When Jeff Smith decided it was time to take the family funeral business into its third generation of family ownership, he was surprised to find his late father, John, slow-walking the idea.
“I graduated college from the University of Arkansas in 1997 and was going to go to mortuary school,” Smith said. “I had worked at the funeral home during the summer in high school and in college, and really, my dad and I both thought this was the direction I would go. Well, my dad redirected me. He said, ‘I think you’d be better off to go get a [Master of Business Administration],’ so I did, and when I graduated with my MBA, we were talking about what I was going do next.
“He said, ‘Well, I don’t think you should come back into the business right now. You would learn a lot more from working for someone else. You need to figure out if this is really what you want to do, and the employees will respect you more if you go work somewhere else. They won’t think I just handed it to you.”
At that point in the story, Smith began to chuckle as he approached the punch line.
“Then he said, ‘Last, but certainly not least, I want you to go make your mistakes on somebody else’s dime,’” Smith said, as the chuckle rounded into a hearty laugh.
The younger Smith detoured into the mortgage business for a few years and he became very successful, but when his father called to ask if he was still interested in taking over the family firm, the wisdom of the elder was apparent. Despite experiencing a booming mortgage market, Smith was ready to come home.
Jeff Smith with his father, John (Photos provided by Smith Family Funeral Homes)
“I remember when I was young, my dad really taught me the importance of, hey, in our business we serve everybody,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much money they have or what street they live on. What matters is they’ve lost a loved one and they’re grieving, and we’re going to do everything we can to take care of that family.”
It is hard to imagine today, when the company has expanded into nine locations, just how much of a gamble it was when Jeff’s grandfather, Clifford opened the original funeral home in 1955, particularly since he had no experience in the business whatsoever at the time —but then, Clifford Smith had overcome steeper obstacles before through sheer force of will.
“My granddad’s background is pretty interesting,” Jeff said. “He was born in 1910, and there were, I believe, nine kids in the family. During the Depression, he took off hoboing and looking to find work. Times were tough all across the board. Well, one time when he was back home, a guy pulled him aside and said, ‘Clifford, you’re too smart to be doing this. You need to go to college, and if you don’t go to college, you’re going to end up either dead or in jail.’ My granddad took that to heart, and he went to Russellville to Arkansas Tech or whatever it was called at the time. He didn’t know any different; he walked right into the chancellor’s office and said, ‘I need to go to school, and I need a job.’”
Waved off, Clifford kept coming back until, finally, the chancellor caved, giving him a job on the grounds crew to get him out of his office. Smith earned an associate degree and then went to Fayetteville, where he finished his bachelor’s degree in agriculture and met Jeff’s grandmother, who was also a student there. In time, Clifford would establish farmers’ co-ops from one end of the state to the other before feeling the urge to start something for himself.
“At that time, there was only one funeral home in North Little Rock, and his buddy convinced him it needed another one, so my granddad decided to start one,” Jeff said. “That is the only case I’ve ever heard of somebody starting a funeral home that had never worked in a funeral home.”
That meant big changes for John and his older sister, then about 12 and 13, respectively.
“The way my dad remembered it, my granddad came home one day and said, ‘Son, we’re going to move. We’re going to sell your pony and give away your dog because we’re starting a funeral home, and we’re going to live above the funeral home,” Jeff said. “My dad thought his world had come to an end.”
Whatever trauma John felt over the loss of his pets, it did not dissuade him from immersing himself in and eventually taking over and refining the family business. In Jeff’s estimation, John was the ideal analytical counterweight, lending operational focus to the big picture dreamed up by his father before him.
“My granddad was the entrepreneur who got the business started, and then my dad refined it,” Jeff said. “Grandad was a serial entrepreneur and a people person, for sure, but Dad and my mom, Kay, both taught me the best lessons about business and relationships and doing everything with excellence. If you’re going to offer a service, make sure that what you’re providing is the very best that you can provide.
“Still to this day, we have a great reputation because we take such good care of people. That was a lesson I learned from my parents, you know; as an owner, our No. 1 responsibility is to take care of our employees and our staff, and if we take care of them, they will take care of all of our customers.”
While Jeff absorbed and applied all of his parent’s lessons through the years, he also inherited a heaping tablespoon of his grandfather’s entrepreneurial zeal. Shortly after joining the company for good in 2006, Jeff spearheaded its first expansion.
“We’ve never gone out asking to buy funeral homes, every one of them has been because somebody called us and asked us to continue their family legacy or continue their business,” he said. “When we bought Westbrook in 2008, and then my wife and I bought the funeral homes from my parents at the start of 2010, we just kept getting phone calls over the next decade.
“That’s been good for business, don’t get me wrong, but I think one of the things that I’m most proud of is we’ve never let anybody go when we acquired a funeral home. The vast majority of the employees would say they loved the previous owners that they worked for, but they also really love working for us.”
Today, the company is firmly established in Arkansas, serving hundreds of families per year each with the same compassionate, insightful service at their time of loss. Smith had continued his father’s legacy of innovation, too, with one of the latest examples being Aftercare by Smith. The service helps surviving family members navigate estate closure and myriad other details following someone’s death, regardless of which funeral home they used for the disposition of their loved one.
The team at Smith Family Funeral Home.
The company also keeps up with trends in final arrangements, serving new generations seeking more and more individualized services.
“Especially as the baby boomers have come into the picture, they’re driving the decision-making process, and they want everything personalized,” he said. “The funeral business has certainly experienced that with one of the first and largest trends being an increase in the choice for cremation. Half of our services now involve cremation, and I think the reason for that is some people see burials as the old way or a stuffy way or certainly an expensive way. We’ve also seen a big rise in the term ‘celebration of life’ over ‘funeral.’ That definitely reflects the attitude and behavior of baby boomers.
“Services can look as traditional or as unique as the family wants. We’re seeing funerals that look more like a wake or an open mic night. We’re seeing a trend of moving more towards evening services instead of during the day. We’ve held services outdoors. We’ve held them at the Clinton Library [in Little Rock]. Personalization doesn’t have to be all that different; it may just be in terms of people having friends get up and talk or more music. It doesn’t have to be wild to be personalized.”
The fourth generation of Smith family ownership is still yet to be determined, Smith said. As his father did for him, Jeff and his wife, Leslie, are allowing their children to spread their wings. If the career breeze carries them back home, great, but it will be a course they set for themselves, he said.
In the meantime, there are more families to serve and more lives to commemorate, treated with the dignity and attentiveness that have become the company’s most enduring trademark.
“Something we really talk about in our funeral homes is the whole purpose of funerals is beyond just the disposition of the body,” he said. “We find ourselves reminding people, you know, you can’t skip grieving. Grief doesn’t go away; it’ll wait for you as long as it takes.
“Funerals are for the living, a chance for everybody to come together and stop and remember a loved one, and it doesn’t matter if 2,000 people show up or 200 or 20. What matters is that we celebrate the life of your loved one properly and that the people who love you have the opportunity to come and tell you they’re sorry for your loss. It’s really about your community coming around you and surrounding you with love to help you celebrate that life.”
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