Boats, motorcycles next to caskets: New Kensington funeral home personalizes services
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Editor’s note: Building the Valley tells stories of businesses big and small and the employees who make them special. If you know of any standout employees, bosses or companies with a great story to tell, contact reporter Madasyn Lee at mlee@tribweb.com.
Ross Walker grew up thinking living with dead people was normal.
The son of a funeral director, Walker spent part of his childhood living above his family’s funeral home in New Kensington. He was accustomed to seeing bodies on display and caskets in the basement.
He realized his family was different than others when he was visiting a friend’s house one day. He asked where the caskets were.
“His mother said to me, ‘What are you talking about, little Ross? You have the funeral home, not us,’” said Walker, now 64. “I said, ‘I thought everybody had caskets in their basement.’ I thought everybody did because we did.”
Walker is the owner of Ross G. Walker Funeral Home. The business handles memorial and funeral arrangements for close to 200 families a year.
He works at the funeral home with his son Ross “Cubby” Walker and six other employees. The Walkers are on call at all hours.
“It just never stops because people die all times of the day, all days of the year, including holidays,” the elder Walker said. “You might be in a joyous situation yourself, and then all of a sudden you’re talking to people that (are) traumatized. You have to try to empathize and get everybody together and figure out what you’re going to do.”
In more than 60 years in business, the Walkers have arranged funeral services for people of all religious backgrounds at the funeral home, people’s homes, churches, community halls, fellowship halls, parks and the shore of the Allegheny River.
“It’s always interesting for us to see all the different funerals that we handle, from Catholic funerals to Jewish. We’ve had Muslim funerals. We’ve had Baptist funerals,” Ross Walker said. “Just very interesting to see all the variations and the different beliefs people have. No two funerals are the same. Every funeral is different and everyone grieves differently.”
The Walkers know how to personalize a funeral. They have decorated the funeral home with things a deceased person loved and put items that would be a comfort to them and their family members in their caskets.
One man liked to gamble, so the Walkers made the funeral home look like a casino with banners and pictures of the man playing slot machines. For a dance teacher, they displayed one of her dresses and photographs of her dancing as a child. A man enjoyed riding his motorcycle, so they parked it next to his casket. Another man liked to fish, so into the funeral home came his 12-foot-long boat, complete with the outboard motor and all of his fishing regalia.
They have buried people with their pets, cellphones, flashlights, hearing aid batteries, bowling balls, fishing rods, guns, whiskey, beer, notes from grandchildren and pieces of hair, and have spread the ashes of people who were cremated in forests, fields, lakes, ponds and rivers.
“We try to give people what they want when it comes to the funeral because we’re dealing with the child usually of a parent and they know their mother or dad, they know what they loved during their life, what they wanted to do,” Ross Walker said.
The Walkers live in Upper Burrell, about 6 miles from the Freeport Road funeral home. The business first opened along New Kensington’s Fourth Avenue in 1954 and moved to Freeport Road in 1961.
Cubby Walker began working at the funeral home on Oct. 1, 2018, exactly 40 years to the day his dad started working there.
“It’s really nice to work with my dad and see how he does business and critique how I work,” said Cubby Walker, 24.
Ross Walker said there have been instances where he has been rattled in dealing with a death. Usually those are violent deaths or the deaths of people he knew.
Walker recalled the death of a friend 15 years ago. He saw the man on the street in New Kensington. They talked. The man looked fine. Two hours later, the man’s wife called Walker to tell him he had died.
“About once a year you get jolted a little bit,” Walker said.