Family knows how to help bereaved say goodbyes.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - For the past century, just four families have provided most of the mortuary services for communities in southern Lane and northern Douglas counties, comforting their bereaved neighbors and burying their dead.

The name of the district's leading funeral home - Smith-Lund-Mills - has grown accordingly through the years and now reflects the last three owner families, whose proprietorships have overlapped since 1912.

Just this year, the ownership - but not the name - changed again, with the transfer of the business from one generation of Lunds to the next. Husband and wife Marc and Christina Lund, both 34, recently assumed responsibility for the facility from his parents, Doug and Jeryl Lund.

But the younger couple say being in charge will not change the way the funeral home operates nor the dedication they feel to the community.

"You have to be passionate about this work, and you have to have a servant's heart to do it well," Christina Lund said. "Every day, you have to get up and be 100 percent for the families that you're helping. This is not a job where you breeze through the day and then just leave it behind at night."

Anyone who doesn't understand the sorrow of people grieving the death of a friend or relative "should reconsider their career choice," Marc Lund agrees.

He serves the family business as one of four licensed funeral director/embalmers, including his father, who continues to work at the funeral home on a reduced schedule. Christina Lund has been certified through the funeral industry as a preplanning counselor. Their sons, 5-year-old Jacksen and Nicholas, 2 1/2 , will grow up close to the family business, as their father did.

"If you ask Jack what his daddy does for a living, he said he helps people," Christina Lund said.

Neither boy will be pressured to join the family firm, but their parents will be happy if they eventually make that choice.

"Everybody knew what my dad did when I was growing up, but I didn't decide until later that I would join the business," Marc Lund said. "When I was a kid, I started with washing the cars, and then later I was an usher at funerals."

When it came time to go to college, he pursued a degree in finance with the intention of becoming "a stockbroker or something," he said.

"But after I finished, I realized I hadn't spent much time with my folks, so I called my dad one day and said maybe I needed to do an apprenticeship" in the funeral business.

Although he thought it a fine idea, Doug Lund recommended that his son get that experience elsewhere and helped him line up work in Portland.

After working there a year, the younger Lund decided to get his license and try working with his parents. He attended the funeral service program at Mount Hood Community College, passed his exams and joined the family firm in 1995. Jeryl Lund retired several years ago after 30 years in the business.

Several years ago, the Lunds bought the privately owned Fir Grove Cemetery, 30 acres of rolling hills and old growth trees just off West Main Street at the edge of Cottage Grove. A traditional cemetery dating to the late 1800s takes up half the land; the Lunds have added sites for cremated remains as well as a "memory book" for markers to honor those whose ashes have been scattered.

Far more families choose cremation now than 40 years ago, Doug Lund said, sparking the growth of cremation-only businesses - often with no services - and spurring funeral homes to install their own crematories, which Smith-Lund-Mills did in 1995.

In addition, during the past decade, many longtime family-owned funeral homes have sold out to big corporations, Marc Lund said.

"I would say there are good people involved in funeral homes in this area regardless of the type of ownership, but it could change the type of continuity you have with people in the community," he said. "Especially in a more rural area like Cottage Grove, we like the fact that we know many of the families we help, often from generation to generation."

In that sense, the history of Smith-Lund-Mills dates to 1906, when Marion Veach established his Veach Funeral Home in a single-story house on the same lot where Smith-Lund-Mills sits now, at 123 S. Seventh St. in downtown Cottage Grove.

Veach ran the business for six years, then sold it to Karl Mills, who had worked with him, and Mills' wife, Elizabeth. They ran the funeral home for 36 years, when their son, Robert, joined them. He and his wife, Lois, continued until poor health forced him to retire in 1977.

In the meantime, Russell Smith had come to Cottage Grove, establishing a second funeral home at 115 N. Sixth St. in 1940. Smith built a new funeral home in 1962, across the street on the corner of Sixth Street and Gibbs Avenue.

Doug Lund joined Smith's business in 1965, gradually purchasing it and changing the name to Smith-Lund Chapel. When Robert Mills retired, Lund and his wife bought his operation, too, moved into that facility at the old Veach location and changed the name again, to Smith-Lund-Mills.

Two years later, in 1979, they rebuilt the funeral home, preserving the original foundation and parts of the old structure.

Doug Lund said the redesign aimed to make the funeral home a welcoming spot.

"Everybody parks in the front and comes in the front door, which is kind of like the old front porch," he said. "All of our offices are in front, so when you go by, you see a living, working area. It's kind of therapeutic."

In fact, people often stop by with their newspapers and a cup of coffee and sit in the comfortable foyer to read and chat in the morning, Christina Lund said.

All this parallels the evolution of funerals into more relaxed, informal gatherings, the Lunds say.

In recent years, computerized slide shows and videotapes have become common ways of recalling the life of someone who has died, and it's the funeral home's job to help survivors plan an observance that will suit their needs and reflect what the dead person would have wanted.

"Whether you call it a funeral, a memorial service or a celebration of life, it's a time to say goodbye," Marc Lund said. "One of the ways is to talk about the person's life - that's a traditional way of doing it - but in recent years, personal effects have become an important part of the ceremony."

The Lunds keep the meeting space in their funeral home flexible, to accommodate tastes from traditional to free- wheeling.

The quiet, softly lit area used for services can be set up for a formal church service with private seating for the family, and transformed into a backdrop for a theme party.

"We had a Harley Davidson parked in here once during a service; and when it was over, someone got on, revved it up and drove it out of the building," Marc Lund recalls.

Another time, family and friends all sat around the room on bales of hay, his father remembers, chatting about their memories while listening to country music.

The range of choices can come as a surprise to those without much experience of death.

With better health and improved medical technology extending life expectancy, many people now come to funeral homes to make arrangements for the first time in middle age, and funeral home staff members often must help them experience the unfamiliar emotion of grief, as well as present options for services and disposition of the remains.

That role gives Christina Lund satisfaction.

"You can't put the same casket with the same flower arrangement in the same chapel for every person," she said.

"If you take the approach that every life is significant, then every funeral becomes unique."

SMITH-LUND-MILLS FUNERAL CHAPEL

Owners: Marc and Christina Lund

Family members involved: Marc and Doug Lund, funeral directors; Christina Lund, certified preplanning counselor

Business: Funeral, memorial, cremation and burial services 

Employees: 10

Latest news: 2004 winner of Pursuit of Excellence Golden Eagle Award from the National Funeral Directors Association

Location: 123 S. Seventh St., Cottage Grove

Contact: 942-0185; Web site: http://member.oip.net /smithlund/

CAPTION(S):

Doug and Jeryl Lund (left) passed the Smith-Lund-Mills funeral home business to their son, Marc Lund, and daughter-in-law, Christina Lund. The four view the old Fir Grove Cemetery, 30 acres of rolling hills that the family bought several years ago on the edge of Cottage Grove.