Matthew Daneman

Staff writer

Eastman Kodak Co.'s Chapter 11 bankruptcy cost its retirees company-provided health-care benefits and life insurance.

But on the upside, they can get cheaper funerals or discount tickets to Mary Poppins.

A pair of Monroe County funeral homes this week rolled out an offer to former Kodakers: Start financially planning and pre-paying for your funeral now and receive a free casket.

"We've been hearing from people, they're having a tough time with the financial part of funerals because they'd always anticipated their life insurance from Kodak would be the vehicle to pay for the funeral," said David Perotto, co-owner of Bartolomeo & Perotto Funeral Home and Walker Brothers Funeral Home. "Growing up in this community my whole life, it's painful for a Rochesterian to watch. It's not a small thing."

The two funeral homes are the latest in a string of businesses that have turned their eyes particularly on Kodak retirees. Around the time Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2012, a variety of businesses approached Kodak retiree group EKRA Ltd. about special discounts or offers aimed at that population, said EKRA President Art Roberts.

And after Kodak announced that fall it was eliminating all spending on retiree health care, numerous insurers hosted seminars locally about signing up for coverage.

Rochester Association for the Performing Arts CEO Jim Vollerstsen said the dance and theater group is creating a Kodak retiree night, with 10 percent ticket discount, to opening nights of its summer Broadway series at the Kodak Center for the Performing Arts. RAPA last year took over operation of Kodak's massive, 1,964-seat Theater on the Ridge venue, renaming it the Kodak Center.

An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Kodak retirees live in the Rochester area, Roberts said. And the company's once-massive Kodak Park and Elmgrove operations mean that today there is likely a particularly high concentration of them living in Greece and in the Gates/Spencerport area, he said.

What Spencerport's Walker Brothers and Greece's Bartolomeo & Perotto are offering is a 20-gauge steel casket or the equivalent — "It's not the most basic, but it's entry level," Perotto said. Today, such a casket goes for roughly $2,200, he said. So a retired Kodaker who starts planning and pre-paying a funeral now will eventually receive that casket free, or the future equivalent of whatever that type of casket costs at that point. The offer is limited to 500 Kodak retirees.

According to National Funeral Directors Association data, the median cost of a funeral in 2012 was roughly $7,000 — a metal casket, at $2,400, is the single largest expense.

" We're trying to get people to talk about it now, rather than a stressful environment," Perotto said.

MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com