Racing curtailed, jockey starts working at funeral home

March 26, 2020/Uncategorized/

Today’s blog article could be classified under “funeral directors and their relatives are the most interesting people”. I grew up living next to the family funeral home, went into that business as a career, and operated the business for almost 35 years so I’ve gotten acquainted with many people who grew up as a funeral director’s kid, much like me. And, at the end of the day, when we get to talking about growing up around a funeral home we have this fraternity-like camaraderie that is difficult to explain.

In this article from the United Kingdom’s Sun you can read about horse racing jockey Thomas Willmott. Willmott is a funeral director’s kid (an FDK not to be confused with the more notorious PK – Preacher’s Kid) who is taking advantage of the British Horseracing Authority’s horse racing ban in the United Kingdom to work with family friends at the Thomas Brown and Sons funeral business in Melrose during the coronavirus crisis.

Willmott explains in the article that his father is a funeral director in Dorset and he’s grown up around the industry and plans to enter the profession once his riding days are over. Willmott is quoted, “One day I might be washing cars, then visiting families the next and going out to funerals.”

Willmott also admits he is fortunate to have this temporary gig. He said many of his jockey colleagues do not have similar options to make ends meet during the closed racing season. He admits they are going to have to find something to bring in income, but also brings in the caveat about what they do. Willmott explains that jockeys must maintain a low body weight and fears some of his colleagues may not be able to do that with a different job. He says, “If someone puts on a bit of weight doing another job, will they be able to get back down again and will they be disheartened with the whole thing by the time racing is back? It could end the careers of some people.”

Funeral Director Daily take: Reading this story has reminded me – and made me smile – reminiscing of times when being a funeral director’s kid and the camaraderie of those in the business looked after each other. When I was in junior and senior high school and would be going out of town on a field trip or athletic event my mom and dad always gave the same advice. “If something happens with the bus or there is a snow storm that stops you from getting home, get hold of the funeral director in that town, tell them who you are, and they will take care of you.”

It also reminds me of a couple of instances where the funeral business was a great connection and something you could build trust and friendship around. My brother and I are both big basketball fans and in 1989 when Minnesota joined the NBA with the Timberwolves my older brother had a connection with the team’s general manager. We arranged for him to come to our community for a fish-fry with the area’s season ticket holders — of which there were about 25. When he came he brought one of the original players with – Sam Mitchell (Sam Mitchell biography). All of our guests wanted to talk basketball with Sam Mitchell – but Sam was enamored by the fact that we owned and operated the funeral home. It turns out that he was married to a daughter of a funeral director and in the off-season he helped out at the mortuary in Georgia. And, he wanted to compare how we operated funerals with how they did.

Finally, many of you know that I serve on the governing board of the University of Minnesota. One of my duties in that capacity is to chair the Debt Management Committee. That committee is made up of lay advisors to the public university’s financial management team. Corporate CFOs as well as a couple of city/county treasurers make up the advisory committee.

When I showed up for my first meeting of that committee about three years ago I met a man by the name of Chuck Osborne. Chuck is the retired CFO of Deluxe Corporation (#258 on the Fortune 500) and had served as the CFO of FICO. It turns out that he was a funeral directors kid and I knew his dad. I now look forward to those meetings simply to visit with Chuck about our common childhoods where we grew up as funeral director kids.

For those of you in the Upper Midwest, Chuck’s dad was Larry Osborne of the O.E. Larson – Osborne Mortuary in Minneapolis. As you know, Larry was a funeral director’s funeral director and a legend for doing trade call work throughout the Upper Midwest. There was no better representative in our industry in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and I’m happy to be able to state that in today’s article. Chuck and I have had many a good chuckle over the adventures of how that trade call business operated back then!!

Death care in the news: