Funeral home purchased, hit by derecho, planning open house

September 21, 2026/Business, Finance/

According to this article from the Lansing (Illinois) Journal the Schroeder-Lauer Funeral Home of Lansing was purchased by Allen Memorial Partners LLC of Utah with the sale closing in June of this past summer.

And, according to the article and other information I received the area in and around Lansing, Illinois, “was significantly impacted by a consecutive wave of extreme weather—including a devastating tornado and a powerful derecho—that swept through the region in July and August 2026.”

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the newspaper article about the situation and what Allen Memorial Partners Jase Allen comments on the situation:

One thing Allen didn’t expect shortly after the change in ownership: A derecho hitting Lansing and spawning a tornado whose path ran about a block south of the building.

When the power went out, part of Allen’s job was rerouting the phone lines.

“It’s hard to run a funeral home when you don’t have a phone line,” he said, “because people call you at any time of the day, right? Someone passes away at two in the morning, we’ve got to be ready.  And we were ready, but our phones line were down, and so the storm, dealing with that multiple times, obviously, because it wasn’t just — the power in the phone didn’t just go out once. It was multiple, multiple times.”

Allen agreed it was an interesting way to start a new ownership tenure.

Turning that weather into a positive situation: I’ve always felt in my lifetime that as circumstances happen it is not about how one falls, but about how one gets back up. To that end, the Schroeder-Lauer Funeral Home is turning the bad weather situation into a positive for the community of Lansing when on October 9 they will hold an event to celebrate the funeral home’s 85th anniversary and at the same time raise funds for the community tornado relief efforts.

Again, according to the article, for every person who attends the open house, Schroeder-Lauer Funeral Home will donate $85, up to a grand total of $5,085 to the community relief effort.

Allen Memorial Partners LLC: Based out of Utah the company, according to the Lansing Journal article, now owns six properties, including two in the Chicago area.