In the garage of his home, retired funeral director Richard Long, 82, shows off the shiny old Thunderbirds that are part of his vintage car collection. He and his wife, Nancy, have acquired about 19 classic cars.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- He's the silver-haired granddaddy of a nearly extinct concept -- the family-owned funeral home. Richard "Dick" Long grew up in the business, working for his father at the Noble Long Funeral Home on the West Side.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- He's the silver-haired granddaddy of a nearly extinct concept -- the family-owned funeral home. Richard "Dick" Long grew up in the business, working for his father at the Noble Long Funeral Home on the West Side.
His many years as a respected mortician included partnerships with other well-known names in the business -- Johnson and Fisher.
He tells colorful stories about the old days, a time before corporate buyouts when independent owners valued personal longstanding relationships with the families they helped.
At 82, barring a few if-onlys, he'd start up again in a heartbeat. He's working on it.
"I was born Aug. 16, 1928. We had a place on the West Side, the 1600 block of Washington Street where my dad's funeral home was. It was the Noble Long Funeral Home originally.
"My dad worked my butt off from the time I was big enough to carry chairs and run the vacuum cleaner. I expect I've run a vacuum cleaner one million miles. One thing I won't do to this day is pick up a chair at a funeral home.
"We had six automobiles. All six were washed first thing in the morning. When they went out and came back in, they were washed again. So I've washed my share of automobiles.
"I got my driver's license when I was 15 and started driving the cars. We had ambulance service back then, and I started driving that thing. That was during the war, and all the young men able to do that kind of work were gone. I was big enough to do my share.
"We had a mine contract at Alcott and did all the ambulance and funeral work for those people. I don't know how many babies I had born in an ambulance, eight miles off the main road, trying to get them back to Charleston General.
"Our firm and Everett Cunningham's firm probably did 70 percent of the work in the valley. Everett worked for my dad before he went into business for himself.
"My father and E.A. Johnson, Mack and Wayne Johnson's grandfather, ran a little whiskey back in those days. Johnson was the ringleader, and he went to [jail] Atlanta for a while. My dad made a deal. If he would go to school, he wouldn't have to go to jail. So he went to embalming school at Cincinnati.
"Johnson had some money stashed away, and when he got out, they started the Long and Johnson Funeral Home on the 1300 block of Washington Street.
"In 1933, Dad opened his own place in the 1600 block and Johnson stayed in the 1300 block. In '48, Dad built the building on Rebecca Street. Then Dad and Johnson got back together, and Lyden Fisher came in with them, so it was Long Johnson and Fisher. In 1968, they built another one in Sissonville.
"I was born into it and didn't know anything else, so I stayed with it. I went to embalming school in Cincinnati in 1950. We had our preparation room at the Cincinnati General Hospital. We embalmed bodies for the black funerals. It didn't cost them anything except for the chemicals. We didn't believe anybody but black people ever died in Cincinnati. We embalmed 1,700 bodies for them.
"When I came out of school, I embalmed one body at the family home. My dad embalmed a lot of bodies in the home. He would embalm the bodies and put them in bed. When the family bought the casket, he would bring the casket and put the body in it. Lots of times, they had the funeral right there in the house.
"Dad died of a stroke in 1952. He was only 50. I ran the funeral home a couple of years for my mother, but Dad always told me he wanted me to have it, so I bought her out.
"I bought the place three times. First, I bought my mother out. Then we bought Johnson out, then Fisher. I paid more for it each time.
"When Fisher and I bought Johnson out, we dropped his name. Now, Long and Fisher on Rebecca Street is sub-leased. A corporation owns Long and Fisher at Sissonville and Pryor at East Bank, another funeral home I had.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- He's the silver-haired granddaddy of a nearly extinct concept -- the family-owned funeral home. Richard "Dick" Long grew up in the business, working for his father at the Noble Long Funeral Home on the West Side. His many years as a respected mortician included partnerships with other well-known names in the business -- Johnson and Fisher.
He tells colorful stories about the old days, a time before corporate buyouts when independent owners valued personal longstanding relationships with the families they helped.
At 82, barring a few if-onlys, he'd start up again in a heartbeat. He's working on it.
"I was born Aug. 16, 1928. We had a place on the West Side, the 1600 block of Washington Street where my dad's funeral home was. It was the Noble Long Funeral Home originally.
"My dad worked my butt off from the time I was big enough to carry chairs and run the vacuum cleaner. I expect I've run a vacuum cleaner one million miles. One thing I won't do to this day is pick up a chair at a funeral home.
"We had six automobiles. All six were washed first thing in the morning. When they went out and came back in, they were washed again. So I've washed my share of automobiles.
"I got my driver's license when I was 15 and started driving the cars. We had ambulance service back then, and I started driving that thing. That was during the war, and all the young men able to do that kind of work were gone. I was big enough to do my share.
"We had a mine contract at Alcott and did all the ambulance and funeral work for those people. I don't know how many babies I had born in an ambulance, eight miles off the main road, trying to get them back to Charleston General.
"Our firm and Everett Cunningham's firm probably did 70 percent of the work in the valley. Everett worked for my dad before he went into business for himself.
