By Joey Haas
Transcript from our video interview with Dolores and Peter Urban at Urban Funeral Home.
Heather:
Welcome and thanks for joining us at Funeral Innovations. In these videos, we chat with industry leaders and discuss marketing trends, tips, and technology. And we talk about how digital marketing helps you serve your families better. My name’s Heather, I’m the marketing director here at Funeral Innovations.
Joey:
And I’m Joey, I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations
Heather:
Today, our guests are Dolores and Peter Urban from Anton B. Urban Funeral Home. Hi guys, how are you?
Peter:
Doing well, thanks.
Heather:
We’re here to talk with them a little bit and see what they’ve been doing that’s successful at their funeral home, and maybe talk a little about what’s been going on with them since the pandemic hit, what’s working and what’s not, but to start us off, will you guys just tell us a little bit about who you are and your business?
Peter:
So I’m Peter Urban Jr. and I’m a third generation funeral director, a fourth funeral director in the family. I first started out here in 2001 working for my father when I was at a teenager doing removals and odd jobs and working funerals. And then as I went through my schooling 2008, 2009 ish, kind of fell into college career when I started working here full time and became a licensed funeral director and embalmer in 2011. I’m married to my wife, Kelly and I have a daughter Meredith and here at the funeral home, I kinda am a Jack of all trade of trying to get things done. And ultimately my goal is to kind of just provide the best quality service that I can to our families.
Heather:
And how about you Dolores?
Dolores:
Oh, I’m, I’m married to Skip Urban who is the supervisor here at the funeral home. I am a nurse by education. Skip and I met at a volunteering for a local funeral, our local ambulance squad when we were teenagers we both came from families that were big into community service. His father and my mother were members of the Ambler Ambulance and we met doing volunteer work there. I went to school for nursing and graduated with a degree in nursing in 1981. And we were married in 1982. We have three children. Peter is our middle son. We have a daughter and Peter, and a son that’s younger than Peter. Peter is the only one that’s in the business. Although our younger son does come and help us out on occasion when need be. He’s been doing a lot of that lately though. The business itself was started in 1950 by my father-in-law, his name was Anton and my mother-in-law Gertrude went back to school and got her license. When my husband was starting school they wanted to transition out of Philadelphia where they had a funeral home into the suburbs of Philadelphia which is Amber, where we are now. And in the early 1980s, they did sell the business in Philadelphia and primarily out of Ambler, which they started here in 1964. Skip’s father died suddenly in 1988 when Skip was in his early thirties. And he and his mom were kind of left alone to try and make sure that the business survived. And until Peter came along, I joined the business in 2007, was working in nursing. I worked in nursing for 35 years until 2016. And in 2007 started just coming in and helping out with the books and wherever I could be was needed. And by 2016, it was a full time job plus, and I gave up my outside nursing, but I have found that nursing really has brought me full circle in this job and feel like it brings me a lot of skills that I need to take care of aftercare, which is my, my baby. If you want to say I have something that I really enjoy doing here, that would be it.
Joey:
Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for, for both sharing that story. So standing out in your community is obviously really important to you guys, and, you know, it’s at the top of your website, in fact. So would you guys mind telling us about why that’s important to you and how you do that?
Peter:
We take great pride in the community that we have here. Kind of, as you heard through our story there, that you know, my daughter is now the fifth generation to grow up, literally within one block of this building, whether it was ours at the time or not. So, so we have a long history of, of being here in the Ambler area. The presence we present isn’t always out loud and upfront. It has some subtle, subtle parts to it. Some of the things of just being involved in community, my father being a volunteer firefighter for over 40 years to just some of the simple things of bringing to the beauty where we take great pride in meticulously maintaining our landscaping and our flowers just that the number of people over the years that, you know, say, Oh, yeah, you’re your guys, you’re building. It always looks so nice. It looks so great. And when they compare to just other types of businesses, like, you know, a major bank across the street, which, you know, come spring time is ordained the lines and anything else. Yeah, it’s, it’s great to know that people notice that stuff. Not just the work that we do but in our community, we, we do participate in a lot of different organizations. One of them being rotary, which we help in the different events that they do between their music fests and other street fairs, that then helps raise money that then gets turned around and donated back to the people in the community. In the recent times here with everything that’s been going on the, the ability to help the people has been very important to us. And little did we know, as I came into the the funeral home a number of years ago, that some of the things that I was, you start bringing in with the technology of recording services and then services of that nature that, you know, we did a little love that over the years, but then suddenly when we were told only 10 people were allowed to come to a funeral we were able to very quickly get up and say, here, look, we can record the services that way people can still be able to see and attend and hear the words that are spoken, that you can still have a presence of more than just the 10 people standing in my building.
