By Thomas A. Parmalee
For decades, Ruthann Disotell has occupied a place in funeral service that rarely fits neatly into a job title.
She has been an embalmer, a funeral director, a funeral home owner, a recruiter, an aftercare specialist, a Jewish funeral home manager (even though she isn’t Jewish), a celebrant, a product inventor and now, as she gears up to turn 72, she is launching a children’s channel on YouTube called “It’s MamaRoo,” which offers lessons on grief and more. It’s MamaRoo also has a Facebook page.
Over her career, one theme has remained constant: an instinctive desire to help people feel seen when they are hurting.
“I’ve had to figure out more than once who I was in this profession,” Disotell said during a recent interview with FuneralVision. “And every time funeral service changed for me, it opened another door.”
Today, through MemoriaLeaf and her celebrant work at Celebration of a Lifetime, Disotell continues building a career unlike almost anyone else in deathcare — one shaped by resilience and evolution.
Growing Up Above a Funeral Home
Long before funeral service became a profession with growing numbers of women, Disotell was a little girl growing up above her father’s funeral home in New Jersey.
The late Harvey H. Brown Jr. operated Harvey H. Brown Funeral Homes in Moorestown and Lakehurst while raising seven children with his wife, Hazel. A former Burlington County coroner, he also served as a Lakehurst Borough councilman.
“My parents raised us kids over a funeral home with an open stairwell,” she recalled. “I don’t know how they did it.”
Yet despite her upbringing, Disotell initially wanted nothing to do with funeral service.
“The word ‘never’ has a lot to do with my story,” she said. “I remember talking to my algebra teacher in junior high and saying I would never follow in my father’s footsteps.”
Her ambitions were artistic: She enrolled at Oral Roberts University as an art major with a minor in education, convinced her future would involve creativity, not caskets.
But during college, something unexpected happened. Nearly every humanities course she encountered seemed to circle back to mortality.
“My English class was poetry, and every poem was about death,” she said. “My modern dance course talked about death. I kept thinking, ‘What is going on here?’”
Then she visited her brother, who was attending the Dallas Institute of Mortuary Science. While flipping through a Bible on his coffee table, Disotell landed on a verse from Ecclesiastes that changed her trajectory.
“It talked about the value of sorrow and the importance of thinking about death while there’s still time,” she said. “Something clicked.”
Soon afterward, the woman who once swore she would never enter funeral service enrolled in mortuary school herself.
One of Five Women in a Class of 104
Disotell ultimately transferred to the Dallas Institute, where she became one of only five women in a graduating class of 104 students.The experience, she said, was transformative.
“I was female and worse — I was a Yankee,” she joked. “Everything kind of slowed down … I talked much too fast for them, and by the time got back to New Jersey, much too slow for them.”
She graduated in 1975 and became licensed in 1977.
Now, more than 50 years later, she serves as a founding board member and president of the Pierce Mortuary Colleges Alumni Association, which was organized in 2025 and will officially launch at the upcoming National Funeral Directors Association convention.
She’s committed to helping a new generation of funeral professionals enter a dramatically different profession than the one she knew.
“Back then everyone went to campus,” she said. “Now so many students are virtual. We’re trying to figure out how to support students in a completely different environment.”
Learning Funeral Service the Hard Way
Disotell’s early years in funeral service were traditional. She worked alongside her father for five years before moving west and opening her own funeral home in New Mexico.
But her entrepreneurial success came alongside personal turmoil.
“I had a very volatile marriage,” she said. “When I left, I left everything behind” – and that included her son.
The experience became one of the defining lessons of her life.
“It speaks to the value of finding the right spouse,” she said. “A bad relationship can take you away from yourself.”
After returning to New Jersey following both her divorce and her father’s death, Disotell rebuilt her career from scratch. She worked in trade service, joined several funeral homes and eventually managed a Jewish funeral home, where she found herself immersed in unfamiliar rituals and traditions.
