The Dating Game

Local mortician chronicles dating spree in new book

By Vanessa Van Voorhis

The Estacada News, Dec 10, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Elizabeth Fournier, funeral director at Cornerstone Mortuary in Boring, recently published the book, "All Men are Cremated Equal: My 77 Blind Dates," based on quest to find Mr. Right.

Vanessa Van Voorhis / Estacada News

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Elizabeth Fournier, funeral director at Cornerstone Mortuary in Boring, wanted a husband and family of her own. Coming out of a failed engagement at the age of 36, she decided she would not be content to wait for Mr. Right to find her. So the marriage-minded mortician formulated an action plan.

“I figured the best I could do is treat dating like a full-time job,” Fournier said.

She created a list of 10 non-superficial characteristics she was looking for in a potential mate and enlisted her friends as matchmakers “to set her up with this or that ‘great guy.’” Between December 2003 and December 2004, her friends sent her out on 77 blind dates.

In December of this year, Fournier’s book, “All Men are Cremated Equal: My 77 Blind Dates,” a fact-filled memoir humorously chronicling her yearlong serial blind dating spree, went on sale online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Fournier’s novel recounts her good dates, including the time she attended a Christmas party on the arm of a “sexy local candidate,” her bad dates, like the one with a concert promoter who ended up bloodied, and her bizarre dates, such as one with a man who only spoke in quotes.

To “protect the rejected,” Fournier renamed her dates according to their profession. For example, “the lawyer is ‘Will,’ and the tax guy is ‘Bill.’”

After her umpteenth date, she developed a routine that allowed her to maximize her availability.

“You know how you would normally dress up for a date in some outfit and do your hair and your makeup?” she said. “There was none of that. Sometimes I would come straight from work and meet them at brew pubs.”

With her 10-point list in hand, she would methodically inquire about her date’s religion, his recreational drug use, and whether he was more likely replace or fix a broken item, all in the hope of gaining deeper insight into his character.

“How do you run your life? How do you deal with stuff? Do you make an effort to get to know friends and family? It all goes into being a kind, good human being, but that’s a very broad term,” she said.

“I was looking for somebody willing to work on things, someone willing to pull out their toolbox and fix things when they’re broken, not just replace them. That type of guy will want to fix a broken relationship rather than move on to someone else.”

None met all of her 10 criteria, and none was granted a second date.

“I went out with a lot of wonderful guys,” she said. “It was really hard, with the handsome ones, to say no. I was lonely a lot of the time.”

After each date, she contacted her dad to let him know how it went. “I told my dad the details in an e-mail. He loved them and thought they were so funny I should share them with friends. My dad and other people said, ‘You should turn this into a book.’”

Fournier describes her work as a “chick-lit book” written in a style that more closely resembles Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones Diary” than Candice Bushnell’s “Sex in the City.”

“Fielding’s book was the first that really made me laugh out loud, and it inspired me,” she said. “There’s absolutely no sex in my book at all. It’s all about finding the right person. I would give it a PG-13 rating.”

At the end of her story, Fournier finally breaks free of her dating rollercoaster when “the one,” Michael Potts, who is also a mortician, finds her.

“I met Michael at a funeral,” she said. “We were both working at that funeral home that same day.” Potts asked her out, but she wasn’t interested in him. “I thought he was a moron.”

Potts persisted nonetheless, and eventually she finally gave in and agreed to go out with him. “He knew 100 percent how he felt about me, and wasn’t shy telling me, and had nine points on the list — all the points but his age.

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