BUSINESS PROFILE – Emerald Coast Funeral Home
Source: This profile primarily contains excerpts from an article written by Alice Adams for Southern Calls Magazine
After being located for years in a shopping center, on December 10, 2016, Emerald Coast Funeral Home held a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the grand opening of its new 15,000-square-foot facility at 161 Racetrack Road NW in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
The new building offers convenience and ease of entry via its expansive glass doors and sidelights. Stacked stone completes the impressive facade of the building. Through the elegant front doors, visitors find themselves in an impressively large vestibule, opening into the chapel.
An ample parking lot is available for the convenience of those attending visitation and services in the 250-seat chapel, twice the number the firm’s former chapel accommodated.
The spacious new funeral home is as inviting as it is comfortable. Roomy visitation rooms outfitted with wide-screens to show memorial videos are complemented by a pavilion for receptions, seated meals or community events.
James R. Bass is the Director-Embalmer and managing partner. “We expect our funeral home to become a popular venue for meetings, conferences and other gatherings,” Bass said. “As part of the community, a partner with our sister firm, McLaughlin Mortuary, and as community leaders, it helps us expand our outreach.”
Emerald Coast Funeral Home & McLaughlin, which operates the only crematory in S. Okaloosa County, has a tradition of community outreach well beyond funeral, burial and cremation services. For example, the staff hosts an annual “Christmas Memorial Legacy Candle” service, inviting families to honor their loved ones lost during the past year.
The funeral home also co-sponsors a weekly grief support group with Emerald Coast Hospice and supports Emerald Coast Crime Stoppers Beal Veterans Memorial Tower and a number of other community activities.
In 2016, and for the 6th year in a row, Emerald Coast Funeral Home earned “The Finest Funeral Home and Crematory on the Emerald Coast,” an award voted by the readers of the Northwest Florida Daily News.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN FUNERAL SERVICE
James R. Bass was called into funeral service early in his life. The path to achieving his dream, however, contained as many wicked twists of fate as there were important mentors, beginning shortly after his birth in McAllen, Texas, a city bordering Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley.
“When I was a few weeks old, my mother put me in a shoebox, gave it to a neighbor boy and told him to take it to Mrs. Brown, a woman who lived a block or two away,” the director began.
Despite his birth mother’s desperation, fate smiled on little James that day.
“My mother – like my father, whom I rarely saw – had become disabled during the time she served in the U. S. Navy, he explained, and sent me to live with The Browns, a wonderful Christian couple, they took me into their home and raised me until I was 5. At that time, I went to live with my maternal grandparents, who gave me a good home.”
By age 12, he was washing dishes in a local restaurant and by age 16 he had left home and was catering throughout the entire Rio Grande Valley, with a large catering service.
But even in his early teens, Bass knew he was still drawn to funeral service and that he would find a job in a local funeral home.
He met “Fred McCaleb Sr. who had a funeral home in Weslaco, TX, Fred was a charter member of the Kiwanis Club that I catered for, and I had asked many times to come help him and he always said no, I knew he had stomach problems, so I started taking him soup and Jell-O’s from the restaurant, finally I endeared myself to him and he finally asked me if I was truly interested and if I was I could come over that day & help him, I stayed that day until midnight and then began helping out at the funeral home on services and practicing embalming, ,” Bass remembered.
When McCaleb saw the boy’s dedication and determination to work in funeral service, he offered him a job and encouraged him to go on to mortuary school.
“Mr. Fred was an outstanding role model,” Bass said. “I am fortunate to call him my mentor because he was honest man, fair, trustworthy and a true professional.” And always reminded me that funerals were for the living.
Earning his licenses in 1975, and, after working at several South Texas funeral homes, Bass heard of an opportunity at the historic Corley Funeral Home in Corsicana, TX.
“Mr. John Corley, an older gentleman, was looking for someone to help relieve him of some of the load, and, for some reason we bonded, he liked me,” Bass said. “Once again, I was fortunate to have a strong mentor and, once again, fate was on my side.”
He said the one funeral he’ll never forget occurred at Corley’s.
“A woman – very attractive and very nice – came in to make arrangements for her aunt,” Bass remembered. “She had moved back to Corsicana to take care of her 2 aunts.
There was definite chemistry, maybe even fireworks! After a courtship, and a proposal at the Richland Cemetery, Bass proposed – and Janice accepted.
At Corley’s, very little about one’s time off was sacred.
“If there was a death, you were on duty,” the director remembered. “However, when it came time for us to travel to Dallas to select Janice’s ring, I asked Mr. Corley for the day off. Since it wasn’t scheduled, I was flatly declined – until I explained my purpose.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Of course you can go,” Corley said. “And be sure to see Mr. Smith my jeweler at Smith Jewelers, ’I’ll call ahead and tell him to expect you two. He’ll give you a good deal.”
Bass added, “So we selected a nice ring from Mr. Smith and then waited until the ring arrived by mail. It was my job to go to the post office each morning, which I did, and once I returned to the funeral home, as Mr. Corley requested, I put every piece of mail on his desk for him to go through.
“On the day the ring arrived, I noticed the box, but, as Mr. John asked, I dutifully put the box on his desk with the other mail. Mr. John said nothing for several days, so one morning, I told him I had noticed the ring had arrived.
“‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said the old man with a gleam in his eye as he retrieved the box from the safe behind his desk and handed it to me.
“When I opened it, there was no invoice. Puzzled, I asked Mr. John if his friend sent his bill separately.”
“It’s paid for,” Mr. John told the young director, and then returned to his reading.
“He had paid for the ring as his wedding gift to them and true to his style, wanted little said about it.”
Later, when Bass was busy packing for his wedding in Las Vegas, he got a call. It was Mr. John, asking him to come over to the funeral home. When he reminded Mr. Corley he was getting ready to leave, Mr. John insisted he come.
“So we finished packing and went to the funeral home,” Bass remembered. “Arriving in his office, admittedly frustrated, the older man greeted me, and, without much small talk, pushed an envelope across his desk. Inside was a check for $5,000. ‘I thought you kids might need a little extra starting out, Mr. John commented casually.”
“Mr. John treated me like a son, and I saw him as the father I never had,” the director said. “In 1999, I was asked to be a pallbearer at Mr. John’s funeral. It was truly an honor but also difficult.”
In his experience, Bass has arranged funerals for dignitaries, celebrities of every ilk and the loved ones of hardworking families. But in the process he also gained a reputation for his ability to assemble strong staffs of professionals and for the leadership skills to breathe new life into faltering firms.
When Emerald Coast Funeral Home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, offered Bass a position several years ago, he jumped at the chance, not only for the challenge but also because he and Janice had children and grandchildren living on the Emerald Coast in Navarre, Fl.
Surrounded by a staff with the dedication and passion to match his own, the Texas-born funeral director remains grateful, first to his wife Janice, their family, his staff and the leadership at Carriage Services.
“We are given the leeway to respond to the needs and requests of the individuals who entrust us with their loved ones,” he said, “and Carriage Services has made it possible for me to realize my dreams, not only professionally but as part of this dynamic community.”
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Conexión is honored to have Emerald Coast Funeral Home as an advertiser and we thank Mr. James Bass for his support to charity causes we are part of and also thank him and his staff for the work we know he has done on behalf of many Hispanic families in the area.
NOTA DEL EDITOR: Este perfil es acerca de la Funeraria Emerald Coast. Ellos son unos de nuestros anunciantes desde casi el principio de Conexión. Durante los que sabemos son difíciles momentos, la muerte de un ser querido, los servicios de Emerald Coast Funeral Home son altamente recomendados. En su anuncio, verán todos los servicios que ofrecen.
