Business
From 2015 to 2021 I served on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. That 12-person governing board for the State of Minnesota got to know each other very well. One of the people I served with, and sat right next to at board meetings for four years, was the Minnesota legislature’s former Speaker…
The longer we live, the more we learn about ourselves and others. As you may know my wife, Angie, and I winter for three months in Southwest Florida. This past week I’ve been alone as Angie each year takes a week or ten days to travel back to Minnesota to visit with her…
For a period of time it was unknown to the owners of Caskets of Honor, located in Calvin, Oklahoma, that selling caskets in their home state was illegal without the procurement of a funeral director’s license. Then, according to this recent story from KFOR-TV of Oklahoma City, the husband and wife ownership team of…
I was a funeral director that operated my own funeral home with the help of five or six other licensed funeral directors. Much of the last 15 years of my work-life consisted of management, but there were times where I made funeral arrangements, wrote obituaries, and was asked to produce video tributes. …
Funeral directors should feel good about their role in helping the “The Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration earn the highest customer satisfaction score ever achieved by any public or private organization measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), as part of the group’s 2025 report.” According to this press release…
For as long as I can remember, those of us who work in Death Care have been un-deservedly percieved by many as part of a strange or dark world. You’re going to see that perception rise again as the new movie “The Mortuary Assistant” will debut in theatres on Friday the 13th of February.…
I’ve been around the Death Care business my whole life. . . . and one thing I can tell you is that, like other businesses, “things” change. For instance, Death Care clientele used to spend a high percentage of their “Death Care spend” on caskets and other merchandise. That’s not always the case anymore.…
In a press release issued earlier in January 2026 out of Batesville, Indiana, ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust made the following statement: “ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust, a federally chartered savings bank that has been providing trust and recordkeeping services to the funeral and cemetery industry since 1998, announced today that Community…
According to provisional data released from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in January of this year the overall age-adjusted “Death Rate” in the United States for 2025 was about 722 deaths per 100,000 of population. In the Death Care business we have usually based our historical numbers on a “per 1,000” population number…
We learned from this article written by Fort Erie Radio that Service Corporation International (SCI) recently purchased two funeral homes in the Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, community. According to the article, the Williams Funeral Home and Benner Funeral Services were sold to SCI in January of 2026. According to the article the funeral…
