Widow honors husband with hologram at Washington memorial service

A lifelike hologram of Bill Cronrath greeted about 200 guests at a memorial service in Washington state, turning a private farewell into a striking example of how technology is changing the way families grieve. Pam Cronrath said she had promised her husband a “super wake,” and she made good on it with a digital version of the man she had loved since 1966.

Bill Cronrath died on September 22, 2025, after nearly 60 years of marriage to Pam Cronrath, who is 78 and lives in Wenatchee, Washington. His obituary says he was born in Oelien, Iowa, in 1946, was the eldest of three children, graduated from Cashmere High School in 1964 and later attended Pacific Lutheran University. The family had been planning a wake in early April 2026, underscoring how long the couple’s life together had stretched across Washington communities and beyond.

Pam Cronrath said the idea took root years earlier, after she saw a doctor appear as a full-body hologram at a medical conference. After Bill died, she began looking for a way to use the same technology for remembrance. She said many of the companies she contacted were either too expensive or not interested before she was eventually connected with Proto Hologram and Hyperreal.

The result was not cheap. Pam Cronrath had originally planned to spend $2,000 on Bill’s memorial, but she said the final cost was probably 10 to 15 times that amount, putting the tribute in the rough range of $20,000 to $30,000. For families weighing whether a digital memorial is worth the price, that figure captures the tension at the heart of this emerging ritual: a highly personalized goodbye can also be a major financial commitment.

The memorial reflects a broader shift in grief, as more families reach for technology to create a more vivid presence after death. Supporters see value in hearing a familiar voice or seeing a loved one appear to speak one last time; critics may worry about the emotional cost of recreating the dead for the living. For Pam Cronrath, the choice was personal and deeply specific to Bill Cronrath, a man whose life began in Oelien, Iowa, and whose final farewell was shaped by both memory and machine.