As Jim Sanders, owner of White-Sanders Funeral Home in Fisk, celebrates his 50th year in the funeral business, he reflects on his long career and looks forward to many more years serving families in Southeast Missouri.
He started his career right out of high school in 1973, working for his uncle, who sold burial vaults in the area.
“I knew the funeral home directors all over Southeast Missouri,” Sanders said, “so I decided that I was going to go into the funeral business.”
He tells a funny story about an incident that helped him consider that pursuit.
“When I worked for the vault company, we were in Doniphan near the last of October, and it was cold and raining,” he said. “We had set the vault, and we were all soaking wet and cold.
“Here came Lynn Edwards, a funeral director there in Doniphan, pulling up in this nice Cadillac. He was sitting in the car and watching us work in the pouring rain.
“I told the guys who were all working there, ‘I don’t know about you, but I want to be that guy driving the Cadillac.’”
His first real experience came working for Lyman Brown at Fitch Funeral Home in Poplar Bluff. Brown asked him to work there over the summer before leaving to study at the Kentucky School for Mortuary Science in Louisville, Kentucky.
Sanders said the culture shock of “taking a boy from Broseley and sticking him in downtown Louisville” was more difficult than his studies.
While in school, he worked for Schoppenhorst Funeral Home, which also provided him with housing.
“They furnished me a place to live, and I made $40 a week, so I thought I was wealthy,” he said. “I had $40 a week and a place to live.”
Back home for Christmas halfway through his one-year schooling, Carl White, who owned the funeral home in Fisk, asked Sanders to come work for him for a week.
White asked him what his plans were after graduation, and then he offered him a job. Sanders returned with a degree and a job in February 1975.
Sanders completed all his licensing requirements in 1976, and White offered to sell him the funeral home, which is known to this day as White-Sanders Funeral Home.
One of the services Sanders and his colleagues provide is helping people deal with the many details that come with someone passing away.
“A lot of people don’t realize how many decisions there are to make and how many things they need to think about when somebody does die,” he said.
“There are a lot of decisions, and people are overwhelmed with everything that they have to deal with all of a sudden.
“This is what we do—we know all the things that they’re going to need to do,” he said.
Another service that funeral homes provide is 24-hour on-call service.
“We’re not working 24 hours a day, but we are on call, whether it’s holidays or weekends,” Sanders said.
Above all, Sanders considers his work a ministry of serving people at one of the saddest moments of their lives.
“I have the compassion and the desire to help people,” he said. “It became evident in the beginning that this is what God called me to do, so this is a ministry for our family.
“There is a lot of satisfaction and gratification in the fact that you are able to help somebody through a time that is, in all probability, the worst thing that will ever happen to them in their life,” Sanders said. “We’re able to help guide them through that.”
Over 50 years, Sanders has seen all kinds of funerals, and they do their best to give the family what they want. Funerals have included a horse-drawn hearse, an ambulance instead of a hearse for an EMT, and boats in the procession for water enthusiasts.
“One time we had a service for a lady who collected cast iron cooking utensils,” he said. “The family didn’t need it all, so they brought many of her pots and pans, set up a table in the back of the chapel, and invited all of their friends to take one of her utensils.”
Despite five decades of service, Sanders has no plans to retire.
“This is what I feel like God has called me to do,” he said. “God put me here, and so until God takes me out, this is what I’m going to do.
“This has been such a rewarding career for me,” Sanders said. “All the families that we’ve dealt with and the friendships that we’ve made are so close that we get invited to their family reunions.
“We’re just family, and with those relationships that we’ve built, I hope to continue until the day the Lord calls me home.”