In this episode of the WWN podcast, funeral director Alan Austin reflects on his unexpected journey from Detroit to Cambridge City, where he now leads Waskom Capitol Hill Chapel and serves as an active community leader. From his family’s deep roots in the funeral business to his own calling to serve others, Alan shares how faith, practicality, and a passion for giving back have shaped both his work and his broader role in Wayne County. Enjoy!
Transcript
Alan Austin: I’m Alan Austin, owner and director of Waskom Capitol Hill Chapel.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News, in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community.
My guest today is Alan Austin, who moved to Cambridge City in 2006 after purchasing Waskom Funeral Home. An active member of the Cambridge City Christian Church, he was selected as Citizen of the Year in 2016 by the Chamber of Commerce. He’s been married to his wife, Tammy, for nearly 25 years. Alan has a daughter, Shelly, and he and Tammy have two children – Aubrey and Alan Red.
Welcome, Alan. I’m so glad you could join me today.
Alan Austin: I’m happy to be here.
Kate Jetmore: Let’s start with where you’re from and how you and your family came to the area.
Alan Austin: Well, I’m originally from the Detroit area. I went to Wayne State University, which is in downtown Detroit. And in 1994, I moved to Florida, and in the late 90s, right before the millennium, I met my wife, and then we got married.
And in 2005, I was at my dad’s, who was active in the funeral business, too, but in Michigan. And there was a magazine there, and we read through it, and it’s kind of weird as it said, the wife of a small-town funeral director.
And I worked at a funeral home that served over 600 families, so I told my dad, well, it’s not a small-town funeral home.
But then the ad was in the magazine at the back, and that was on October 15th.
Kate Jetmore: And what ad was that?
Alan Austin: It said “East Central Indiana turnkey operation funeral home,” and had a number to call. So I did, and got all the information, and decided to take a chance.
Kate Jetmore: And at that point, was that a complete coincidence, or were you looking to buy a place?
Alan Austin: I was not looking to buy a place, and that’s what made it kind of weird that my dad said my wife was the wife of a small-town funeral director, and now she is.
Kate Jetmore: Oh, interesting. So just to give a little context, and especially for people like me who don’t move in the same circles that you do, you worked in Florida, or owned in Florida?
Alan Austin: No, worked for a company in Florida.
Kate Jetmore: OK, that served 600 families. And now how many families do you serve, would you say?
Alan Austin: We usually serve around 50 families a year. So what was a month there, is our whole year.
Kate Jetmore: Wow. 50 all year round.
Alan Austin: Yeah, on average.
Kate Jetmore: Wow. Wow. And I’m just curious, did your wife read that article? And does she feel, you know, now in her role as wife of director of a small-town funeral home, does she feel like it was accurate?
Does it paint the picture, the same picture that she’s living?
Alan Austin: I actually bought the book, and we both read it, and it was about a funeral home in the Upper Peninsula, and just some funny anecdotes. She doesn’t really work here very much. But when we met, she was working in the cemetery office, and I worked at the funeral home that was at the cemetery.
Kate Jetmore: OK, so kind of in the same field.
Alan Austin: Yes, she was a secretary there.
Kate Jetmore: OK, interesting. I want to go back because I think you said that your dad also worked in this field, up in Michigan. Is that right?
Alan Austin: Yes, yes.
Kate Jetmore: So does that mean that you grew up in this world?
Alan Austin: Yep, I was 11 years old when my dad started his business there, and he rented cars to funeral homes, and did what they call removals. If someone died at Reid, the funeral home would call my dad, he’d go and bring the person into our care, and then take them to the funeral home.
And when my dad first started, he was operating on a shoestring budget, so he took me to Robert Hall and bought me a suit, and I was going on house calls with my dad when I was 11 years old.
Kate Jetmore: Oh, wow. And was that sort of how your whole family got started, or were your father’s parents in the same business?
Alan Austin: They were not. He grew up behind a casket factory, and when my older sister and I were young, sometimes he’d deliver caskets on holidays and weekends, and we’d get to go ride in what seemed like a massive truck and, you know, get a hot chocolate and be with dad for the day.
And, but he worked at Sears and Roebuck and when they got married in ‘55, they had just built a new store by where my parents were buying their first home.
But they wouldn’t transfer him to that store. And then after we had riots in ‘67 and ‘68, the number of families that would come in that would want him to sell them washers and dryers and refrigerators was steadily going down.
So one of his friends, he had moved his funeral home because of the riots, and the neighborhood changed. And he told my dad, he said, I don’t have a hearse. If you buy a hearse, we can build our businesses together.
And my dad got his first hearse on December 23rd, in 1969. And my mom and dad and sister, we went looking at Christmas lights in our brand-new Cadillac hearse.
Kate Jetmore: Wow. So did your dad end up investing in several hearses? Because you said that you rented them to different funeral homes, is that right?
