Funeral Director Daily

Park Lawn makes another splash

By Funeral Director Daily / May 13, 2019 /

Toronto based funeral and cemetery services provider Park Lawn Corporation announced last week that they have entered into agreements to acquire the assets of Horan & McConaty Funeral Services and the assets of the Baue Funeral Home Company. The press release and more information that you can read from Yahoo Finance here, indicate that the…

New York cemetery moves caskets without notification, State investigating

By Funeral Director Daily / May 3, 2019 /

Today we bring you this story that broke earlier this week out of West Seneca, New York. It deals with the movement of about 220 buried caskets from one part of a cemetery to another part of that same cemetery. You can see a story and news video about this from WKBW of Buffalo here.…

SCI reports 1st Qtr. . . Comparable Unit funeral sales drop 5.5%

By Funeral Director Daily / April 30, 2019 /

North America’s largest funeral home and cemetery operator, Service Corporation International, reported 1st Quarter 2019 results last week and you can see their press release on those results here. The company’s CEO, Tom Ryan, issued the following statement in the report. “We are encouraged as we start of 2019 on par with prior year earnings…

Cemetery volunteers file lawsuit against billboard company

By Funeral Director Daily / April 29, 2019 /

Washington Park Cemetery sits in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. It is a cemetery that opened in 1920 and has not accepted new burials for almost three decades according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Wanda Brandon is among a group of volunteers who tend to the cemetery. She has filed a lawsuit against…

StoneMor Partners reports year end 2018

By Funeral Director Daily / April 10, 2019 /

In a news release from April 2 that you can read here, StoneMor Partners reported their financial results for the 4th Quarter of 2018 as well as the full year 2018. As you may know, the company has been filing delayed SEC reports but this report puts them pretty much on schedule. Here are some…

Newspaper alleges Chicago Archdiocese uses cemetery funds to pay abuse costs

By Funeral Director Daily / April 4, 2019 /

An article was published last weekend by the Chicago Sun-Times that questioned if money from the Archdiocese of Chicago cemetery operations was being diverted to pay down debt incurred because of priest misconduct cases. You can read the article here. The Catholic Church in Chicago has for years said, according to the article, that the…

Park Lawn reports ’18 Year End Results

By Funeral Director Daily / March 28, 2019 /

Toronto based funeral industry company Park Lawn Corporation released a press release that you can read here about its 2018 year end performance earlier this week. As you may know Park Lawn Corporation has grown greatly this year by acquisitions including The Signature Group, CMS Mid-Atlantic, and Citadel Management in the United States as well…

Funeral Service and Public Companies – Part 2 – Carriage Services

By Funeral Director Daily / March 25, 2019 /

Carriage Services is a funeral home and cemetery acquisition company that, according to Reuters, operated 181 funeral homes in 29 states and operated 32 cemeteries in 11 states as of August 28,2018. According to their own history from their web-site they were founded in 1991 and had their initial public offering (IPO) to become a…

A canary in the coal mine

By Funeral Director Daily / March 22, 2019 /

Two readers sent me this article and news video from Minneapolis KARE 11 TV yesterday. It concerns the 140 acre privately owned Crystal Lake Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Washburn-McReavy Funeral Home business owns 16 funeral homes in the Minneapolis metropolitan area and also a few cemeteries, of which Crystal Lake Cemetery is one. Earlier…

Here is an idea for your cemetery to raise some revenue

By Funeral Director Daily / March 12, 2019 /

Back in the summer of 1991 I visited Europe and specifically, Germany, for the first time in my life. There are a couple of things that I remember vividly from that experience. First of all, I remember being served bottled water at dinner and then being charged for it. Back home we were always afforded…