Photo by Eric Keith / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Bothers Jonathan and Nathan Bokay escaped their rural Wathena roots only to return when their mother died. Finding no affordable caskets made entirely of walnut, the brothers decided to fill the niche themselves. When asked how business is going, Nathan quips, ‘People have been very healthy lately.’

Craftsmen have long loved the wood of walnut trees. Very hard, exquisite grain. They use the timber in making premium rifle stocks and steering wheels for luxury cars.

Nathan and Jonathan Bokay also like walnut wood for its proximity. The trees thrive in these parts, the raw and renewable material having been part of local manufacturing for generations.

The brothers figure it this way. It makes environmental and fiscal sense to use what’s at hand. They admit coming from a long line of farm people who would stockpile odd items for decades on the chance of them one day being useful.

Why get something shipped from elsewhere, with its incurred waste of packaging and transportation, when something as beautiful and bountiful as walnut resides nearby?

And a part of life hereabouts, the native wood could serve as part of the hereafter.

The Bokays own and operate the North East Kansas Casket Co. They started the business this year to make handcrafted, tasteful and affordable burial boxes with a bit of green attitude thrown in.

“Everyone says, ‘Bury me in a pine box,’” Nathan says, noting that grieving survivors then choose the opposite.

The brothers wanted nothing to do with the metal corners and handles on most coffins. And they saw an opportunity that suited their skills and temperament.

Jonathan and Nathan live on the opposite ends of a tract south of Wathena, Kan., acreage that has been part of their family for four generations. Adjoining Nathan’s house, on a hill looking over a plain that stretches to the Missouri River, a barn that until recently held hay now serves as the center of their enterprise.

Wood work came organically to the two. Their parents owned a St. Joseph refinishing business called the Strip Joint, and the boys grew up amid the fumes of lacquer. Nathan remembers, at age 5, pulling a footstool from the trash, sanding it, giving it a new coating and selling it.

Both graduates of Bishop LeBlond High School, the boys took separate paths for a time.

Nathan, now 31, got a degree in environmental studies at the University of Kansas and moved to Washington state. There, as an aquatic biologist, “I got paid to fish,” he says.

Jonathan, 26, trained at the Hillyard School locally and went into the construction business, becoming a residential framer in Kansas City and living in Lawrence when his brother went to the university.

When an opportunity came to buy part of the rural ground from their grandmother, they converged on the family homestead. They didn’t want to farm, but they wanted to keep the land productive and, as a goal, not have to drive into town every day.

Their business startup had its rough patches. The farm required a lot of upkeep. The winter left the roads a mess. And the brothers puzzled over details in casket design — what looked and functioned best?

Except for the initial preparation of wood, they avoid assembly line tasks, concentrating on one box at a time, refining with each successive effort.

In doing so, the Bokays kept the environment in mind, not only using local materials but often fueling a bus that carries those materials with used cooking oil. They make the casket interiors with organic cotton, with nothing petroleum-based, and they plant 10 trees for every box completed.

The brothers arrived at a finishing technique that proved appealing and safe. Some of the high-end shellacs could be smelled all the way to the river. The coating they use is thin and natural, with the idea of it breaking down over time.

“The really nice finishes came with biohazard stickers,” Jonathan says. “We’d much rather do it this way.”

A drive around the property speaks to family heritage and good vehicular suspension systems. A campsite down by the riverbank has hosted countless gatherings with kin.

The Bokay brothers, self-critical of the work they create, wanting always to make it better, find few bad things to say about this life on this land.

In their product and approach to business, they want what’s around them to stay as it is.

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.