Alan Austin: Yes, he had several hearses. And now in Michigan, the cremation rate has gotten a lot higher there than even here in Indiana.
And so the need for a hearse is not as much. And there were times when everybody had a regular funeral.
He could rent the same hearse three times in a day. They’d have a 10 o’clock funeral, a 12 o’clock funeral, and a 2 o’clock funeral.
And so that was really good. And so that’s how he was able to do it. And then he worked with all his competitors.
I drove for all my dad’s competitors because nobody had enough cars to handle the busiest days. So then they would rent cars from each other if they needed them. They all worked together.
Kate Jetmore: Wow. And so you mentioned, you know, kind of early 60s, mid-60s, late 60s. The time that you’re describing, did it continue on into the 70s and even 80s?
Alan Austin: In Detroit? Well, the city steadily went down through the 70s and 80s.
It’s on a comeback now. We go there, we go to the Fisher Theater, we like to go see plays, and downtown is getting much nicer than it was, but there’s still blocks that you could drive on for several miles and there’s no buildings on what were the main thoroughfares in the 40s and 50s.
Kate Jetmore: It’s so interesting to hear you talk about these trends that you witnessed as a person who grew up in Detroit, as the son of a person who was working in the funeral industry. Is that what you call it? The funeral industry?
Alan Austin: Well, it’s different. It is a business, it has to be a business, or you wouldn’t be open. So that’s why it’s an “industry”. But the good funeral homes and the good funeral directors don’t treat it as an industry. It’s more like a service for the families.
Kate Jetmore: Of course, of course. And one of the trends that you mentioned was that we’re seeing more cremation. You’re seeing more cremation. Is that a national trend? Is that more of a Midwestern trend? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Alan Austin: It’s a national trend. It goes hand in hand with the attendance at church going down. People don’t have the same traditional values that they had.
And people not staying in one place. If you would have asked me in 1992, where would I be in 2025? I would have told you I’d be in Detroit. But I moved to Florida, and then I moved from Florida to Indiana, and my parents, they had five kids, and my older sister was the only one that was still in Detroit before she passed away, and she was running my dad’s business.
I have two sisters in Florida and one in Missouri, and I’m in Indiana, and that wasn’t the way it was before. Everybody stayed within 10 or 15 miles, so when you have a funeral and people have to come from all over, you know, and if they move to Florida, then they’re down there for five or six years, and they go, well, we have our friends here, do we need to ship all the way back?
You have to pay two funeral homes, not total charges, but you have two funeral homes involved, and so those types of things, people just always did what they always had done, and that started shifting dramatically in the 90s, and then the most, like in Michigan, it was Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is, and it started growing out of there, and that is where, because of the university, you know, a lot of professors and people that are learned don’t believe in the things of people of faith many times. And California has a tremendously high cremation, Arizona, all those places where people are really mobile, it’s really expanded.
And here it’s not that, we don’t have that much. When I left Michigan in ‘94, if you wanted to open and close a grave at one of the local cemeteries, it was about $1,000 in 1994.
And that’s about the highest we have here, you know, 31 years later, the prices. So it’s… when you talk about going someplace and it’s going to be $3,000 to buy the grave and open and close the grave. And then you got to get a marker. People go, gosh, that’s a lot of money. Am I really gonna go to the cemetery? And for most people, the answer really is probably not. Maybe once a year or something.
Kate Jetmore: What I hear you describing is a trend that kind of runs parallel to the trend of, you know, that we’ve seen for a couple of generations now, which is that people don’t stick close to where they were born necessarily, you know. Our work takes us elsewhere, or we get married and move to the hometown of the person that we met. But that it’s also, you know, that decision is also connected to your financial situation, you know. Can you afford it, is it something that you can afford, or is there another option that’s a better fit for your pocketbook?
But you also brought in the question of faith, which is a big one. And I’m wondering, well, I’m very curious about how you approach your work when you’re accompanying a family who’s going through the process of grieving a loved one.
And I guess I’d love to hear what your approach is as a man of faith and as a funeral director.
I don’t know if you can parse those two things out or if they’re one and the same for you.
Alan Austin: They’re very similar. I usually, if I had a family call and needed help, a lot of the families I know already. So I know what church they go to. Are we going to be having a visitation here? Will we be going to church the next day? Things like that.
But I always just tell people, you know, I’m here to help you. If it wasn’t for you, there would be no need for me to be here. And I will do anything and everything that a family wants to make things the best for them.
Kate Jetmore: Wow. It seems like there’s a lot of freedom there. I was raised in the Catholic Church where there’s, you know, I guess it depends on the priest, but sometimes there isn’t a lot of freedom there, you know. The funeral has to be very traditional and, you know, you do have to respect a lot of norms and traditions.
Alan Austin: Generally they’re getting better, they used to not let you have, you couldn’t depart from the Mass, and so there was really no eulogy for the person at the service, it was a service, the service is actually for the people that are there, not the person that’s passed away, but they want to remember that person, and most of the priests now have family go up and they’ll do the opening prayers and then they’ll, they’ll talk about their mom or dad or whoever it might be after that, and then the priest goes through the liturgy.
