Greencastle, Pennsylvania funeral director Marty Zimmerman, Jr. was recently presented with the community’s James P. Oliver Award at the community’s annual Chamber of Commerce banquet.  According to an article that you can read here, the award is presented annually to a person who most exemplifies the spirit of the community, leadership, entrepreneurship, civic duty, and volunteerism.

Zimmerman is former owner of the Zimmerman Funeral Home, which has served Greencastle since 1948.  The Zimmerman Funeral Home is now affiliated with the Thomas L. Geisel Funeral Home and continues with Marty Zimmerman as the supervisor.

Zimmerman’s father, and mother, were presented this award in 2006.

Funeral Director Daily take:  A couple of things stand out to us.  This is the type of leadership that consumers all across America expect of their funeral directors.  As a group we’ve been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately — babies being found, body parts issues, and pre-need theft.  Those headlines take away from all the good done  every single day by funeral directors across the world.

Obviously, the heritage of the Zimmerman funeral home has been exemplary with two generations of them being presented with this award.

The other thing that is interesting is that the Zimmerman Funeral Home has recently “merged” with the Thomas L. Geisel Funeral Home in Greencastle.  You can read about that here.  While we don’t know the circumstances, I’m guessing that the next generation of Zimmerman’s believed that their lives would be outside of funeral service.  As we’ve written about before, sometimes when two competitors (Zimmerman and Geisel) can get together, it is the entire community that can win from the decision.

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