Newspaper Clipping: Sullivan Brothers Mortuary, May 29, 2013
- Title
- Newspaper Clipping: Sullivan Brothers Mortuary, May 29, 2013
- Accession Number
- 2026.38.1.11
- Accession Date
- 16 June 2026
- Accession Creator
- Meadow Knapp
- Description
- The Greer Citizen newspaper clipping of an interview with Warren and Maurice Sullivan from the Sullivan Brothers Mortuary
- Contributor
- Amanda Bradford
- Date
- May 29, 2013
- Format
- Small newspaper clipping taped to the main newspaper clipping
- Storage Location
- Box 33, Folder #2
- Text
-
SULLIVAN: Business has to remain aware of practices of different religions
FROM PAGE ONE
Ing and people know about it all the way from here to California. I've had one TV show to call me about it. I had one young lady doing her thesis on it."
Maurice's grandfather wanted to include the drive-by window option so people who were un-able to get out of their car could still have the op-tions of viewing the body to pay their respects. The building has drive-by win-dows on both sides. While the windows have been utilized, Maurice, who's worked at the mortuary since 2004, said he hasn't yet experienced a service involving them.
For Warren and Maurice, their job isn't only hold-ing funerals and burials of loved ones, as they re-fer to them, but it's also about raising community awareness and offering counseling.
"It's just talking to peo-ple," Warren said. "You'd be surprised at the people who've lost someone and they just need someone just to talk to. We're not counselors, trained coun-selors, but we are counsel-ors in a certain aspect of this."
"We're out in the commu-nity. We're continuously seen in the community, so it's a good thing because you always want people to recognize you with your business," Maurice said. "Whether you're at work or out having a good time with your family, brand-ing comes from people knowing who you are see-ing you over and over. So I don't mind taking a little bit of work home with me even if it's just wearing the last name Sullivan ev-erywhere I go. It's always good to see somebody smile, that lets me know that something I did they remember me and what I did for them."
As a funeral director, Maurice is a part of the
'You'd be surprised at the people who've lost someone and they just need someone just to talk to.'
Warren Sullivan
Funeral director/mortician
Aftercare the mortuary of-fers, which they call the yellow rose.
"Aftercare is where we have families come back in or go out to different locations and sit down just like this and families tell us how is the loss, how are you doing now, how do you plan on moving forward. And (we) kind of help them move forward in the days, weeks, months to come and listen to them talk about how their loss has effected their life," he said.
"It also extends into the schools. We do a lot of ca-reer days where we go into the schools, listen to the young adults talk about their experiences," Mau-rice said. "Because death doesn't just effect older, it effects younger as well. And, that's where a lot of great experiences that I've had doing this have come from."
Through his experience with the aftercare and his involvement with career days at schools, Maurice's favorite and least favorite aspects of his job are ex-posed.
"To see that and listen to them (children) talk about their loss, it kind of brightens their day a little bit better because they're the future. We've the past. You have to get them involved early.
"The biggest question I kind of Have to take a step back with is, they ask me do I ever cry. They ask me is it scary. And I have to sit down and tell them that I have a 1-year-old son, and it's hard for me to dress him because usually when I'm dressing people it's for the last time. And when he's sitting there looking up at me, even to this day, that's the hardest thing for me to do."
Each profession has its high and low points for people involved, and the funeral industry is no ex-ception. For Warren and Maurice, children's deaths are the hardest to handle.
"You'll probably find that everybody's least fa-vorite is the same, a child's funeral or having a funeral where the family didn't get to say goodbye to a loved one," Maurice said. "Those are the two hardest funer-als there are."
In addition to talking to clients in preparation for a funeral and following up afterward, the job also requires educating people on their funeral options and helping them to pre-pare beforehand.
"We're living in an eco-nomical time period now that a lot of people are not prepared for death, no insurance, no funds to bury loved ones, so a lot of times we have people just call, 'How should we go about doing this?' These are some of the things, or some of the questions that we run against on a day-to-day basis," Warren said.
Warren, who has been involved in funeral servic-es since 1978, said when he first began in the busi-ness, not having money for funeral services was un-heard of and fewer chose cremation over burial in the South.
"The economics part of it has changed. Cremation has changed. When I first started doing this we may have one a year, now it’s unreal," he said. "people have not stopped loving their loved one, and they still want to get them bur-ied and they still want to have a service to celebrate that life. But like I stated, it comes down to dollars and cents. Some can af-ford it and a lot more can-not, and that has really changed since I started."
Another aspect of being involved in funeral servic-es is remaining aware of various religions and the funeral traditions of each.
"I'm of Baptist faith, nut we've served many differ-ent religions. And you can kind of see the little bit of religion in every body that comes in even though we don't go to the same church," Maurice said.
"You have to know the religions because every re-ligion is different."
Growing up around the funeral industry, Mau-rice said he was different from his friends in that he wasn't afraid of death. But, despite handling death more than most, being in-volved in funeral services doesn't make the loss of a loved one any easier.
"A loss of a loved one is just the loss of a loved one, I don't care who you are. We all have feelings. God has put that in us. And I don't think there's any medium or anything that says, 'OK, since you do this every day you should be able to get through this better.' No, I don't think so," Warren said. "We understand it. We understand this is life and death comes along with life, so we are better prepared for it, but I don't think that we minimize it any more or any less than someone else who's going through this."
Patience and strength are the two qualities Mau-rice believes anyone going into funeral services needs to have.
"Patience because every body who comes and sits at this table, you don't know what their experi-ence with the loss is, how they're going to come off at you. And some people sit down and laugh with you and you'll have some peo-ple who'll come down that really don't know how to express their emotions. So if you don't have patience, there's really no need for you to sit back here at this table and try and take care of loved one," he said. "Strength because they're looking for you to be the strong person in their life during that time and loss, they're looking for a lot of laughter and a little bit of tender and care."
"To me this is a ministry. It's no longer a 9 to 5 job to me. Burying someone's loved one, it becomes a ministry because of the fact that everything is dif-ferent," Warren said. "It's always gonna be different. If it becomes a cookie cut-ter, I don't think I would want to be in this type of business because it is personal. Life is personal and death should be per-sonal."
[email protected] | 877-2076
WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2013 THE GREER CITIZEN
Part of Newspaper Clipping: Sullivan Brothers Mortuary, May 29, 2013