It may be Hinesville’s oldest continually operating business — and it’s making plans to continue for at least another generation.
Carter Funeral Home marked its 85th anniversary in operation on March 15 and now it has its fourth generation in the family on hand to help guide the business.
“I feel humbled and honored that the business was really started by our family from scratch and has survived this long,” said Sanford Carter Sr., the now retired patriarch of the family business. “We have a lot to be thankful for that it’s been this successful for this long.”
Passed on from his father and mother, Sanford Sr. has watched his son Sanford Jr. enter the business and run it — and now the fourth generation, Andrew Carter, is a licensed funeral director.
Sanford Carter Sr.’s father Lenieu started the business, among other enterprises, in 1941. But his father passed away in 1947 when Sanford Sr., the eldest of three children, was just 5 years old.
The funeral home operation fell to his mother Hazel, who began the first of what was later many firsts in her life. She became the first licensed female embalmer and later became the first woman elected to the Liberty County Board of Commissioners.
“Here she is with kids from 5 years old down to 18 months,” Sanford Sr. said. “She had a family to raise and a business to operate. She jumped in and took over.”
Hazel Carter had grown up working under her father, the late J.R. Bagley, in his furniture store. “He was quite the entrepreneur,” Sanford Sr. said.
But at the time, women- owned businesses were uncommon and banks were hesitant to extend credit to women.
The family was living on Ashmore Street at the time and bought a tract on North Main Street in 1953, moving the business and the family to that location. Sanford Sr., 10 at the time, began helping out.
“I wasn’t running the whole show,” he said, “but I washed the cars, I cut the grass. I was a handyman and doing the things I could at that age.”
When he turned 16, he began driving the ambulance — the EMS had not been created at that point and funeral homes ran the ambulance services — Sanford Sr. took on a bigger role. Following his graduation from Bradwell Institute in 1960, he spent two years at South Georgia College and attended embalming school in Cincinnati at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. “I accepted the responsibility to help my mother,” he said. “She was the head of the household and the breadwinner. But growing up and doing the things I could do — I couldn’t drive an ambulance at 13 years old — I did what I could out of necessity.”
The family also opened a State Farm insurance agency — it too is still going strong — in 1967 and built a house across the street from the funeral home.
“We still did ambulance work, emergency calls, wreck calls, stuff like that,” Sanford Sr. said.
In 1973, they built and opened the funeral home’s present location on Oglethorpe Highway.
“We built the building from the ground up,” Sanford Sr. said. “It gave us a lot more room. And we’ve been here ever since.”
Sanford Sr. served a year as mayor pro tem and was county coroner for more than 30 years. Sanford Jr. also coached in the recreation department and Andy is in the Kiwanis Club.
When his mother died in 1987, Sanford Sr. and his brother Don took over the business. It wasn’t long before Sanford Jr. finished his studies at the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science and began his career.
“I was always around the funeral home,” Sanford Jr. said, even recalling his grandmother taking him to Leroy’s Store for Men to get him a suit when he was much younger.
There were two phones in the house where Sanford Jr. grew up. One of them was off limits for the kids to use. It was the funeral home phone, and when it rang, it was time for his father to resume his duties at the funeral home.
The funeral home has been a family business, and Sanford Sr.’s late brother Don also was involved up until his passing in 2008. Don had been presented the Pursuit of Excellence, given to just 1 percent of funeral directors, by the National Funeral Directors Association.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Andy started out helping in whatever they could. He started doing what he could do before getting licensed as a funeral director during the COVID-19 pandemic. And his father is proud of his youngest son following in the family footsteps.
“It’s very rewarding,” said Sanford Jr. “I let him make his own decision. He still lives at home, so I see him all the time.”
Changing times and rites
Over the years, the Carters have seen a significant shift in how funerals are approached. The trend now is for cremation over burial, though for those who prefer a traditional burial, they have a vendor who can provide hand-made caskets.
As the community has changed and grown over the years, so too have the requirements. Andy fielded a call on performing a Muslim service of burial. He retreated to his textbooks and quickly studied up on the Islamic rites, including the ritual washing of the body and positioning the body so it faces east toward Mecca.
Other longstanding funeral routines also are becoming less frequent — the Carters said more services are doing visitations and funerals on the same day than in years past. They’ve kept up with the times, too, offering online memorials, tribute videos and sharing service details online. They also provide grief support emails and weekly and other grief support resources. Logan Strickland tackles the video work for the services.
Andy and his grandfather spend a lot of time together, and they discuss how to make their services better in a changing landscape.
“There are a lot of transient people who may not be used to Southern funerals,” Andy said. “We try to develop services and flow of services, how to accommodate people. It’s important to remember the traditions of funerals. Death is something that makes people very emotional. You have to know how to ask the right questions and be compassionate.”
What has remained constant, though, are the needs and emotions of a family preparing to pay its last respects to a loved one.
“There are ways you can help people through that and they will remember you forever,” Sanford Sr. said. “It’s a bonding thing with them.
“You never know when or where it’s at,” he continued on the end of a life, “and a lot of times people aren’t prepared to handle the circumstances.”
The duties and responsibilities of the job are already evident for the youngest and newest of the family’s funeral directors.
“Being a funeral director, you have to be like a rock,” Andy said. “It’s very easy to get wrapped up in their emotions. You have to be their rock.”
Andy went to preschool next door to what was then their Richmond Hill location and grew up watching his dad at work. How people he didn’t know greeted his father for his service struck him and stuck with him.
“People would come up and thank him for what he did for their family and how much they appreciated him,” he said. “It was something I always admired.”
He’s also taken note of how the family business is viewed through the generations of people they have served.
“What I like is they don’t say, ‘I have get a hold of Carter Funeral Home.’ They say, ‘I have to get Sanford or Andy.’ That’s one of the greatest gifts about being a small town funeral director,” Andy pointed out.
The hours can be long — “there are a lot of late nights that turn into early mornings,” Andy acknowledged — but one of rewards is the knowledge of having made a difference for a family at one of their lowest times.
“They tell you, ‘you won’t remember every family you served, but they will remember you,’” Andy said.
Though he never met his great-grandmother, there are those who remember her and tell the youngest of the Carters about her.
“People still come up to me and say she is one of the greatest ladies they ever met,” Andy said. “She was extraordinary. To see how hard my family has worked to keep it going, when the nights get long, that’s when you keep going.”
A long past, and a long future ahead
It’s not lost on the oldest of the Carter family that other Hinesville businesses that go back several decades now have new names and new ownership.
“We take pride in that,” Sanford Sr. said. “We’re delighted we’ve been able to be successful in operating this business for as long as we have. You’re honored that families keep coming back to you over and over. We appreciate the support of the community for such a long time. It’s an indication we’re doing some things right. We’re honored we’ve earned the respect of the community. Our goal is to continue to offer a bona fide service and improve on it any way we can and keep the trust and good will of the people we serve.”
Seeing his son and his grandson carry on the family business for two more generations, at least, also lifts the spirits of the eldest Carter.
“I’m jumpin’ up and down,” Sanford Sr. said with a broad grin. “I’m just as proud as any parent can be of any vocation that young people follow them in.
“We aren’t planning to get out of it anytime soon.”