Kate Jetmore: Right. How has this work changed you as a person? I mean, what you’ve shared is that you’ve been exposed to, you know, providing this service to families, whether as your father’s son, then later as an adult, as an employee, and now as the owner of a funeral home. But have you, can you trace an evolution in yourself? Has this work changed how you view your own mortality?
Alan Austin: No, I don’t think I’m ever going to die. (Laughter)
Kate Jetmore: (Laughter) Thank goodness.
Alan Austin: “If I die,” right? That’s what people say, and well, you know, there’s really no “if” about it. It’s going to happen.
Yes. How many times have you heard people say that? And it’s just not true. But how my career evolved was I always loved doing things with my dad.
My dad was very active in our hometown and he taught me to give back. And so we do the same things.
My kids are the same way now. So, yeah, it’s been very, very good and very rewarding to know that you’re helping people.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah. And I do hear a very practical approach, you know, you even made a joke about it.
You know, we don’t always have to be so serious about it. And also, it is an inevitability. It’s not if you die, it’s when you die.
And then sort of from that understanding and from that practical standpoint, now let’s talk about what we need to talk about.
And I’d love to talk about giving back. As I mentioned in the intro, you did win the Citizen of the Year award from the Chamber of Commerce. Is that what it was, the Citizen of the Year award?
Alan Austin: Yes, the Chamber of Commerce, yeah.
Kate Jetmore: And you have been very generous with your time and leadership skills here in Western Wayne County. What is it that drives you when it comes to giving back to the community?
Alan Austin: Well, in this area, I think Cambridge City is unique in all the towns. The Chamber puts on fireworks here. You’ve never once seen us have an article in the Palladium-Item that says we need money, and we’re not going to have fireworks if we don’t get money.
Now it’s probably been about 15 years ago we started… And it was my idea. I got it from my dad. It’s called the Fireworks 100. And we sell 100 tickets at $100 apiece.
We give $5,000 back, but that’s funded it. And so that’s where I am, like on things with the Chamber.
I’m the treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce. I’m treasurer at my church. I’m treasurer in Kiwanis. Because I like numbers and it comes easy for me. So I end up having those types of jobs.
But for example, our band, my kids were both in band, they needed new uniforms. They hadn’t had new uniforms. And I said, well, you know, how much do we need to raise? And so the band director said, well, I need, you know, somewhere around $18,000 to $20,000. It ended up being $21,000 and something. But I, just by asking, raised that money in two months. And they had them for State Fair Band Day and the guy, he said it was so great when the guy from Hagerstown said, how did you come up with all this money? And he said, and they will. People in Cambridge that think things are worthwhile will give, you know.
I remember talking to Mrs. Bertsch and I was there getting a check for our golf outing. And I said, well, I’m doing this for the band. She said, for the band? She said, how much do you need? And that was the way most… So we were doing sponsorships at $400. And boom, boom, the checks just came.
And, and I, we had another girl who was treasurer of the band boosters. I was treasurer until my kids got out. And she said, how are you getting this money? And so, but people know, if people know that you give back, then they’re more than willing to, that you’re, you’re asking because it’s important. It’s important to our kids, our community. And so I’m always willing to do that.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, I mean, sometimes it, it is that simple. You just have to ask. I mean, if you’re sitting at home thinking, oh, if only people would give, sometimes it’s just a matter of, you know, picking up the phone. And as you said, when we do that, when we take that active step, we are setting an example for others in the community, and very importantly, for the next generation, for our own kids.
Alan Austin: Well, even all four of our communities here got the grants for their parks. Pershing and Milton and Dublin and then Cambridge City, we’re putting up a band shelter.
The Lilly Foundation’s helping with that. That was a little more… But the other grant was for fixing up the park, which it needed, and most cities didn’t have that kind of money.
That was through Main Street, and I didn’t have, I just finally had to say, I’m stretched too thin. I was on it when it first started. But I said, no, I don’t think I can do this, but…
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, there are only so many hours in the day.
Alan Austin: Yes.
Kate Jetmore: As we wrap up, Alan, I just want to ask you what you love most about Cambridge City.
Alan Austin: The people. The people are… For the most part, they have the hearts of gold and will help with everything. We have a golf tournament coming up for Joe Peggs, for his family. He died in an accident, cutting down a tree in Milton last fall, and they’re going to have to have two sessions of golf, that’s how big the tournament has got, and they, people see something that’s worthwhile and they’re willing to give and willing to help out.
Kate Jetmore: That’s amazing, and that’s just one of many examples, I’m sure.
Alan, I want to thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I loved learning more about you, how you came to be in the community, what you’re doing in the community, and what’s to come, and I want to wish you and your family all the best.
Alan Austin: Thank you. God bless you.