lufkindailynews.com
the lufkin news Sunday, March 24, 2013
9H
Expanding the funeral empire
Partnership allows for improvements, updates at Tims Funeral Home By MICHAEL W. DOUGLAS The Lufkin News
I
f you’ve driven behind Garrett Primary School down Leach Street within the last three years, you might have noticed subtle changes at Tims Funeral Home. The interior has undergone a makeover, too, with more casket options and an updated chapel. The funeral home’s vehicles are now Cadillacs. The changes are due to Tims being bought by Vernon Webster Sr., of Houston-based Vernon Webster Investments, LLC, which also owns All Families Mortuary in Hearne and Madisonville. The casket company, called The Unique Designer Casket brand, has a distribution facility in Lufkin in the old Boles Food Market Building at the corner of Abney and North Douglas Street. Webster said it was God’s plan that he got into the business because he was scared of caskets. Now he’s designing and selling them. “You just grow into it,” he said. “‘Lord, I was 50 years old and You have called me from what I loved to do, which was to sell clothes.’ Now that’s what I love. And then now I find something equal to that.” Webster started working in fashion at the age of 14 in 1969, when he left Hearne and went to Houston, where he landed a job as a porter with Palais Royal department store. Then in 1970, as a 15-year-old, his dad told him to look for wholesale clothing in Houston. That began his fashion sales and merchandising career. He did take two years off to graduate from the Gary Job Corps in San Marcos in 1972, but spent the next three decades in men’s clothing. This included opening up Michael Clothier in Houston, which is now managed by one of his sons, Vernon Jr. But when Webster Sr. semi-retired when he turned 50, another opportunity came his way.
“I owned some real estate in Hearne, and a funeral director wanted to put a funeral home on it and questioned me about it. And so I decided to convert that building into a funeral home. That was in 1985-86. And that got us started in our first funeral home, All Families Mortuary,” he said. “And then a year or two later, I ventured into another funeral home in Madisonville, Texas.” While visiting with a funeral director, a family’ made a unique request that sparked Webster’s designing interests. “A family wanted a casket that reflected their mother’s love of quilting. ‘We really, really want something special for our mom. We want a casket that is different from anything else we’ve ever seen,’” he recalled them saying. “That stuck with me. There are other families that would also want something different and unique, so I created the company called Unique Designer Caskets. “I’ll never forget it. She said she remembered her mother knitting a cotton sack. When were kids coming up, grandparents and older people would make cotton sacks. ‘The last thing that mama was knitting was a quilt,’ a family member said. ‘I’d really like to have something like that, something like a quilt inside.’ And so we got a manufacturer that did that for us. And inside the casket it was like a quilt … patchwork. And, boy, they loved it. That’s what they wanted to put their mom in.” After that, Webster said, he felt called to the funeral business. “It looked like a miracle that I was led to a company that manufactured caskets and had that material, who would produce that kind of casket and did produce it,” he said. “It’s amazing. Because of that family’s need, it led me into a full business. I realized you have to be connected to that community and I realized
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that it should be a calling, not just a job. And then something really went off in my head: I realized how I felt when I was able to satisfy that family and wanting that feeling to reproduce itself with other clients that our funeral home would serve. How can I make this special and what gratification would I get? I enjoyed so much being able to help families during their time of their bereavement and their grieving process. It became a calling to me. When that calling hit me, I had to come out of retirement mode and realize this was a 24-7 business. I work more now than any other time of my life. But I’m gratified more now, because I’m happier now when I’m serving a family need.” In 2010, when Webster came to Lufkin, he went to meet with Freddy Tims about his Unique Casket Designs and about selling caskets to Tims Funeral Home. “One thing led in to the next one, and then he thought, ‘Hey, man, I’d like to have a partner.’ And then he went on to tell me how it had been here since 1928. It started off as the East Texas (Undertaking Co.) in the 1920s. About how his daddy I.D. Tims had purchased it in 1949 and changed the name from East Texas to Tims Funeral Home. And that he’d hate to see the business just go out. And so I thought, ‘Man! This is an opportunity that we could redo something in this community,’ because this is probably one of the oldest buildings and businesses in North Lufkin. And to lose something like that would be to lose part of who we are, our identity. And so I looked at it, thought about it and then that made me go in and buy it. And I bought it and decided that we would keep it right there, and serve the community in such a way that we would put emphasis on ‘With Pride, with Respect and with Dignity.’ And that’s what we’ve been able to do the last three years, for sure. “I’ll never forget what Ms.
MICHAEL W. DOUGLAS/The Lufkin News
Vernon Webster Sr., of Houston-based Vernon Webster Investments, LLC, is shown standing in front of a variety of designer caskets. Bettie Kennedy tells me all the time when she sees me. She tells me, ‘You all have turned the funeral home service to a different level. You have carried it to a different level, because we see things at your service that we haven’t seen in our community.’” Keeping Tims at its location, keeping Freddie Tims as the funeral director, establishing a brand, and giving the building a makeover are just some of the signs of the new owner’s commitment to the community. “I didn’t have to keep Tims in that community, I could have moved it out on the loop,” he said. “I could have done other things. Or I could have just closed it down and opened up an entirely different funeral home, not to compete with myself. But when I realized that name had a ring in this community for all of those years, I knew it was important that we keep it there and that we do put emphasis on service ‘With Pride, with Respect and with Dignity,’ because that’s the time the family really, really needs you and depends on you.” Webster said business has been good, which includes getting requests for services be-
yond Lufkin and from growing diversity in clients. “Without looking at the real numbers, I would say 20 percent of our business now is from other communities, other than black folks,” he said. “That’s progress.” He said he stresses to his fu-
neral directors that when indigent families ask if they can get a proper burial for a loved one, even if they don’t have insurance, the employees always say yes, “because when man stops off, God will pick up.” Michael W. Douglas’ email address is mdouglas@lufkindailynews.com.
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