That experience shaped her understanding of funeral service.
“A lot of people walk through the door and don’t actually know what’s appropriate in their own heritage,” she said. “I loved helping guide them.”
It also taught her something deeper about funeral directors.
“We sometimes assume families already know what to do,” she said. “Many don’t. They need permission, guidance and reassurance.”
Her father, meanwhile, had left another lasting lesson — one rooted in compassion but sharpened by business reality.
“He was a wonderful funeral director, but not a great businessman,” she said. “He didn’t know how to ask for the money he earned.”
Disotell watched her father ultimately lose his businesses despite his talent and reputation. His Lakehurst location still exists under new ownership as the DeGraff Lakehurst Funeral Home in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
“When I opened my own place, I understood immediately that you had to collect payment properly,” she said. “That was a hard lesson he passed on to me.”
Reinvention Through Pain
For years, Disotell thrived in nearly every aspect of funeral service. Then a series of devastating car accidents changed everything.
She was rear-ended three times in a single year. Shortly after back surgery, she had another accident when another vehicle hydroplaned.
The injuries permanently altered her physical abilities, leaving her with a plate in her neck.
“I loved embalming,” she said. “I truly loved preparation work. But my body doesn’t have the durability it used to have.”
The loss devastated her.
“I grieved not being able to do that anymore,” she said. “It was hard to figure out what to do with myself now … what skills do I have that are transferrable?”
For many funeral professionals, that might have marked the end of a career. For Disotell, it became another pivot point.
“The celebrant movement came along at exactly the right time for me,” she said.
As a celebrant, Disotell discovered that the conversations she cherished most were the personal ones she had with families about their loved one.
“I love bringing them back to places of joy,” she said. “Every grieving person still has joy inside them.”
Today, she travels throughout New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and beyond conducting personalized services in funeral homes, banquet halls, taverns, backyards and veterans organizations.
While she tries to stay local, she’s presided as a celebrant at funerals as far away as St. Louis. “I’m still waiting for my destination funeral to Hawaii,” she joked.
On her celebrant page, she notes: “My thought has always been … everybody deserves to have their own show. If you can’t have it at your funeral, when do you get it? By interviewing members of the immediate family, I create a biographical service, staying true to who the person was, the life they lived and the people they touched. Most people leave feeling they learned something new about their friend or loved one.”
Whenever she can, she recommends holding a service at a funeral home, but she noted, “People want places that reflect identity … sometimes that’s a funeral home. Sometimes it’s a VFW hall where everyone can raise a glass.”
She remains a passionate advocate for funeral homes as gathering spaces.
“If it’s called a funeral home, it should feel like home,” she said. “Comfortable. Welcoming. Relaxing.”
The Leaf That Became a Movement
The idea for MemoriaLeaf began quietly — and years before she started the company in 2017, which was first called Oaktags.
While managing a Jewish funeral home, Disotell became fascinated by the tradition of mourners wearing black ribbons.
“You immediately knew who the grievers were,” she said. “It reminded people to be gentle with them.”
But she wondered why other grieving families had no similar visible symbol. The idea stayed in the back of her mind for almost a decade. Then one morning after a storm, she noticed leaves scattered across a sidewalk. One tiny leaf in particular captured her attention.
“It looked like it wanted to reach out and hug me,” she said.
She picked it up, scanned it and transformed it into a lapel pin.
Over time, something unexpected happened. People continued wearing the pins long after funerals ended.
“I started seeing them on old ladies’ coats and cowboy hats,” she said. “People didn’t want to take them off.”
That emotional connection led to the rebranding of the company as MemoriaLeaf in 2022 — complete with a heart added to the design and an accompanying poem:
Some leaves
wither and drift away;
others rip off in a storm.
This leaf rests upon my heart
To keep your memory warm.
Today, MemoriaLeaf products are used throughout the United States, Canada and even El Salvador. The company also offers a commemorative coin that comes in a red presentation box, or it can be carried as part of a keychain or in a pouch.
