Alex Erickson
Marhsall, Minnesota part-time Funeral Director

The Marshall Independent of Marshall, Minnesota ran an interesting article the other day that featured Marshall native Alex Erickson and his story about returning to his hometown of Marshall after working in the metropolitan city of Minneapolis for a few years.

We have known for sometime in rural America that the best way to grow employment and population in rural communities is to have those who have left for the lure of the city return and start businesses to grow employment.  In essence, several studies have found out that returning to a small community is much easier than getting people who have never lived in a small community to move to one.  Erickson states that he is an avid outdoorsman, enjoys hunting, and likes to admire the crops and farmland.

What is interesting about Erickson is that he has a degree in Mortuary Science, has worked in that capacity in Minneapolis, but is returning to Marshall as a Sales Consultant for Titan Machinery.  He says that machinery sales is much like funeral service in that it is a service oriented field where his job is to serve his potential clients.  He notes that “Service” is key to this business as well as funeral service.

Another interesting thing about Erickson is that he is not letting his degree in Mortuary Science go to waste.  According to the article he is continuing to work part-time with the Hamilton Funeral Home of Marshall as a part-time  “On-call” funeral director as well as at other times when needed.

Funeral Director Daily take:  This is an interesting take and something that rural funeral directors should maybe look into in helping to create opportunities for potential part-time employees that can help alleviate a problem with ownership of small town funeral homes.  Many small town funeral homes are one-man shops where the owner is on call 24/7 virtually all year.

Having a part-time licensed person in the community might very well allow someone to own a funeral home in a small town who otherwise would not take ownership because of the 24/7/365 situation that can happen.  Having another person who enjoys and is educated in the industry to cover a weekend once a month or other occaisons as needed would be welcome.  I know that before our mortuary went from 4 to 5 full-time funeral directors we visited with a former funeral director who farmed in the area to see if he wanted to work about one weekend per month.  While we decided to hire the 5th funeral director at that time, he was very amenable to the situation and would have went to work with us.

With the differeing requirements of different states in relationship to licensure, I think it would be in rural community funeral director’s best interests to see if they could work with someone in their community to satisfy those requirements and then be able to help out.  Anything that can keep these small town funeral homes in their communities would be good for the communities.  Having this type of help may be the only way where some great funeral directors will be willing to take on funeral home ownership.

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