‘We’re all mortal creatures’
White family spans four generations of funeral directors serving south metro area
by Aaron Vehling
Dakota County Tribune
White Funeral Homes is in its fourth generation of serving Dakota County. Jim White, left, is semiretired but still helps his three sons (including John, right) run the business. - Photo by Aaron Vehling
For four generations, the White family has built a business centered on an inevitable conclusion, which many are loathe to fathom until that inevitability hits.
“We work with people under stress all the time,” said Jim White, a third-generation funeral director and patriarch of the fourth generation of the family that runs White Funeral Homes, which has five south metro locations. “We know this is the last place people want to be, but we have to be there for them and help them get through the trying times.”
Jim’s three sons, Mike, Jim Jr. and John, own and manage White Funeral Homes while Jim, now retired with more than 50 years’ experience, offers occasional help with funerals and mediation between his sons.
Sustaining a funeral home business for four generations is not easy, said John. It’s an industry in which 50 percent of those who enter it leave it after five years, according to the December 2009 issue of Mortuary Management magazine.
Toss the precarious nature of the family dynamic into the mix, and the continued success and expansion of White Funeral Homes appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel for an industry that is having trouble replacing its retirees.
The secret to their success? Both Jim and John, 40, say it is a straightforward concept: boundaries.
“I tell the ‘boys’ we’re father and sons after work,” Jim said. “During work, we’re fellow employees.”
John used a family cookout last week for his 40th birthday as an example.
“The brothers always say that when we are with the family (outside of work) we try not to talk about business,” he said.
A staple of the community
White Funeral Homes started more than 100 years ago in downtown Lakeville. Daniel Gephart, Jim’s grandfather, ran a furniture business. He added caskets to his inventory, which led to a full-fledged foray into the funeral business.
At that time, a good chunk of the procedures for preparing a body were conducted in that person’s home. For example, Jim said, the Whites would haul equipment to the home and do the embalming on site. Afterward, the wake would be held in the living room of the house.
Jim’s father, Bud White, married Gephart’s daughter, Louise, and ushered in a new era, separating the furniture and funeral businesses by building a full-service funeral home in town in 1950.
Then came the third generation. Jim, the third-oldest boy, would help his dad with what he could. His brothers were not interested in the business, but Jim sure was. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1956 with a degree in mortuary science.
He tried his hand at working outside the business, but the funeral business was calling.
He purchased a site in Farmington, he said.
“I helped my dad run the home in Lakeville and I ran the one in Farmington,” Jim said.
Business was steady. In addition to running the Farmington location, Jim was helping his dad with embalming and practically every other aspect of arranging funerals.
But then something happened.
“Maybe I got restless,” Jim said. At this point, he and his wife, Pat, and seven kids were living above the funeral home in Farmington. “I was frustrated with politics. It was the Nixon era.”
So in 1974, Jim ran for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives as a DFLer.
He went all over the district (which at that time stretched from Farmington to nearly Rochester) knocking on doors. He deployed his family to do the same and made many parade appearances.
“We worked our butts off, and I got elected,” Jim said, inflecting his voice with an emotive sense of accomplishment.
In a conservative district, Jim had bested 18-year incumbent Walter Klaus of Empire Township.
“I was a little surprised,” Jim said.
Though he was re-elected, serving was not easy. Jim said he was proud to do his civic duty, but holding office made running the business difficult. In order to serve in the Legislature in St. Paul, Jim said he had to hire someone to run his day-to-day operations in Farmington.
“I was hiring somebody to run my business who was costing me twice as much as I was making at the Legislature,” he said. At the time, legislators were paid $12,000 a year. He voted for a $5,000 pay raise.
“I thought legislators should be paid more,” he said. “If you want good people, you’ve got to pay them well.”
The vote put his political career in a casket and paved the way for Steve Swiggum, his opponent in 1978, to serve 25 years in the House, eventually becoming the speaker and later being appointed commissioner of Labor and Industry. The position, Jim pointed out with irony, pays more than $100,000 a year.
Inevitability
Jim and John have been around death their entire lives (John saw his first dead body at age 6, he said), and both assert that working around death has caused them to naturally be more cognizant of it.
“We’re all mortal creatures,” Jim said, “and we’re all going to die.”
