HEARSEMANIA’S OHIO HOMECOMING

The 2025 edition “Hearsemania” held in Lima, Ohio from June 13th through 15th proved a truly epic experience that most memorably celebrated the 100th anniversary of Superior Coaches entering the hearse and ambulance building business (the company was originally founded in 1923 to manufacture bus bodies for locally-made Garford Motor Truck chassis). Five different hearse clubs officially co-hosted this de facto homecoming counting the Western Pennsylvania-based Professional Car Society Tri-State Chapter and Graveyard Mafia; the Spirit Haulers of Pittsburgh; the Cemetery Knights of Charleston, West Virginia; and the R.I.P. (Ride in Peace) Funeral & Formal Auto Society of upstate NY. Canada’s Black Widow Hearse Club was also represented by one of the banners hung from the interior balconies of the Lima Howard Johnson that served as the meet’s headquarters hotel. The fun fittingly started on Friday the 13th with tours of two historic cemeteries book-ending visits to the Allen County Museum (whose exhibits even cover the killing of Lima’s Sheriff Jess Sarber by John Dillinger’s gang during a December 12th, 1933 jailbreak) and Superior’s pre-1981 factory at 1200 East Kibby Street, after which the attendees took over S&S/Superior’s current Central Point Parkway facility for a weekend-spanning car show where plant tours were offered on Saturday. Lucky Stiff’s Post Mortem Ball served as Saturday evening’s main diversion in lieu of a staid awards banquet, turning the hotel’s central court into a lively bacchanal featuring Troupe Zephyr’s belly dancers, a creepy costume contest and a magic show where Jason Fink hung a brick from his earlobes and let audience members staple dollar bills to his stomach. In total more than 150 hearses, flower cars, limousines and ambulances from as far off as Oklahoma, Ontario, Florida and Texas took part, with this tremendous out-of town turnout augmented by all the rare and unusual pro-cars S&S/Superior owner Sean Myers has acquired with the goal of getting a company museum going. “I had to quit buying cars because I ran out of room,” our host admitted, adding he keeps another 45 cars at Southwest Professional Vehicles’ Kansas City, Kansas location. “When I bought Accubuilt eight years ago in 2017, I thought the place was void of history,” and one reason this troubled him is that the classic funeral vehicles and ambulances he so admires have enduring design features: “The extend table in my 1939 S&S Cadillac is almost identical to the one we use today — you could almost swap them out and its cathedral panels also influenced the interior design of our new Florentine flower car.”