Ms. Amy Lange
(from the Lange FH web-site)

The Lockport (NY) Journal recently ran an article on funeral director Amy Lange in their Editor’s Pick Section.  The article, that you can read here, deals with the Lange Funeral Home and Ms. Lange’s unique position in the funeral industry as a female owner/operator for the past 34 years.

It turns out that Amy Lange wanted to enter the family business owned by her father and received her funeral director’s license in January 1982.  Unfortunately, her father, Mark Lange, who had helped start the business in 1953, passed away in December 1981 – one month prior to Amy becoming a licensed funeral director.

It was her father that cultivated her interest in the funeral profession.  According to the article, Amy Lange watched her father’s compassion and saw how he took care of families.  After coming to work in 1982 it took Amy only two years to understand that she wanted to own the funeral home and bought it from her mother in 1984.  She has been serving families in the Lockport area ever since.

Amy mentions in the article that early on it was very challenging for her because the death care industry was a male dominated industry with only about 5% of the licensees being female.  Again, according to the article, Lange has no plans to retire soon and continues to enjoy what she does.

Funeral Director Daily take:  I was struck by this article.  You see, my father owned a funeral home and died unexpectedly  when I was 19.  It was at that time that I decided to pursue the death care industry and much like, Ms. Lange, not too long after working at the funeral home that I decided to purchase the business from my mother.  Probably not unlike Ms. Lange, my father was my role model, but I never worked a funeral with him – simply because of my young age and his young death – struck with a heart attack while working at a funeral.

Again, probably like Ms. Lange, I wanted to be respected in the community like I saw my father respected whenever I was with him as a child.  Being a funeral director’s kid came with some caveats though– dad missed a lot of your events because he had to be at funerals or making “arrangements”, we changed weekend plans frequently because dad had to “stay around” to conduct a funeral, and you had to be nice to everybody because they were potential client families.

Probably much like Amy Lange, however,  there was nothing better than the feeling you received as a young funeral director in helping somebody out at a difficult time in their lives. You wanted to continue to do that over and over.

One place I will give Ms. Lange tremendous credit – and because of people like her the industry is better today – is that in the male dominated world funeral service was in the 1980’s I had a lot of help whereas she fought the battle to open the industry up to other females.

The Lockport Journal ran a great article and all I can say is keep up the good work blazing the trail for all the young female funeral directors coming into the profession.

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