Disotell compares the concept to awareness ribbons that signal unseen struggles.
“Grieving people often become invisible after the funeral,” she said. “I wanted to create something that says, ‘Be kind to me. I’m carrying something heavy right now.’”
At the same time, she understands funeral homes must evaluate products carefully.
“You can absolutely do a wonderful funeral without my product,” she said. “This is an add-on. It’s something that adds another layer of value and connection.”
MemoriaLeaf offers a variety of products to honor a loved one and provide comfort to grieving families.
Why Children Understand Grief Better Than Adults
Now, Disotell is embarking on a new adventure.
Her new initiative, “MamaRoo,” is a YouTube channel designed to help children understand grief, death, friendship and emotional connection.
According to its description on YouTube: Each episode with MamaRoo will talk about the things we face as we grow up. Delivered with the kindness of Mr. Rogers and the compassion of Eugenia Doubtfire, this cozy spot will encourage children through loneliness, self-doubt, grief, and sharpen their skills in excellence, kindness, honor, respect and manners. Most episodes will include a book recommendation. If you have a book you feel is beneficial for kids, you are welcome to send a copy to: Ruthann Disotell, 24 E Main St #5021, Clinton, NJ 08809 If your child has a question for MamaRoo, it can be sent to ItsMamaRoo@yahoo.com
The concept grew from decades of observing children at funerals.
“Children have always been a difficult subject for funeral homes to navigate,” she said. “Families always ask, ‘Should kids come?’”
Her answer is almost always yes.
“If we include children in happy occasions, why wouldn’t we include them in difficult ones, too?” she said. “That’s how they become emotionally healthy adults.”
She believes adults routinely underestimate children’s emotional intelligence.
“Children get grief better than adults do,” she said.
She remembers one experience vividly: a 5-year-old girl approaching her grandmother’s casket during a visitation.
“She stood on her tiptoes, looked inside and proudly said, ‘My grandma’s an angel,’” Disotell recalled. “I thought, if only adults could see death that purely.”
Through MamaRoo, Disotell hopes to normalize conversations around grief rather than shielding children from them.
“Sometimes, feeling bad is just who we are and what we are going through — and it is normal,” she said. “So, it is nice to talk to kids and let them know when they feel bad … that can be normal — that feeling sad is OK and crying is OK.”
She called the channel “MamaRoo” because “Grandmom Ruthann is a mouthful,” she joked.
The channel will combine discussions about loss with broader conversations about friendship, manners, emotional health and connection, often paired with recommended children’s books.
“I’m not a counselor,” she emphasized. “But I can be a sounding board.”
Disotell believes deathcare professionals must become more comfortable speaking directly to younger generations.
“We spend so much time distracting children at funeral homes with toys and videos,” she said. “But we don’t always explain what’s happening in the other room.”
A Life Built on Showing Up
There is a remarkable through-line in Ruthann Disotell’s story.
Every reinvention — funeral director, entrepreneur, celebrant and grief educator — emerged from either loss or limitation.
Her father’s death. Divorce. Physical injury. Professional transitions. Estrangement from her son, who she has reconnected with now that he’s an adult.
“He married a gal with a 7-year-old son, which is ironic because he was 7 when I left him,” she said, noting that she now sees him twice a year and appreciates being back in his life.
She’s also grateful that she was able to rebuild a family life through remarriage with another former single parent and being the stepmom to several children.
None of it hardened her. If anything, it seems to have deepened her compassion.
Today, she and her husband Tom, also known as “The Marlboro Man” — whom she describes simply as “a Southern gentleman with an Arkansas drawl – and a good man who loves me” — share a blended family that includes seven grandchildren.
And after more than 50 years in funeral service, she still speaks about grief work with unmistakable wonder.
“I’m privileged that people allow me into their hearts,” she said. “They trust me with their memories and with telling the story of someone they love.”
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