Hudson Valley Monuments: New Ownership, Same Commitment

Cortlandt Manor, NY – August 4, 2025 — A longstanding provider of memorials in northern Westchester County is entering a new chapter. Hillside Memorials—long known to funeral homes and cemeteries across the Hudson Valley—has rebranded as Hudson Valley Monuments following a change in ownership and the introduction of expanded support services for the profession.

Located directly across from Hillside Cemetery in Cortlandt Manor, Hudson Valley Monuments is now part of the Travis Monument Group, a multi-location memorial company with deep roots in the Tri-State area. The transition brings new investment, added technical capabilities, and consistent service backed by more than 100 years of industry heritage.

“Our team works closely with funeral directors, cemeterians, and municipal managers to deliver personalized, on-time memorials,” said Anthony Minozzi, Chief Operating Officer and fourth-generation memorialist. “We understand the operational demands of your work and see ourselves as an extension of your care to the families you serve.”

A Familiar Legacy, A Trusted Hand-Off

Originally founded in 1922 as George W. West Monuments and operating for decades under the Hanner family as Hillside Memorials, the firm has long been a resource for timely, respectful memorial design and installation. Upon her retirement in early 2025, Lorraine Hanner entrusted the business to the Minozzi family, long-time professional colleagues and leaders in regional memorial service.

Now operating as Hudson Valley Monuments, the company remains focused on supporting the operational needs of cemeteries and funeral homes while maintaining high-touch service for at-need and pre-need families.

Services That Support Funeral and Cemetery Partners

Hudson Valley Monuments has expanded its offerings to better align with the needs of deathcare professionals, municipalities, and religious institutions:

• Design-to-Approval Turnaround – Fast, collaborative memorial design using digital renderings, with family approvals coordinated when needed.
• Installation Coordination – Direct coordination with cemetery or funeral home staff to ensure placement and delivery are handled seamlessly.
• Historic and Civic Restoration – Stone cleaning, resetting, and conservation services for aging or damaged municipal and private markers.
• Custom and Oversized Memorial Solutions – Markers, headstones, columbaria, cremation memorials, and mausoleums tailored to site-specific needs.
• Showroom Experience (Coming Soon) – A new showroom for in-person design consults, reducing back-and-forth and simplifying family engagement.

Part of the Travis Monument Group

Hudson Valley Monuments is one of five companies within the Travis Monument Group, which provides regional scale and shared operational resources while retaining localized service:

• Travis Monuments – Nyack, NY
• Putnam County Monuments – Carmel, NY
• Orange County Monuments – Washingtonville, NY
• Rovelli Monuments – Danbury, CT
• Hudson Valley Monuments – Cortlandt Manor, NY

Each location is staffed by experienced artisans, project managers, and support professionals who understand the unique demands of funeral and cemetery service.

“This is more than a name change,” added Minozzi. “It’s a renewed commitment to serving as a reliable partner to funeral homes and cemeteries—delivering what’s needed, when it’s needed, with professionalism and care.”

Foundation Partners Group Launches Next Chapter with New Investment, New Ownership and Bold Plan for Growth

WINTER PARK, Fla. (August 4, 2025) – Foundation Partners Group, the second-largest funeral home provider in the U.S., today announced a transformational milestone in its growth journey, including new ownership, increased investment in its people and facilities, and a strategic reorganization to strengthen field operations and support care teams.

“These changes are bold by design,” said John D. Smith, CEO of Foundation Partners Group. “They reflect our commitment to operational excellence, a people-first culture, and a unified organization focused on growth and delivering exceptional care to families.”

A Stronger Foundation with Institutional Investors

The company is now backed by institutional investors who share its vision and commitment to the future of funeral care. These investors have committed fresh growth capital—effectively recapitalizing the business with modest leverage and strong liquidity.

“This is a vote of confidence in our team, our strategy and our future,” Smith said. “Our investors believe in what we’re building—and their investment gives us financial flexibility to grow, improve facilities and invest in our people.”

