Friday afternoon, and Connie LeSourd finally had time to catch up.

She tries to take advantage of the free time. When it comes to her job, she could be sitting down for dinner one minute and, after a quick phone call, be out the door the next.

After all, death doesn’t wait for anyone.

LeSourd may have had a tough, harried morning — the alarm didn’t go off, the car wouldn’t start. But when she meets people at the door of Kern Funeral Home in Mount Vernon, where she’s worked for 19 years and now is part owner, she must be the calm face of comfort — cool, collected and unquestionably welcoming.

“You have to be that calm in the storm,” LeSourd said, quietly, while looking around the small room in the funeral home where she meets with grieving families to make funeral arrangements.

LeSourd had never intended to take ownership of her father LeRoy Anderson’s funeral home. But like so many children of funeral home owners, LeSourd discovered an ironically fulfilling life in the business of death.

“I just feel that it’s so important, what we do, to comfort people in a time when they need that comforting,” she said.

Love of community

When it comes to professions, perhaps none is more misunderstood than that of funeral director, also commonly known as a mortician.

Think about it: a tall, thin, pale man in a black suit standing in the background, hovering silently like a ghost.

Certainly nothing could be further from the truth, LeSourd said with a smile. Wearing a green sweater atop a white T-shirt, casual slacks and an easy smile, LeSourd’s presence is anything but scary. Besides being part owner, LeSourd, 48, is the secretary/treasurer of the business.

And somber? Yeah, sometimes, she said. But you have to have a sense of humor around so much sadness. Let yourself sink too low and you lose perspective.

“In the beginning when I was here, I worked with my father and two other funeral directors and they all three could make you laugh,” she said with a smile.

When it comes down to it, being a funeral director requires a broad range of skills: business savvy, a knowledge of science and some medicine, understanding of human psychology and, most importantly, say funeral directors, a deep sense of compassion and commitment to the community.

It’s not unheard of for a funeral director to go to a grieving family’s home to help with the funeral arrangements or even stay with family members for a day to comfort them, LeSourd said. Sometimes the bonds forged between funeral directors and grieving family members after a death can turn into lifelong friendships.

“Often, we get to see that full perspective of people’s lives, as they grow up in the community and we all grow together — even die,” said Rick Lemley, co-owner and funeral director of Lemley Funeral Chapel in Sedro-Woolley, as he carefully arranged an American flag over the casket just before the memorial service for Gerald Mapes.

Mapes, an 82-year-old farmer and lifelong Skagit County resident, died Oct. 10 after battling leukemia.

“We care about these people,” Lemley said.

‘Letting go’

Few traditions are more important in people’s lives than meaningful funerals.

The family of 82-year-old Gerald Mapes had to agree, as they filed quietly into Lemley Funeral Chapel two weeks ago and were greeted at the door by Lemley and Daniel Lauer, who is serving his apprenticeship with Lemley as part of his schooling to become a funeral director.

“It’s kind of a send-off,” said 75-year-old Lila Mapes, Gerald’s wife, as she held the hand of her son, John Whitlock, shortly before the funeral service.

Planning for the funeral brought the family together and gave them time to collect photographs, remember Gerald and “let him go.”

For some, forgoing an official funeral or memorial service can mean prolonging the grieving process.

Frank Salseina of Concrete said he’s never quite gotten over the death of his 28-year-old nephew in February. His nephew didn’t wanted a funeral service, so the family went without one.

Salseina was working with Lemley to arrange his father-in-law Howard Johnson’s funeral. Johnson, a 90-year-old lifelong resident of the Birdsview area, died Oct. 14.

“I just kind of think it was a mistake,” Salseina said of the lack of a memorial for his nephew. “You don’t have to have anything special, but I think it’s important that you have something.”

For Salseina, working with Rick Lemley has made planning the funeral easier. Much of that has to do with the fact that the Lemleys have been running the funeral chapel in the county for 73 years.

“They’re part of the community and people know them,” Salseina said.

Family side of business

Like 89 percent of funeral homes in the nation and all of those in Skagit County, Kern and Lemley are family owned, and both have been handed down through three generations.

Lemley said people who grow up around a funeral home are more likely to see the work of a funeral director and employees as enormously important and rewarding.

It’s really not so much about the dead, he said. It’s about the living.

When Connie LeSourd was growing up, the funeral home was just a place where her father worked — not much different than any other workplace. Her family lived across the street, and later, on the top floor apartment above their funeral home on Third Street in Mount Vernon. Prompted by their own morbid curiosity and stereotypes of funeral homes, friends would often rib LeSourd to show them around the funeral home.

When LeSourd married, her husband wasn’t excited about helping out at the business.

“He was scared at first, but after helping a few times, he got used to it,” she said.

Originally, LeSourd had planned to become a nurse. She never really thought she would ever take over her father’s business.