"My father and E.A. Johnson, Mack and Wayne Johnson's grandfather, ran a little whiskey back in those days. Johnson was the ringleader, and he went to [jail] Atlanta for a while. My dad made a deal. If he would go to school, he wouldn't have to go to jail. So he went to embalming school at Cincinnati.
"Johnson had some money stashed away, and when he got out, they started the Long and Johnson Funeral Home on the 1300 block of Washington Street.
"In 1933, Dad opened his own place in the 1600 block and Johnson stayed in the 1300 block. In '48, Dad built the building on Rebecca Street. Then Dad and Johnson got back together, and Lyden Fisher came in with them, so it was Long Johnson and Fisher. In 1968, they built another one in Sissonville.
"I was born into it and didn't know anything else, so I stayed with it. I went to embalming school in Cincinnati in 1950. We had our preparation room at the Cincinnati General Hospital. We embalmed bodies for the black funerals. It didn't cost them anything except for the chemicals. We didn't believe anybody but black people ever died in Cincinnati. We embalmed 1,700 bodies for them.
"When I came out of school, I embalmed one body at the family home. My dad embalmed a lot of bodies in the home. He would embalm the bodies and put them in bed. When the family bought the casket, he would bring the casket and put the body in it. Lots of times, they had the funeral right there in the house.
"Dad died of a stroke in 1952. He was only 50. I ran the funeral home a couple of years for my mother, but Dad always told me he wanted me to have it, so I bought her out.
"I bought the place three times. First, I bought my mother out. Then we bought Johnson out, then Fisher. I paid more for it each time.
"When Fisher and I bought Johnson out, we dropped his name. Now, Long and Fisher on Rebecca Street is sub-leased. A corporation owns Long and Fisher at Sissonville and Pryor at East Bank, another funeral home I had.
"I sold out about 15 years ago. I was the first one to sell. They all thought I was an SOB for a while, but then they all followed. Those corporations laid down so much money, you couldn't turn it down.
"One of the only independents left now is Barlow-Bonsall, and that's the Johnson boys, Mack and Wayne. They're my nephews. Actually, their dad and I are first cousins. They call me Uncle Dick. The Cunningham place belongs to Mack and Wayne's cousin.
"There is no monotony in the funeral business. Every family is different. It's not an easy life. You'd have to get up at 1 or 2 in the morning and go to the home or hospital for a body. We didn't let anybody lay around.
"Older people died in the winter. The old saying is, if old people can live until the sap starts back up, they will be all right for another year. When the sap starts down, that's when they die.
"I didn't think much about old people dying because they had lived their lives. It always did bother me when some little kid died, because they never had a chance. Another thing that bothered me was when a man who was working and trying to make a decent living for his family got killed.
"I've gotten the wrong body twice. The medical school used to be up at Lewisburg. They had a body they weren't supposed to have. The hospital sent it to the medical school and sent me the body they were supposed to send up there.
"The family came in for the visitation. They walked up to the casket. I noticed they looked a little strange. They said, 'Dick, that's Dad's suit. And those are Dad's glasses. But that's not Dad.'
"I got hold of the hospital and got it straightened out. I sent the body I had to Lewisburg. Trouble is, I'd already embalmed him, and they didn't want that body embalmed.
"A boy was killed in the service and shipped in from the Army. I knew this family, but I didn't know this boy. We got him in shape, but the family said, 'Dick, that's not him.' I called the base again. They finally figured out that the body I had was a Marine from New York. They had sent my boy to New York. Here we had put an Army uniform on him and he was in the Marine Corps.
"I did all my own embalming. One man fell into a fire and burnt his face off and I restored it. Another fellow fell in his hog pen, and the hogs ate one side of his head off and ate his arms off. But I took care of that. It's an art, restorative art. I wasn't the best, but I wasn't the worst either. Hector Frame at Fidler Frame was probably the best in the valley.
"I've had everything happen. This one fellow burned up in a house, and his widow came in, and he'd had a leg replacement years ago, and he had a plate in there. She wanted that plate.
"One family had me put 40 dolls in a lady's casket. She had collected dolls all her life. She was a big woman. You talk about filling up a casket.
"I married Nancy 20 years ago. She had an old Corvette and a T-Bird, and we started collecting old cars. We have 19. I have a 1949 Buick Roadmaster flower car. You could put the casket in the back and the flowers would go on top of it.
"When we buried the Rev. Hobson Fisher of the Mountain Mission in the family cemetery above Sissonville, 102 flower girls went up the hill, each one carrying at least two floral pieces.
"They don't send flowers like they used to. Joe Bonsall put an end to that. They used to call him 'No Posie Joe.' He started the thing about donating to charity instead of sending flowers. The florists all hated him.
"I don't see how my life could have been much better. I'm not a multimillionaire, but I have enough to buy anything I want. I would go back in the funeral business if I could break the lease on my buildings. I'd make Wayne and Mack go in with me, somebody to do all the work.
"I don't like the way these chains treat people. We buried in the fourth and fifth generation. These chains don't give a damn. It's just figures, no personal touch. They thought they could come into West Virginia and run a business like they did in New York and Washington, D.C., where they have a lot of transient people. It doesn't work that way in West Virginia."
Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
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