Heather:
So have you seen success with that then Peter?
Peter:
I have it, it all depends on how you measure success sometimes. For some people, it is the fact of just being able to see it and watch it again, because you know, so often you hear people say like, you know, the funeral was just a total fog to them and they don’t remember, and then being able to go back and hear people that stood up and said things again, it is able for them to bring back those stories. You know, some people want it shared publicly, you know, on, on the website, other people went, oh, no, I just want aunt Mary and Florida to be able to see it. So I, you know, it’s not about everybody, it’s just about this one important person. So yes, there has been some success. But for some people, it’s just the fact of that we’re just able to go, yes, we can do that for you. Where there are many other places out there that are just kind of other funeral homes that just put it back on the family again and say, oh yeah, if you want to record it, go ahead. You do it.
Heather:
So it’s nice to have that in sort of your your suite of offerings to families in case they need that as part of the service.
Peter:
Yes. Yeah. It’s great. And you know, the fact of little did I know, you know, seven, eight years ago when I first dabbled with a camera standing in a cemetery for someone that was out of town, that it would come back to be a great resource to fall back on again.
Heather:
Yup. Yup. So it moving away from the pandemic and maybe implications from that a little bit, I know you guys are a member of OGR the international order of the golden rule. And would you tell us a little bit about what OGR is and what your role there is?
Peter:
Sure. So OGR international winner of the golden rule. It’s an organization we belong to since the late eighties. My father is a past president and I am a current board member and also chair of the young professional council. And over the years OGR has brought many great things to us, that different education that Isn’t always accessible from the other associations out there, whether it be from the local to the national level.
Heather:
So it’s an organization that helps educate funeral directors?
Peter:
Correct. It’s an association of independently owned funeral homes, primarily in North America, but with additional ones that are overseas. It’s enabled us to bring business practices from friends that we have made in other areas. And one of those things of they’ve started some of these business practices that we’ve been able to then pick up because they’ve already jumped the first couple of hurdles and learn where those shortfalls work. And so it’s great that you can have a friend somewhere that says, Hey, you should, you should try this. And it’s just, it’s like a turnkey where you’re good to go right away. You don’t have to learn the same stumbles that some others have. And with the friends that we have made, one of those old great comforts that we have had with our families is many are snowbirds in this area and go down to Florida area and they always say, well, what happens if, what happens? And when without saying, you know, Oh, I’ll just call someone to come and help and get you back that I’m able to say, well, you’re in central Florida, I’m going to call my friend, Roger, who I saw just last month at a convention, you know, and he’ll be able to help me that, that I’m not just calling some stranger that I’m calling somebody that that I know and trust like anybody. Yeah. You can keep that personal connection for the family over that time and space. Yeah.
Joey:
Great. So kind of, I know you had briefly mentioned using concerts and events as community outreach. And maybe you could take a moment to dive into that a little bit more and, and talk about how you let your community know about these events and what are top, like, what are some of the topics and what’s worked and what hasn’t?
Dolores:
Well, I’m going to take that to that question for you. In 2009, so two years after I started working here, my mother died and I suddenly was on the other side of the table and realized how much, you’re in a fog, how much you, you, you can’t think in the moment and, and how much your heart is just aching afterwards for not just days, but weeks and months. So it was really with my mom’s death, that I was determined to make sure that this was going to become part of what we was a standard of care for us. And so we are a small mom and pop shop. So it’s not, it’s not easy for us to have great big giant events and bring in hundreds of people. So what we really do is we have two events that we have our staples that we do. One is every fall, and we call that the coping with the holidays. And it’s a three-week program that we do two hours, three weeks in a row. And we cover topics like grief is not an illness, adjusting to a new normal, coping with a holidays. And we invite people. We have flyers in our, when we make arrangements, that’s that that’s put in, you know, it’s from one year to the next, we pretty much, as soon as we identify the, the actual dates, a flyer is going to out to our families on that. So it’s offered every year and we’ve had from 50 people in the room to 60 people in the room and very proud of the fact that many people have sent church showers, the communities, the people, the resources, the bereavement teams, and I’ve literally taken our program and gone back to their own churches and offered similar topics. It’s, facilitated by a grief counselor. I’ve always participated in the program next to her one. I learned something from her every year. And I learned from the people that come into the room. People are amongst friends that that are in the same position. And over a course of three weeks, they bond and people have made lifelong friends. Some people come back year after year. The other program that I started pro I’ve been doing the other since 2009 for about six years now, we’ve been doing what I call healthy grief. We started by calling it, staying healthy through grief. It’s kind of, the topic has just kind of changed to try and bring in more people, but we focus on caregivers. And the bereaved in, in one group.