Father and son also agree on what is the most difficult part of the job: doing a funeral for a child.
“If a person is 5 or 6 years old, you go home and hug your kids,” John said. “You know just as well that it could have been one of your own kids.”
Jim agreed, adding, “It’s tough. It’s the only thing I never cared to work with.”
‘Nothing is traditional’
“We used to know everyone we buried,” Jim said. “But we don’t know anymore because we do a lot of business and the population is growing.”
There are a few major differences about the business now compared with when Jim started: cell phones and the types of funerals.
For a business that is “24/7,” a cell phone is a perfect utility.
“We used to have to check in every hour,” Jim said. Pat would be on the phone all the time while watching seven kids, he added. Cell phones changed that.
Customs are changing, too. More people are choosing the cremation route; about 40 percent of White’s business is cremation, John said. Some families forego visitations or funeral services in favor something simple.
Other times, John said, he has had customers have a traditional visitation and funeral followed by a cremation. But there are other changes as well.
“Some people bring CDs (for visitation or funeral service music),” he said. “Some people have ‘Amazing Grace’ and others have Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
Adding to all of this are the changing demographic of Dakota County.
White Funeral Homes has hosted Muslim, Buddhist, Hmong and even nonreligious funerals, in addition to the Christian ones that have been a staple for a century.
“Every ethnicity has their own way,” John said. “Some ethnicities have visitations for two or thee days. They stay overnight at the funeral home with the body.
“We try to accommodate them. Nothing is traditional anymore.”
In other words, John said, “you go with the flow.”
Another change is that more people are now making end-of-life plans. John said that during the days when Jim ran the business, most business was “at-need,” which means you plan at or after the death.
The White family had 475 funerals in 2009 (about nine a week). John said as many as five of those are “pre-needs,” in which people preplan and often prepay their entire funeral.
Expansion and the future
Over the past 15 years, with the rise of involvement of the new generation of sons, White Funeral Homes has expanded to include five locations: Farmington, Lakeville, Apple Valley, Lonsdale and Burnsville. The Burnsville location is undergoing a massive renovation to be finished by October, a move the Whites have been planning since they bought the site in 2000.
John is one of three brothers who chose to continue the business. The first three generations of Whites were solo when taking the reins. The trio is a new approach.
“It’s a very satisfying business,” John said. “When I go home at night I feel I’ve accomplished something.”
In addition to the White family, the business currently employs two other full-time funeral directors, two full-time secretaries and six part-time funeral visitation helpers, John said.
“People are always asking if we are planning to expand,” he said, “but we don’t know. We are a family-owned business and want to stay that way.”
John added that when customers comes calling for funeral arrangements, they will get a White. He and his brothers don’t want to jeopardize that dynamic.
But what about a fifth generation? As Jim said, it is unusual enough to have three brothers working together for 20 years, as Mike, Jim Jr. and John have. Could a bunch of White cousins spark a massive expansion while maintaining that connection between business owner and customer?
“I am not going to encourage them or discourage them,” John said of his children.
His father did not pressure him to become a funeral director and he does not want to do that to his kids, who are still fairly young, he said.
“If they do what I did and feel this is something they enjoy, that is great,” he said.
Even if the fifth generation decides to eschew the funeral business, the Whites have made their mark on their community. All are or have been involved in civic organizations, such as the Lions Club and the Chamber of Commerce, and have for a century sought to serve the community as a whole as much as their customers.
Bud’s visage is among those of Lakeville founding fathers whose reliefs adorn plaques in Pioneer Park Plaza.
John admits that he and his brothers are strong-willed and at times get into arguments over the business, with Jim attributing a recent disagreement to remodeling of the Burnsville site. But with dedication to the business and the family honoring the boundaries of work-life separation, perhaps the recipe for the fifth generation’s success is already in place.
“I have 22 grandchildren,” Jim said. “I expect the business will carry on. I hope it can continue.”
Aaron Vehling is at
aaron.vehling@ecm-inc.com.
The Whites are classy people and part of the “forefathers” of Lakeville. I lived across the street from Bud and Louise. Great people. Did Bud’s yard in high school. Jim is cut from the same cloth. Just a great family.
May God bless your service to the community. Amen