LeRoy Anderson, previous co-owner of Kern, was introduced to the funeral business when he owned Anderson Florist. He would haul large wreaths of flowers to the funeral home. Eventually, he began to help Coy Kern, the owner at the time, with odd jobs around the funeral home.

Kern didn’t have any living sons to take over the business. So he asked Anderson to come and work for him in 1947. Anderson saw a great business opportunity that, as fate would have it, was a perfect fit for his take-charge personality.

“He was the leader of our family, and when you’re funeral director, you have to be the leader,” LeSourd said, noting that grieving people often need a steady hand to help them through the memorial and burial process.

Many in LeSourd’s family have helped out at the funeral home for years. Jeremiah LeSourd, 27, is the last generation to get into the family business.

Like his mother, he grew up around the funeral home. He knew at the tender age of 10 or 11 that he wanted to become a funeral director.

He began helping at the business when he was just 19, answering late-night calls and taking up odd jobs.

“I learned you don’t dare make plans,” Jeremiah LeSourd said with a smirk. Working at a funeral home often means you’re on-call 24-7.

That always-on reality of the job — sometimes missing Christmas dinners, kids’ birthdays, wedding anniversaries — can eventually take a heavy toll on a funeral director’s family, Lemley said.

Growing up, Jeremiah’s friends would often tease him about his family’s occupation. But after working at the funeral home, he realized that it wasn’t the dead he needed to worry about.

“When it comes to people being afraid of a deceased person, for a funeral director, that’s the least of your worries,” he said. “Us living folks, we’re the unpredictable ones.”

Why they do it

It’s not uncommon for people to question an undertaker’s reasons for choosing his occupation, Lemley said.

“People still ask, ‘How can you DO that?’” Lemley, 54, said with a smile and a resigned shrug.

Even now, some of the students who walk home from nearby Sedro-Woolley High School carefully stay on the other side of the street when it comes to passing by the funeral home, Lemley observed with a grin.

Lemley spent his younger years living in the upstairs residence of his grandfather’s funeral home. As a result, he became accustomed to being around the dead, although he said he didn’t pay much attention when a body was being wheeled in or prepared for a viewing.

Lemley’s grandfather, Harold, more or less stumbled into the job back in the early 1930s when the original funeral chapel’s owner asked him to help out with a few jobs. Harold Lemley became more involved with the business, and when the owner died in 1935, he took over.

The business passed on to Rick Lemley’s father and uncle in 1957.

Chuck Ruhl, 66, who now owns the business with Lemley, remembers when he began working at Lemley as a high school student.

Like Lemley’s grandfather, Ruhl stumbled into the profession when his mother, a surgical supervisor for the former Memorial Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, got him in contact with the Lemleys for some work. Ruhl was used to being around a medical environment, so the idea of working around dead bodies didn’t frighten him.

He started his apprenticeship to become a funeral director and embalmer after graduating from high school. He worked for the Lemleys for a year and a half, driving the ambulance to pick up bodies and learning other aspects of the trade, and then decided to leave.

He worked in the funeral industry in southwest Washington for years, and then left the business in 1978 to sell life insurance and securities. In 1998, he returned to Sedro-Woolley to become a partner with Rick Lemley.

Of the businesses he’s been involved in, Ruhl has enjoyed undertaking the most.

“My frustration, when I was out of the business for 20 years, was that I couldn’t be in the role I was used to where I could take care of people like that,” Ruhl said. “It’s a calling, in a sense.”

Challenges

Despite the fulfillment, working in a funeral home has obvious down-sides.

Funeral directors are human, too, Lemley said. There are times when it’s tough to control your emotions, he added.

“In the first 10 years here, I experienced the death of 10 classmates,” he said, quietly. “That was hard to experience. There are ones that are harder to deal with than others.”

For Connie LeSourd, the death of a child or young adult is always the toughest. Such loss of potential, she said, quietly.

And then there’s the challenge of dealing with family members who may not have seen each other for years and sometimes have different ideas about a eulogy, a viewing, open or closed casket, or burial or cremation, funeral directors say.

In some instances, the funeral director ends up a referee of sorts, keeping the families on track in planning the funeral service, LeSourd said.

“We see a lot of that,” she said. “In those cases, we have to consult with the closest of kin. That keeps us out of trouble.”

Funeral directors also have to guess about what to say, and how to say it, for a grieving family. No one can predict exactly how a person will react to death, Lemley said. And sometimes, well, there really isn’t a “right” thing to say.

“Sometimes, you go up and give them a hug and just tell them that you’re sorry for their loss,” Lemley said.

Beverly Crichfield can be reached at 360-416-2135 or .

By the numbers

There are 21,088 funeral homes in the United States, including 184 in Washington.
An estimated 105,668 people work in the funeral industry.
The funeral industry generates about $11 billion in revenue each year.
The average funeral home handles 112 calls per year and has three full-time and three part-time employees.
Source: National Funeral Directors Association