Like many I learned of the death of Minnesota funeral home owner and operator William L. McReavy, Sr. on Christmas Day.

Here is Legacy.com’s announcement of that event.

The Washburn-McReavy brand goes back to the year 1857 in Minnesota which happens to be one year before Minnesota became a state.  Like many generational family firms still in business the brand started as a furniture manufacturer in Minneapolis who were many times tasked with the job of building a coffin for the deceased.

William L. McReavy, Sr.

William L. McReavy, Sr, age 92, took over the one-roof firm, near the edge of the University of Minnesota campus at the tender age of 17 when his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1949.  In 1963, McReavy made his first aquisition. . . today the company has 18 facilities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and is still family operated.

Here is the website of today’s Washburn-McReavy Funeral Homes.

An incredible mentor:  You can get the facts on the man I will always call “Mr. McReavy” from lots of places, but you will only get my feelings about the man here.

You see, and I’ve mentioned this in Funeral Director Daily before, at age 19 my father died of a sudden heart attack and if our generational funeral home was to go on it was up to me to carry on.  I had enrolled at the University of Minnesota and, eventually, like a lot of mortuary science students, I looked for a funeral home apartment to live in to save money, and learn part of the business, while going to school.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Turns out, that probably one of the luckiest days of my life was when three of us mortuary students secured an apartment at the Washburn-McReavy “Southeast location”.  Eventually, Mr. McReavy met me and while he never told me, I think he put 2 + 2 together and realized I was starting in the business much like he had — a young son of a deceased owner who was a little scared of what the future held for me.

I did what all students did — answered phones, went on death calls, washed the automobile fleet (over and over and over), but was also fortunate that Mr. McReavy kept his office in the Southeast location. . . and, as busy as he was, told me “If you ever need to talk about school or the funeral business, just come up to my office and we will visit.” . . . . I took him up on those offers and learned invaluable lessons, not only about the funeral business. . . but about life.

I owned and operated our small rural family business for 35 years and much of what I did to build business was modeled after the successful McReavy innovations at his business – the largest funeral home operation in the state.  One of the things I learned was about “building a brand”.  When Mr. McReavy bought a funeral home, the exterior was always remodeled to look like the other company facilities with a unique logo on the building. . . . Also, he had a distinctive look with his vehicles — they were all white in a day when hearses were always black.

One of the first things I did was develop a unique logo for our brand. . . a logo that is still in use today.  And, I put a distinctive look on our vehicles — they were all basic black but I added gold pinstriping to all of them so they stood out from other black vehicles.

There was so much I learned from Mr. McReavy that I know I would not have been as successful as I was without him.

And in kind of an odd twist of fate I kind of feel like I got to pay him back in some small measure in the later years.  Mr. and Mrs. McReavy were big fans and benefactors to the University of Minnesota and as fate would have it I was selected by the Minnesota Legislature to serve on the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota and it made Mr. McReavy so proud to finally have a funeral director serve on that board. . . a school which offers a 4-year degree in Mortuary Science through the University’s Medical School.

Because of that position, Mr. McReavy and I got to see each other at football games and hockey games and University fund-raising events and even in his advancing age he loved talking the “funeral business”.

I’m very fortunate because a lot of people have been very good to me over the years, but as I told Mr. McReavy’s son and daughter in a text message on Christmas Day, “Nobody has been more kind to me than your father”.

Funeral service has lost one of our pioneers — May God Bless the memory of William L. McReavy, Sr.

Related —  William and Kay McReavy receive the University of Minnesota’s Highest Honor

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