Guest Speaker & Club Member Ross Morizzo

Times were different then and regulations were slightly different as well.  The nightman/embalmer was a former chemist who lost everything during the great depression.  Our family lived above the funeral home and the embalmer lived in the actual funeral home.  I remember hearing stories of how grateful he was to have a job.  After visitation he would bring a mattress out from a closet to sleep on. His kitchen was either upstairs with our family or on a little hotplate in the main office.  My uncle Dan got his Funeral Director/Embalmer license in 1962, a year after his father passed away.  My dad got his license in 1966.  

 

As time went on the "old neighborhood" started to change which forced the family to sell the funeral home on Harrison Street, so they moved to 4817 W. Chicago Avenue.  My dad tells a story that when he was 20 he and had to take his mother to sign the mortgage because of his age. He remembers driving home and explaining to his mother "mom we are back on the hook for $38,000 and we will never see daylight."  Shortly after this time his mother died, so my uncle and dad were on their own.  They kept the funeral home on Chicago Avenue until 1976 when once again the neighborhood began to change, so they were on the move again.

 

The next funeral home my dad bought was at 5766 W. Higgins in Chicago.  He bought this funeral home in hopes of adding onto it and putting in a basement.  Well that didn't exactly go as planned.  The building was under construction while still open for business. The general contractor decided to take a short cut that works 99 times out of a 100.  Needless to say dad was the lucky 1% and received a 911 call from my uncle.  When my dad called the funeral home my uncle told him that the building had collapsed.  My uncle can exaggerate a little bit so my dad told him he would be back shortly. Sure enough when my dad got there 3/4 of the building had collapsed and my dad lost everything that he owned. The general contractor filled for bankruptcy immediately and closed down his company. There was no recourse.

 

After the building on Higgins collapsed my dad was talking to the owner of Lawrence Funeral Home located at 4800 N. Austin.  My dad would do night removals mostly because the owner didn't want to do it himself and he liked to drink a lot at night.  He asked my dad what his plans were and dad told him he was going to rebuild.  The owner ask my dad, "why don't you buy me out?"  So a buyout arrangement was made that month.  My father really didn't have the assets accept for the funeral home back on Higgins with only one wall standing. Fortunately my dad knew a banker who worked out a loan with a handshake.  I'm stilled shocked knowing all the hoops we had to jump through in order to build our newest Hoffman Estates Location and buy our current home.

 

Our family lived above the Lawrence Funeral Home until we moved to Barrington in 1988.  I don't remember a lot about the Lawrence location but I do remember wanting to go down stairs to hang out with my dad during the day and even during funeral services.  My mom would page down to the office to let my dad and uncle know I was coming.  I would just stroll down the hallway with my sippy cup and hang out with the guys. I remember how cool it was that we had people over almost every day.  I guess I didn't grasp the funeral concept yet.  After my dad sold the Lawrence Funeral Home he stayed on for 2 more years to watch over the transition.  It was hard for him to take a step back from the day to day operations, but he wanted to devote more time to his family.  

 

In 2008 after working as a commercial real estate broker I decided that I wanted to go back to school and get my funeral directors license.  I still remember my dad and I driving to my aunts house for dinner when I told him I was going back to school.  My dad asked me "what field of study I was going back for? "Do you want to be a Lawyer?" I said no.  "He asked if I was going to get an MBA?" Again I said no. Then he said alright what is your plan?  I told him I wanted to be a funeral director and no joke I thought he was going to drive off the road. He immediately asked me when classes started, to which I told him that classes start up in a week. I told him was fully signed up and was excited about becoming a 3rd generation family funeral director.  I was just 2 months into my class work when we started an extensive search for the right funeral home location.  We decided on the Northeast corner of Barrington Road and Hassell Road in Hoffman Estates.  We felt it would satisfy a strong need to have a locally placed modernized funeral home in this community.