Dale-Time

I’m planning on moving back into the funeral home this year. That’s kind of backwards from a lot of other funeral home owners who start out living at the funeral home until they can save enough money to get a house of their own. But for me it makes sense both financially and business wise. You see, my daughter’s more than halfway through college, we have a cottage in South Haven (it was my wife’s place before we got married), a house in Norton Shores, and I figure I’m at the funeral home nearly 12 hours a day anyway I’ll probably get more time off if I live there. And if I live there I can be more attentive to the building and customers instead of traveling back and forth all the time. But there’s more to the story than that.

John Nolen Family

Twenty-three years ago the funeral home purchased the house of Dr. John Nolen, DDS and his dentist office. Dr. Nolen lived next door to the funeral home and his office was right next door to his house. Our property surrounded his house and we were good neighbors. He raised his family of 4 girls there during the 1940’s and 50’s. The house I grew up in (the same house my father grew up in) was next door to his, around the corner. My house was attached to the funeral home. I lived there with my folks and sisters until a fire in 1979 forced us to tear it down.

Circa 1930's Funeral Home, Clock House & Nolen House

After Dr. Nolen died in the late 1980’s we purchased the home and his office building from his family. We expanded our building and attached to his buildings. We converted the Dentist office into office space for the funeral home staff and converted his house into our Family Center where we held receptions after the funeral.

Family Center

For nearly 20 years we used the Nolen house for receptions. It is a big 100 year old house. Five bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs. Living room, dining room, big kitchen, wood paneled library, fireplace, study and 10ft ceilings on the main floor. We put in small 4-top tables and chairs on the main floor to give it a homier feel (as opposed to 8 ft banquet tables packed into the room like a VFW hall). We could handle 75 people comfortably in the space and it worked great for that time.

For years the upstairs sat empty, but eventually one of our housekeepers moved in to the upstairs. It was old and creaky up there. The carpets hadn’t been changed in years and the plaster was cracking, the floors sagged. Kathleen cleaned it up as best she could and made it very livable for herself and occasional visiting grandkids.

We also had two apartments above the older section of the funeral home. For as long as I can remember one apartment has been occupied by a staff member. They came and went through the years and made some modest decorating improvements. The last few residents had not taken care of the space very well and it was in need of a major overhaul. The other apartment, we called it the Dorm, had been used as the employee lounge and had two bedrooms where the staff had stayed when we ran ambulance service or had the on call duty. This was before the days of answering services, call forwarding or cell phones and somebody had to stay at the funeral home to answer the phones. The dorm sat empty for a number of years after we moved the lounge to the remodeled dentist office and shifted our casket showroom to the main floor of our original funeral home building.

So a few years back I started doing remodeling projects. First, I fixed up the old dorm back into an apartment so an Apprentice could live there. Then last year I rehabbed the other funeral home apartment. I replaced plumbing, redid the bathroom, fixed the cracks in the plaster, painted the whole place, hung new ceilings, had new carpet installed, and did a complete overhaul of the laundry room. I did most of it by myself and I loved nearly every minute of it. Once that was done we moved Kathleen from the Nolen house into the apartment and I started planning the rehab of the Nolen house.

New reception area

Over the last few years we had also done some changes in our casket showroom. We had downsized it from a large complete store to a smaller, more compact display room using slatwall, partial caskets and video displays. We then converted the old showroom space into a larger, more open reception area capable of handling 125+ people. For a time we offered families the choice of using the new reception area or the Family center in the Nolen House. The new space was the big winner and the Nolen House family center ended up sitting empty. That’s when my wife and I decided we might as well move back into the funeral home and make the Nolen house our residence.

That’s some of the back ground. More than you probably wanted to know. I’ll continue with the story in the next entry.

I’m Dale Clock.   Thanks for listening.