempt to finish three a day, and everything we do is handmade.”

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Simpson’s business ultimately traces its roots back to 1865 when an outfit called the Burlington Coffin Company set up shop in central Alamance County. This company remained in business until 1972, when financial pressures forced it to shutter the posh showroom it had established in Burlington.

Simpson admits that this tough break for Burlington Coffin was a stroke of good fortune for the Marsellus Casket Company. This New York-based firm had been on the lookout for a location in the Southern U.S. to augment its production facilities in the Empire State. Simpson was among those that Marsellus tapped to resurrect the moribund workshop in Burlington. In the meantime, another spinoff of Burlington Coffin began operating in Graham, creating an intercity rivalry worthy of college basketball’s “Tobacco Road.”

This era of dueling casket companies ended when Marsellus pulled out of Burlington in 1979. That same year, some of Marsellus’ former artisans teamed up with their competitors to form the Mastercraft Casket Company, which Simpson recalls had initially functioned as a democracy in which each worker was also a part-owner with a say in how the company ran. The practicalities of operating a business nevertheless favored a more traditional model, and in 1984, Mastercraft adopted a top-down structure with Simpson in the role of its chief executive.

Under Simpson’s leadership, Mastercraft went on to establish itself as the gold standard among casket manufacturers in the United States.

“We have a reputation for quality and customization in funeral services,” the company’s CEO went on to assert. “The general public doesn’t know who we are. But we’re known to every funeral director in the country, and the greatest compliment to me is that many of these funeral directors ask us to make their caskets.”Although Mastercraft may not be a household name outside the funerary profession, the company has gained some heightened visibility thanks to the patronage of the late Jimmy Carter.

Since the former President’s funeral cortege left Plains, Georgia on Saturday, the eyes of countless Americans have glimpsed the Mastercraft label as news cameras have panned to the foot of the former President’s casket. Thousands of others have filed past its handwrought exterior as Carter’s body lay in state under the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It may go without saying that the focus throughout these solemnities has been the life and legacy of the late President and not the piece of stage setting that Mastercraft has provided for the nation’s collective farewell. Carter will remain at the forefront this morning as dignitaries from around the world gather at the National Cathedral for his public funeral. The late President’s body will then be spirited back to Georgia for a private service before its eventual interment on the grounds of Carter’s family home.

That said, it would be a rare person indeed who didn’t feel some sense of pride in his or her contribution to this historic occasion. So, it has been for Kelley Lamphere whenever the news cameras have caught the glint of that Mastercraft label on the casket she fashioned all those years ago.

“It’s always great to see your work out there,” the company’s general manager affirmed, “and have people appreciate what you made.”

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