A new Board of Directors will be announced in the coming weeks.

Organizational Realignment to Empower the Field

To better support the 250+ funeral homes, cremation centers, and cemeteries across 21 states, Foundation Partners is realigning leadership and operations:

• Execution resources are moving from the Support Center to the field.
• ‘Centers of Excellence’ are being built within the Support Center to enable field success, and more effectively serve families.
• Data, analytics and technology are being elevated to drive smarter, faster decision-making and growth.

“As part of this shift, some leaders are transitioning out, and others are stepping into expanded roles,” Smith said. “We thank all those moving on for their contributions and are excited about the next generation of leadership driving performance where it matters most—in service to families.”

Investment in People, Facilities and Service

Smith emphasized that Foundation Partners is entering a new phase focused on organic growth, team development and modernizing infrastructure:

• Facility upgrades and transportation fleet improvements are underway.
• Care centers are being enhanced to improve workflow, and elevate service and consistency.
• Investments in training and tools will enable team members to serve with greater pride and effectiveness.

“After years of growth through acquisition, we are now building a high-performing operating company driven by shared values, empowered people and consistent standards of care,” Smith said. “The future is bright—and it starts with our people.”

About Foundation Partners Group 

Winter Park, Florida-based Foundation Partners Group is one of the industry’s most innovative providers of funeral services and the second-largest funeral home group in the country based on the number of families served. Foundation Partners owns and operates a network of over 250 funeral homes, cremation centers and cemeteries across 21 states. Our deep understanding of technology and customer experience-centered approach allows us to deliver truly innovative and compassionate care to the families we serve. Visit https://foundationpartners.com/ to learn more. 

Orlando, Florida, based Foundation Partners Group (FPG) caught some by surprise when it announced in a news release on Monday,  “a transformational milestone in its growth journey, including new ownership, increased investment in its people and facilities, and a strategic reorganization to strengthen field operations and support care teams.”

The news release did not disclose the name or names of the new owners.

You can read the entire press release from Foundation Partners Group here

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  As sometimes happens, I started getting phone calls last week wondering if I knew about anything happening at Foundation Partners Group.  One caller told me that he knew of several employee changes or loss of positions.  Another caller told me that Access Holdings, an institutional owner/investor for some time no longer had the company listed among its current portfolio of investments on their website.  Another caller wondered if I thought they would be putting some of their brands up for sale.

I made a couple of phone calls and learned that there would probably be an announcement of some sort soon.

From my point of view, Foundation Partners Group has, at least since Access Holdings became involved, been an experiment on the feasability of high propensity cremation businesses being able to follow the successful path of building a national organization through acquisition much like Robert Waltrip pioneered with Service Corporation International (SCI) and traditional funeral homes back in the 1960’s.  Waltrip’s method has proved a successful modus operandi, not only for SCI, but for other national, regional, and local funeral home consolidators who have emulated the recipe for over half a century.

The jury may still be out on the question of building a profitable consolidated national company based on high cremation percentage businesses.  It will be very interesting to see what path FPG takes from here on.

While I have no insight into the profitability or non-profitability of the company the CEO John Smith is quoted, “This is a vote of confidence in our team, our strategy and our future.  Our investors believe in what we’re building—and their investment gives us financial flexibility to grow, improve facilities and invest in our people.” 

Again, from my point of view, the difference that I see between the traditional funeral home consolidators and what Foundation Partners Group has done with a cremation-heavy business is that the historical financial margins for traditional funeral homes were enough to allow for acquisition payments as well as the build-out the supporting network of “corporate” employees and management.

The question that I have is “Is that service margin enough to do the same roll-up and build-out with a cremation-centric national company”?  I’ve always believed that the margin may be there for  an online Direct Cremation “only” business, but not necessarily with a more costly bricks-and-mortar “cremation-centric” operation.

