Ginny Clark takes the reins of the family business

A funeral director, also known as a mortician or undertaker, is a professional involved in the business of funeral rites.

These tasks often entail the embalming and burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the planning and arrangement of the actual funeral ceremony.

Funeral directors may at times be asked to perform tasks such as dressing (in garments usually suitable for daily wear), casketing (placing the human body in the coffin), and cossetting (applying any sort of cosmetic or substance to the view-able areas of the corpse for the purpose of enhancing its appearance).

A funeral director may work at a funeral home or be an independent employee.

Ginny Richardson Clark is one of those people, she is the funeral director for the Richardson Funeral Home in Owingsville, in Bath County.

This funeral home has been a business in Owingsville since 1986, under the original direction of Ginny’s grandmother, the late Edith Richardson.

She has taken the reins of the business, guiding it into another generation with a steady and strong hand.

While conceding it can be a stressful business at times, she considers her job to be a ‘calling’.

After she graduated from Morehead State University, Ginny was offered a job in Florida to train horses, but did not take the job, instead taking the position as apprentice for her father Paul Richardson, Edith’s son.

At that time, her job consisted of being a ‘go-fer’, doing anything that was required to help her father with the business.

In the U.S., most modern day funeral homes are run as a family business.

The majority of morticians work in small, independent family-run funeral homes.

The owner usually hires two or three other morticians to help them.

Often, this hired help is a member of the family, perpetuating the family’s ownership.

Other firms that were family-owned have been acquired and are operated by large corporations such as Service Corporation International, though such homes usually trade under their pre-acquisition names.

To be a young, female funeral director is a rarity in Kentucky, but one Ginny has probably been groomed for since she was big enough to realize what her family did for a living.

Her parents, Paul and Cathy Griffith Richardson, although professionally ran the funeral business as their livelihood, they also introduced Ginny to their first love, the one of horses, which they have an unabashed passion for. Ginny said she was introduced to ‘her first horse’ Rags when she was six months old, when her parents sat her in the saddle. It is a tradition Ginny is passing down to her children.

She is married to Louie Clark and is the mother of four children, Audrey, Lucian, Summerlee and a stepmother to Dylan, Louie’s son from a previous relationship, whom she considers to be one of her own children.

Having received her BA degree in Journalism from Morehead State University in 2006, she missed her graduation because it fell on the same day there was a war re-enactment event in Owingsville.

As part of the MSU Equestrian Club, an overall grade average of 3.0 had to be obtained to stay in the club and she managed to do so..

Not knowing where she ‘fit in’, and not knowing what her profession should be, one day something ‘clicked’ and she got the ‘calling’ to take the path which she followed to be where she is today, as funeral home director for the Richardson Funeral Home.

In 2009, she knew this was what was meant to be her profession.

Having received her license to be a funeral director five years ago, she is now pursuing her license as an embalmer.

She said she would have to repeat the same classes she studied to become a funeral director, under the tutelage of Brent Richardson, her uncle.

One of her staff members, Tina Staton, said Ginny was a ‘strong woman’ and an ‘independent thinker’.

The following is a brief history of the funeral home world, which Ginny is now a part of.

Most funeral homes have one or more viewing rooms, a preparation room for embalming, a chapel, and a casket selection room.

They usually have a hearse for transportation of bodies, a flower car, and limousines and normally sell coffins and urns.

In the United States, the individual states each have their own licensing regulations for funeral directors. Most require a combination of post-secondary education (typically), the passage of a National Board Examination (NBE), passage of a state board examination, and one to two years’ work as an apprentice.

(NOTE; Ginny recently passed that exam about two weeks ago on her first attempt and she is proud to say, “Not very many funeral professionals pass both sections of the NBE on the first attempt”.)

In the ancient world, ceremonies for the dead and their survivors is as ancient as civilization itself. ‘Death Care’ is among the world’s oldest professions. Ancient Egypt is a probable pioneer in supporting full-time morticians; intentional mummification began c. 2600 BC, with the best-preserved mummies dating to c. 1570 to 1075 BC. Specialized priests spent 70 full days on a single corpse. Only royalty, nobility and wealthy commoners could afford the service, considered an essential part of accessing eternal life.

Across successive cultures, religion remained a prime motive for securing a body against decay and/or arranging burial in a planned manner; some considered the fate of departed souls to be fixed and unchangeable (e.g., ancient Mesopotamia) and considered care for a grave to be more important than the actual burial.

In Ancient Rome, wealthy individuals trusted family to care for their corpse, but funeral rites would feature professional mourners: most often actresses who would announce the presence of the funeral procession by wailing loudly. Other paid actors would don the masks of ancestors and recreate their personalities, dramatizing the exploits of their departed relative. These purely ceremonial undertakers of the day nonetheless had great religious and societal impact; a larger number of actors indicated greater power and wealth for the deceased and their family.

Modern ideas about proper preservation of the dead for the benefit of the living arose in the European Age of Enlightenment. Dutch scientist Frederik Ruysch’s work attracted the attention of royalty and legitimized postmortem anatomy.

Most importantly, Ruysch developed injected substances and waxes that could penetrate the smallest vessels of the body and seal them against decay.

Taking a giant leap forward to the present, Ginny Richardson Clark is carrying on that noble profession, as a funeral director, contributing her services to the deceased and the survivors with a ‘strong’ hand and an independent, optimistic look toward the future.