A chance encounter in a Woodville taco shop led to, not just a job offer, but a true calling for one young woman; a calling to help support families and navigate the often-overwhelming waters of the grieving process.
“I’ve been in the funeral business since 2017,” said Lacey McLendon. “My job involves helping families plan services that honor their loved ones, as well as preparing said loved ones through embalming and restorative techniques to ensure they are presented with dignity and respect.”
McLendon, a Tyler County native who still calls the county home, now works as funeral director at Forest Lawn Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Beaumont, after getting her training and experience with Stringer and Griffin and Riley Funeral Home in Woodville.
She said she knew what she wanted to do in life from one conversation she had with a funeral home director back in 2017. She was waiting tables at Tampico Tacos at the time when she encountered David Boughan, of Stringer and Griffin. “There was nobody in the place but us. We got to talking about his line of work, and I was immediately interested because he emphasized on the honor and ethics of the practice, and he nearly offered to get me a job on the spot as part-time help.”
McLendon said she knew then and there that she wanted to sign up for mortuary school and knew what her destiny was to be from that conversation. She worked for about a year for Stringer and Griffin, and learned the ropes, which included removing decedents from homes, nursing homes, hospitals and other locations. She later went to work at Riley Funeral Home, where she transitioned to the embalming and director protocols. It’s also where she completed school and her apprenticeship duties and earned her dual license in 2019. She said she was proud to be able to serve the residents of her home county.
“My job is about supporting families and helping them navigate loss with compassion while staying true to who I am at my core,” McLendon said.
Funeral directing is not a glamorous profession. No one grows up dreaming of spending their days surrounded by grief, paperwork and the quiet logistics that follow death, yet it is one of the most quietly important jobs in our society.
Grief is disorienting, and whenever someone dies, the loved ones left behind are often at their most vulnerable. Coordinating logistics is a lot of what McLendon said her job is about “behind the scenes,” and every day, she said, she works with families who are grieving, and sometimes in shock.
“Oftentimes, in fact most of the time, more families than just one, have pending services. Multiple people pass on the same day sometimes and it can get easily overwhelming if I let it,” she said. It also helps to have supportive colleagues, she said. “As a team, at my current location we support each other one hundred percent. There’s a lot of quiet understanding among funeral professionals.”
The paperwork, coordination, timing, phone calls, service personalization and all of the other moving parts that go into handling funeral arrangements take focus, McLendon said, as well as extreme emotional strength.
McLendon said that the most difficult types of services she’s had a hand in are those involving the loss of young lives, or tragic and sudden losses. “In a small town, you’re not just serving a family at that point. You’re serving neighbors, classmates and friends. Sometimes you’ve watched that person grow up,” she said. “I’ve buried dear friends’ children, as well as several people I went to high school with, or their close family members.”
McLendon said that with handling arrangements for people she knows, as well as the young and sudden deaths, there is a reinforced sense as to why the work is so important to her. “During those moments, families need someone calm, compassionate and focused, and even though it is hard, I would rather it be me caring for the lost loved ones because I know my heart is a hundred percent present there with them through it all,” she said.
When the services to handle do hit close to home, it can produce hard memories to look back upon. McLendon said that once she had a dear friend, for whom she buried her husband and mother within a year, which were both sudden, tragic losses. She added that not too long after that, her son lost a friend under sudden, tragic circumstances, and then about a year later, her stepson lost a best friend, suddenly, at age 16. All of those were services she worked on, but she said she holds all of the families close in her heart. “Getting to provide these families comfort from me, and not from a stranger, was such an honor,” she said.
If there is any sort of stereotype still existent about funeral workers being of a gloomy or stern disposition, McLendon bucks that notion. “[My job] can be emotionally heavy at times, but I’ve learned that mindset is everything,” she said. “I remind myself daily that the work that funeral directors and embalmers do truly matters.”
Outside of work, McLendon said she makes it a priority to spend time with family, to attend church and to study her Bible to remain connected with God. “Without Him I could not do this at all,” she said. “I get my strength from prayer and surrounding myself with as much positivity as I can.”
She said she also tries to stay in good physical shape by running, taking Pilates classes and spending time in the gym. “Those things are kind of a mental release for me,” she said.
McLendon recalled one recent service that she recently worked for a World War II veteran who did not return home until recently, when his body was identified through a combination of research and DNA testing. His name was Lt. Frank Johnstone, and he had been shot down over Austria at 20 years of age. He’d been buried by villagers, and his story almost lost completely to the sands of time, except for the faith of family members that one day he would come home.
McLendon called it an “extraordinary privilege to receive him into our care,” and to ensure his dignity.
To see his casket with an American flag draped over it, while standing alone in the chapel was a quiet reminder to McLendon that freedom is never free.
And it is in moments like that where the fact is underscored that funeral directing is not merely a job, but a form of service, and one performed at one of the most difficult moments in a person’s life.
