A COMPLETE AND SUCCESSFUL LIFE

By Frederick A. Hurst

Funeral Home owner Howard Hill was bulging with pride as he described the history that led to his purchase of the old three-story Bell’s Funeral Home, which he has renamed “Howard K. Hill Funeral Services.” Located at 1287 Chapel Street in New Haven, Connecticut, in a neighborhood that was struggling to remain viable, Howard’s top down, inside and out renovation of the facility was welcomed by his neighbors.

Howard’s second-floor office is professional right down to the neat display of amenities his staff regularly provides to clients to the new casket display directly across from his desk that occupied half of his spacious office area. The mechanical curtain that would mask the display from top to bottom had not yet been installed but it was on order. Its purpose would be to allow the Funeral Director to make detailed funeral arrangements with the bereaved family and then to dramatically close the session with a press of a button that would raise the curtain to expose casket options to carefully prepared clients.

It was obvious that Howard Hill had given deep thought to how to best service his clients while they were immersed in the delicate emotional trauma surrounding the finality of death. The bereavement rooms were carefully recast to reflect Howard’s concern for his clients’ comfort. The third floor, once an attic, was carved into two modern offices and the entire facility is equipped with a sophisticated wireless computer network that connects all relevant locations and allows Howard and his staff members to remain in close communication and to maximize customer service, which is enhanced by his recently reconstructed website, which can be accessed at www.hkhfuneralservices.com.

Howard’s explanation for how he came to be one of the busiest Black funeral home owners in the greater New Haven community goes a long way to explain his success. “We have to take responsibility as Black people for excellence,” he said. “We tend to be grounded in mediocrity when the customer wants much more and won’t mind paying for it. I offer whatever it takes to satisfy my customers and they know it and they tell their relatives and friends.”

Howard Hill did not set out in pursuit of his current career. He had been playing the rhythm guitar since elementary school and by the time he graduated from high school he had earned a full scholarship to Berkeley School of Music. But, in 1986, before graduating, Howard fathered a child. It never occurred to him to do anything but accept the responsibilities of fatherhood. It was what he learned from his own parents while being raised in a tight-knit family with his three siblings.

Howard’s parents made personal responsibility an important part of the family value system and the siblings absorbed the message. Howard’s father supported the family by spending a lifetime working in a Windsor, Connecticut factory while his mother watched the home front. One brother, Reverend Jeffrey T. Hill, is now pastor of Archer Memorial AME Church in Windsor. A sister, Jody Hill-Lilly, works in South Windsor’s Department of Child and Family Services as the director of its training academy. And his brother, Brian, is a JAG (Judge Advocate General) stationed in Germany. So, when his son, Deshawn, was born on August 1, 1986, Howard dutifully skipped college and went to work in a factory to support him.

But, when the regional economy took a dive and factories began to close and Howard found himself out of a job, he decided to pursue a career direction over which he could have more control. Howard enrolled in Southern Connecticut State University and later attended embalming school from which he graduated in 1993. Wizened by his experiences and mature beyond his years, Howard was determined take time to learn the funeral business and to eventually buy his own funeral home.

Howard worked for a while with his uncle at Interborough Funeral Home in Brooklyn, New York, where he learned the fundamentals of the business. For the next ten years he worked at Keyes Funeral Home in New Haven. When Keyes sold the business, Howard made his big move. In 2004, he leased space within Bell’s Funeral Home in New Haven.

The owner of Bell’s Funeral Home was planning to eventually sell the business. He and Howard entered into a two-year agreement that allowed Howard to lease space within Bell’s to begin his own business. The agreement also gave Howard an option to buy at the end of the two years. Howard opened his business-within-a-business at Bell’s on July 1, 2004, the day the State licensed him, which also happened to be the day his daughter, Kendra, was born. Within two days, he received his first death call and within his first three months of operation he had five calls, an unusually high number for any new funeral home.

Howard’s initial good fortune was a bellwether of the success to come. By the time I met him in late 2007, he had purchased Bell’s outright, hired two fulltime funeral directors and a support staff, began implementation of a major building renovation plan, which was recently completed, and developed a range of client services that would make him one of the most successful funeral home owners in New Haven.

Howard learned that a funeral director’s role was more than preparing the deceased for burial and conducting funerals. As he sees it, his role is about being equally sensitive to the needs of the living and removing as many of the burdensome details from the mourning relatives and friends as possible, both in preparations for death and after death. It was with this in mind that Howard developed his “one stop shop.”

Accordingly, Howard Hill Funeral Services provides bottled water, flowers, food, programs, photography, musicians, singers, ministers, you name it. The funeral home will arrange flights, hotels, limousine service to and from the airport and, most of all, Howard and his staff keep in touch with families after the funeral, when they are most alone, and comfort them. And, at the end of each year, the funeral home holds a memorial service that brings all of the people who lost a loved one during the year together to discuss their feelings and remember their deceased.

Howard Hill is a strong supporter of the community. He offers free seminars on how to prepare for a death in the family and is partnering with various churches to provide the same. He takes out ads in most community programs and gives $1,000 scholarships to a variety of community organizations and donates money to many others. He calls his community involvement “planting seeds.”

And his efforts have proven fruitful. When interviewed in late 2007, Howard was on track to reach 200 funerals and, in a recent call he confirmed that business remains robust. He has been doing 16 to 22 funerals a month and even in an off month he will do ten. He averages up to 40% of the African-American market. And that’s not bad for the new kid on the block!

It is his well-structured, dedicated staff that makes it all possible. While Howard makes the funeral arrangements, he has hired a full-time, “pre-need” funeral director, who is responsible for counseling people about how to prepare for death before it becomes imminent. Besides counseling and conducting community workshops, she also sells them the appropriate burial insurance thus eliminating the often daunting family task of raising money to pay for a loved one’s funeral. A second full-time funeral director is responsible for embalming and otherwise preparing the deceased for burial. Howard also hired an office manager and two full-time funeral directors’ assistants.

Howard married Nancy Hill in 1998. They had Mathew in 2000 and Kendra in 2004. Nancy has a Master’s of Social Work and works as a school social worker in New Haven. Like his parents before him, Howard Hill has taken his family and work responsibilities seriously. He exemplifies a type of excellence at work and at home that serves as a model for anyone interested in a complete and successful life. n