Heather:
When you say caregivers, Dolores, you mean people who are caring for their ailing loved ones?
Dolores:
That is correct. I have found through doing some, I don’t want to say call them speaking again, drinks, but small workshops at our local YMCAs. I did the challenge. It’s some rewards of caregivers. And I have had people that have come into our programs that have come and it’s because their loved one is on hospice, or they have Alzheimer’s. And they’re there because they heard about this program and they’re grieving their loved one who hasn’t even died yet. And the dynamics between the two groups is just, it’s a circle. The people that are caregiving often become the bereaved sometimes in the near future, and sometimes it’s years, but those that are bereaved have often been the caregivers before. So the tips that they can share back and forth, there’s just a button. And that happens in that room that I can’t break and I don’t want to break it. I just have found that it works. And we do everything from the current events that are touching people today to a nutritionalist and a exercise. Certified a facilitator, works with me for that, and we do heart health and we do stretching and balancing mindful meditation. And that is ongoing. I should say, when we do it every month, I typically have taken off the summer. Of course, none of this has happened now since March. So it’s, that’s then a challenge. And I guess we can go back to that on a pandemic. We’ll know what we’ve done differently, but I, I have just found, even if it’s only six people that come in the room, those six people leave. So appreciative it’s worth every moment of my time.
Heather:
That’s wonderful. So how are you adapting those opportunities during the pandemic?
Dolores:
Well, a lot of help through, you know, Funeral Innovations, using social media email campaigns, where people were providing that information out to people in newsletters and via social media, Facebook that people sign up for and get series of, of information that can help them. And it really depends on what’s speaking to them and what they’re looking for. I think one of the most effective ones was grieving from a distance that Funeral Innovations helped put together. And it was, it was very good. I got a lot of feedback of people that really appreciated that information.
Heather:
Well, thanks for the tip of the hat to us. We really do this more to provide help for the funeral homes out there. Do you guys, have you morphed any of these into an online experience or into a rather a video groups? Have you done any Zoom conferences or anything like that?
Dolores:
Well we have not specifically done any video conferences. Unfortunately, the people that a majority of the people that I, that have been coming in the door now are not in a position to be able to do that. I’ve done it more with just picking the old fashioned way. I picked up the phone and called them to say hello, I send them emails. And some of them call each other, you know, they’ve made friendships over the course of the last couple years and they, they keep in touch that way. Hopefully I didn’t typically do it during the summertime. But I’m hoping that if we go green in the near future, I, I could send out an email and just say, Hey, let’s just meet in the parking lot, somebody evening in and just say hello in September, we’ll be able to pick up where we left off. Otherwise we will have to adapt to different techniques.
Joey:
Yeah. so you, you talked a little bit earlier about how you reach out to caregivers and and to bereaved through your events, your spring time event. Or I don’t know if it was spring, but you said your second event. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe other ways you reach out to those people and, and how, you know, just talk a little bit more about that
Dolores:
You know, I work closely with the churches. I help facilitate a widow and widower a group through our, our two local churches open to the community again on hold at the moment that hopefully we will get back to a little more normal on that. I guess we do the fly, you know, the flyers. For one way, we have people that come in and do we’ve had storytellers. I’ve had people that have come in and done just heartwarming, talk on grief to gratitude people that have had been bereaved themselves and have written books coloring. We have somebody local, a grief therapist, local, who, who has written a book on healing through coloring, and you know how to book for that. Again, a lot of it is just face to face talking and word of mouth from one person to the next that things are available. And I’m putting things out there on social media. We have a website that has a lot of great resources on it. And our goal isn’t necessarily that we’re providing everything. Our goal would be that we know where to get information. So when we meet people and realize different situations, we know how to go reach out into the community and find what will help them specifically, because we can’t help everyone. Personally, you have to rely on other people in other services. So knowing what else is available into the community and not being afraid to send somebody else to, to another somebody else’s program is a big part of being a good person and doing things for the right reasons. Yeah.
