A.S. Turner & Sons has a busy summer — adds a funeral home and terramation service line

August 25, 2026/Business, Cremation, Finance, Products/

A.S. Turner & Sons has served the population of Decatur, Georgia, and the greater Atlanta area for more than 120 years. Funeral Director Daily recently mentioned the firm in this article about The Natural Burial concept which takes The Natural Burial’s proprietary Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) process, Terramation, to the local level.

We’ve also learned that A.S. Turner & Sons has made an acquisition of another greater Atlanta family-owned firm. According to an article that we noticed in a Kates-Boylston publication, A.S. Turner recently announced the acquisition of Ford-Stewart Funeral Home in Jonesboro, Georgia.

According to that same article the Ford-Stewart Funeral Home was:

Founded in August 1997 by Horace Ford and wife Linda Ford, Ford-Stewart Funeral Home (and) has become one of the most respected funeral homes in South Metro Atlanta. Horace began his career in funeral service in 1963 and earned his funeral director’s license in 1968. Over nearly three decades as owner and operator, he built a reputation for compassionate care and personalized service alongside his wife Linda (died in January 2018), son, Darren Ford, a licensed funeral director, and his daughter, Jennifer Ford, who oversees funeral assistance and administrative operations. . . . . . Horace, Darren, and Jennifer Ford will continue serving the families of Jonesboro, ensuring the trusted relationships they have developed over the years remain intact.”

According to a prepared statement by A.S. Turner & Sons owner Cy Hume, “Horace Ford has spent decades earning the trust of this community, and we wanted to honor that legacy. This is not about replacing what has been built – it is about investing in it, strengthening it, and ensuring it continues for generations to come.”

The Terramation service line — I’ve watched the process of bringing Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) to legal status for about the last eight years. I think it has been a slow, methodical process, but I also see the process trending in the right direction for those invested in it. To my knowledge, the A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home is the first NOR facility in the Southeastern part of the United States, and their proximity to the Atlanta market should give them a head start on building the NOR brand in the Southeast.

I’m also a fan of the process that The Natural Funeral has put into place by setting up their “TerraCare” system that allows the process, at what I consider a reasonable investment cost, to be brought to the populous. Their system allows for individual funeral homes to be able to offer the process in their own local communities without arranging transportation of the deceased to distant facilities.

In the short history of NOR, most of the vessels for the disposition have been positioned in large facilities in the states of Washington and Nevada. The “TerraCare” system may be a game-changing innovation in the popularity of the disposition method by bringing the process to the population centers. Again, I think A.S. Turner may be ahead of the curve in their thinking.

Here is some information on the “TerraCare” system from The Natural Funeral
You can see a short video on the A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home “Terramation” system from this web-page on their website.
Here is the website of the A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home an Crematory
Here is the website of the Ford-Stewart Funeral Home

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