Owing perhaps to the nature of the business, funeral homes can seem to be a forbidding place.
For the proprietors of Strong Funeral Home in Damariscotta, the somber section of their business does not detract from the fact that, for them, a funeral director’s career is truly a labor of love.
“There is a real connection to the community,” said Strong owner Scott Kinne. “There is such a heritage at work here. It’s not just providing a service. It is way deeper than that.”
According to Kinne, the function of a funeral home is uniquely personal. Although there are other concerns in the area, there is not so much competition between the businesses as cooperation, Kinne said.
Frequently clients select the funeral home of their choice based on word of mouth referrals or a previous experience during services for friends or relatives.
In addition to Kinne, Strong relies on a core of people who have been with the company from 10 to 25 years. Each person, Kinne said, adds his or her own strength to the company.
“We know whom to call when we need something,” he said.
Strong also benefits from the support of two fulltime funeral directors, Kinne and Dustin “Dusty” Hancock
Kinne warmly refers to the younger Hancock as his little brother. Hancock is a Damariscotta native, a Lincoln Academy graduate, and a man who returned to his hometown to pursue his career and raise a family.
Hancock and Kinne both say their profession chose them more than the other way around.
Hancock said he became familiar with the funeral process when he experienced the death of a relative as a teenager. When he was 16, Hancock called Kinne and asked for a job.
“I started mowing lawns and washing cars,” Hancock said. In 1997, Hancock became a full time funeral director, working for his mentor.
“Dusty could literally have gone anywhere in the country and just about named his price,” Kinne said.
Kinne grew up in Cushing and started in the business when he was 15 working at a funeral home in Thomaston. As Hancock would do years later, Kinne never thought about working in another field.
“Like Dusty said, it wasn’t something I thought about either,” Kinne said. “I think we were both drawn to it. If I had to do it all over again, I don’t think there is anything I would change.”
Kinne said his relationship with Hancock has developed to such an extent that the two men can finish each other sentences and both men add to the business by offering different areas of strength.
Although both men are very skilled in all areas of the profession, Kinne admits he prefers the customer service end of the business, the actually dealing with the relatives and survivors while Hancock’s expertise lends itself well to the technical aspects of the profession, the actual preparing of the deceased for burial.
According to Kinne, the technical part of the business is less than 20 percent of what a funeral director’s job entails. The bulk of the business involves assisting the living through what can be a very painful time through planning, organization, and the support of a comforting hand.
According to Hancock and Kinne, the most rewarding part is successfully escorting their clients through what can be a very painful process, to the point where they are able to conclude with a positive memory.
“We do everything we can to make the family’s wishes come true,” Hancock said.
The formal education of a funeral director is a career-long endeavor. Initially, there is a two-year degree program where the prospective director studies everything from psychology to anatomy and physiology.
Once the initial program is completed, the prospective director serves a one-year apprenticeship under an established professional before receiving a license from the state.
Licenses are effective for one year at a time and directors must continue their education through annual courses, seminars and the like.
Both men agree that all the schooling in the world can’t adequately prepare a person for the emotional onslaught of a family in crisis. In truth, working with a distraught client requires more art than science, Kinne said.
“The people in our profession aren’t just handling caskets,” Kinne said.
“You form a tight relationship in a short amount of time,” Hancock said. He added he frequently runs into customers locally who greet him like family.
Both men described having a type of internal switch that goes on when needed; the mind set that allows them to focus on the task at hand and set aside the emotional aspects of their work.
“There isn’t a formula,” Kinne said. He added that when, and only when, the time is appropriate, Hancock, himself and the staff lay on the humor to ease the stress. “When we are not working, we laugh like crazy,” he said.
That said, Kinne acknowledged there is a price to pay for the work he does. With more than 31 years in the business, he prefers to leave the technical work to Hancock. On at least one occasion, involving the death of a child, Kinne asked Hancock to pick up the body at the Miles Memorial Hospital because Kinne could not bear the thought of carrying the child out.
“People say you must get hard to it, but the opposite happens; you get softer,” he said. “It affects you more.”
Admitting it is possible to make a decent living as a funeral director, Kinne and Hancock point out that the profession is not a get rich quick scheme.
“It is not a zillion dollar a year business,” Kinne said. “It’s not rocket science, it is all heart. If you are going into it to make a living you are going to be eaten up.”
According to Kinne, Strong is likely the oldest continuously operating funeral home in Lincoln County. Based on his understanding, Strong replaced a Pemaquid funeral home operated by a man named Elliott. Elliott’s business was located in the building that formally housed the River View Market on Harrington Road.
According to what he has been told, Elliott apparently died in some sort of a hunting accident in the early 1930s, Kinne said.
At some point after that, Damariscotta barber Clyde Strong opened the Strong Funeral Home on Elm Street in 1933. “What is unknown is whether the people from down there came up here,” Kinne said.
The original Strong Funeral Home was located in the carriage house on property that is now occupied by the Skidompha Library. The carriage house was demolished to make way for the new library complex in 1999.
The business remained downtown as Strong passed it on to Myron Cummings who eventually sold it to Kinne in 1981. Kinne worked in the same location and lived in an apartment over the funeral home, raising three boys there until 1988.
“I grew up in Cushing and I sent out a bunch of resumés and this was literally the closest one to home,” Kinne said.
Kinne said he enjoyed living and working downtown. He recalled there was never a problem with the neighbors except when there was a funeral on a summer Saturday and mourners and customers of the Yellowfront Grocery, then located next door in the space now occupied by the Maine Coast Book Shop, had to scramble for parking spaces.
In August 1988, Knee had the opportunity to purchase the land currently occupied by Strong on Bus. Rt. 1, and leaped at it.
At the time his house was under construction, and Kinne said he had to ask the builder, Tim Hanley, if Hanley could finish the funeral home within four and half months. Tim Hanley did just that and completed Kinne’s Damariscotta home as well, doing an outstanding job on both, Kinne said.
The current Strong Funeral Home is unique in that it was designed from the outset to serve its purpose. The doors, the hallways and the waiting area were all designed to meet the specific needs of a funeral home.
In the past, as with the original Strong, funeral homes were frequently located in converted houses.
At some point in the relatively near future, Kinne said he expects to hand over the reins to Hancock. There is no set timetable for the transition, Kinne said, but eventually his goal is to receive a paycheck from Hancock and leave the younger man with the worry about the bills and all the other concerns that go along with running a business.
“People are already asking me, when are you buying the business,” Hancock said, musing, “I am 34 now. In 25 years, I’ll be 59 so I could see the 100th anniversary.”
For customers, the change will be mostly invisible. Kinne says he has no plans to leave the area beyond the possibility of a few winter months spent in warmer climes. Looking ahead, past and future clients will be able to count on receiving the same level of service from the same team that has served the local community for almost 30 years, Kinne said.
Asked what he would advise someone who is faced with the need for a funeral home, Kinne suggested that people rely on an established service they can trust and to not feel shy about asking questions.
“I would tell them to ask anything they like,” he said.