Heather:
So I heard, you mentioned all sorts of different ways that you reach out to your community with events, with talks, with pamphlets, with email, with social media all that kind of creates that message that you’re there to help them. And you’re also willing to refer them from a community and relationship with your funeral home. Do you find that this builds trust with your community, reaching them in all these different places and offering these services?
Dolores:
I hope so. How about you, Peter?
Peter:
Yeah, that’s it there’s, you know, being in part of this community for so long as we do get very lucky in the aspect of a high percentage of the people that we see, we know in some way shape or form whether it’s because grandma played cards with them or because they owned whatever other big business and down here for generations. There’s always been a great connection with the people in town here.
Heather:
Do you guys, do you guys think you could talk a little bit about what channel of reaching your community has been the most challenging?
Dolores:
You know, that that’s hard to say, you know, like we have a bank across the street from us and, you know, literally people come through the drive and they have to stare at our building. And it’s, it’s hard to imagine I, when people come in the door because they need our services and tell us they’ve been going into that bank for 10 years and never realized it was almost across the street. And I think that’s like, you just think, I can’t imagine that, but I realize, but people have this well around them. They don’t want to think about this topic, which is where some of our challenges come in because promoting our business is a very touchy, I would say, advertising people don’t want to hear from us in all honesty. They don’t, they, they, they want us here when they need us, but they’re, they’re not, they’re not out seeking our, our services on a regular, on a regular basis.
Heather:
Yeah. They went to avoid thinking about it, for sure. I’ve, I’ve seen that across the country, in every community that we have firms and but they sure do appreciate it. You being there when they do need you, is the other thing that I’ve heard. We have one final question that we ask all of our guests, and that is what is the most important thing that you’ve learned serving in this industry?
Peter:
I think that one of the important things I learned is that for many of the people, it can be just one small thing as part of the service or a momento or a picture or something that can make that huge emotional difference to them in, in celebrating a funeral service. So you always try to focus and find that one thing that you can give the family to make it special. And you know, you always do your best.
Heather:
I haven’t heard that answer before Peter. I love that. Is that something that you like, do you ask for that thing or do you just really pay attention and then sort of get a feel for what that’s going to be?
Peter:
It’s more of like you try and you don’t ask you kind of try and get that feel for it because oftentimes you find that if you’re able to surprise them with that small token in some way it has a much greater impact on them than they know it’s coming.
Heather:
Yeah. Yeah. What about you Dolores?
Dolores:
Oh, for me, I, I say there’s two words that come to mind and I say it from both the nursing aspect of my life and from, you know, service is grace and patience. Grace-wise, I just say, we all say things that are well meaning, but it doesn’t always come out the right way. And so if we can help people, when they walk away to realize they’re not alone and to take people in good faith at what they say is trying to help them, they not quite as offended by stupid things that they come out of people’s mouths. And, and, and that little thing can be mean the world to one person and absolutely put somebody on the floor for another. And I give that example of, for a child, you know, somebody will say you have another angel in heaven. Well, an angel in heaven, you know, someone might feel comfortable about feeling like, Oh gosh, yes, my child’s an angel. The other one would say, I don’t, I don’t want that. And the other piece of me that with patience is just that, you know, we all, we all experienced deaths differently. And so I wrote down that I just working in nursing and funeral service has forced me to stay focused on perspective of those that I serve on their perspective, so that, that I’m here and hopefully able to meet them in a middle ground so that, you know, that I’m not over pushing myself, that someone needs a support afterwards because not everybody needs support and might have a really good family background and other people, you know, we, it’s hard for us to understand how you couldn’t be prepared for my 98-year-old grandmother to die. You know, we look at that, like, how could you say you’re not prepared, but they aren’t. And so to be patient with them and, and, and meet them in between is is something that I try very hard to do.
Joey:
That’s awesome words of wisdom there. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. And that’s going to be it for us. So thank you so much, Dolores and Peter, we really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Tends, Tips, and Technology. We’ll be posting this video on our blog, on our YouTube channels, and you’ll be able to access it on our Facebook feed, so feel free to check back there. And then we’ll be back with another show, so check back in with us next week. If you’re watching this back if you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone that you’d like to hear from in an interview, make sure to comment down below and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Have a great day. Thanks you guys.
Peter:
Thank you. Bye.
Heather:
Thank you.