Time will tell and time will tell on the next moves of Foundation Partners Group.

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

According to this January article that I recently read from the Carroll Times Herald of Manning, Iowa, the Ohde Funeral Home of that community has recently came into new ownership.  The newspaper article made note of the fact that the funeral home “recently began a new chapter of compassionate care and trusted service under the ownership of Tina Bartelson and Danielle Mikels.”

While there are a lot of ownership changes in the funeral home business at this time and there are many female owned funeral homes, I’m trying to remember if I can remember of a pairing of two non-related women funeral directors in the business partnership of a funeral home prior to this business announcement.  It’s probably happened but I don’t think I know of a particular funeral home business where I am aware of it.

And, I think it is great and a definite plus for our profession.  Not too long ago there were virtually no female licensed  funeral directors working.  My mortuary graduating class in 1980 had only one female graduate in our class of about 40 people.  That’s changed. . . as this 2023 article from the Portland (ME) Press Herald points out with its quote of the American Board of Funeral Service estimate that 72% of mortuary education students now being female.

I can also remember back in the 1980’s or early 1990’s in my area a male funeral supply sales representative died unexpectedly.  When he traveled his sales territory his wife many times accompanied him.  The position came open because of his death and the company named the wife as the successor.  At that time it was probably a risk to do so. . . but that company found an incredible sales person in her and I’m guessing that she was more successful than her husband was.

While there are many local and regional stories like this one national story that I am particulary fond of is that of Nira Mesker.  Ms. Mesker was the Controller for a Service Corporation International (SCI) owned supply company and when SCI decided to spin off that business, Kelco Supply in 1990, they offered it to Ms. Mesker.

As this history from the Kelco Supply website attests to, Ms. Mesker was quite an entrepreneur and grew the Kelco brand.  The greatly enlarged, family owned business is now led by Ms. Mesker’s daughter, Alicia Carr, and continues to grow its stature in Death Care.  I’m fortunate that I live in the same state as Alicia and know of the positives that she brings to Death Care and funeral service education.

I’ve also, thru Funeral Director Daily, met many great female executives and entrepreneurs in the Death Care business sphere.  One of them, Sarah Tepe, CEO of Crowne Vaults, was instrumental in convincing me that the publishing of Funeral Director Daily could be a very positive  forum for those people new to the Death Care business world.  I’m glad that I was encouraged by her and if you read Funeral Director Daily you can thank Sarah and some of her friends for keeping me going when I had only about 50 readers.

I’m guessing that Ms. Bartelson and Ms. Mikels will operate their funeral home with the same success that Alicia Carr and Sarah Tepe have done as pioneers in operating funeral supply companies in what once was a male-dominated profession.

Related — Ohde Funeral and Cremation Services website

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  As I look back in history I come to the realization that the United States usually gets things right. . . . but it generally takes a long time for us to get there.  For instance, Vermont became the first state to ban slavery in 1777 and the purchase of the Northwest Territory in 1783 banned slavery by the U.S. government in new territories, but it took a Civil War to ban the practice nationwide in 1865 — 88 years after Vermont got it right —  when the Civil War ended.

Or, the United States declared our independence in 1776 but didn’t give women the right to vote until 1919.  Or, even when I graduated from high school our school didn’t even have most sports for women. . . .about the only one was track and field.  At that time it seemed to me that females were expected to be cheerleaders, not athletes; nurses not doctors; and teachers not education administrators.

Title IX was passed in 1972 and gave this gender movement some legs.  And, I’m glad it did. . . . Matter of fact, during my tenure on the board I was among those that hired the first female president in the University of Minnesota history. . . .it only took about 170 years to get the University to that point!!!

When I look at American issues with that perspective I can understand why women were not invovled in funeral service for so long.  However, I’m glad to see them coming on board in droves now. . . . .it’s taken us a while, but it looks like Death Care is finally getting it right too!

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