Business Tribute

Duncan-Graves Funeral Home

aims to make services personal

By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer

    PRESQUE ISLE — The present site of the Duncan-Graves Funeral Home, located at 30 Church St. in Presque Isle, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, while the business itself has been operating since 1936.

Harold K. “Ike” Graves
1895-1976

    According to former owner Rick Duncan, Graves Funeral Home was started by Harold “Ike” Graves.
    “He was a funeral director, and he also had a furniture store down on Main Street and that’s where it originally started,” he said. “Furniture stores way back then used to stock the caskets; they were the only ones that had them … that and livery people because they owned the horse-drawn hearses.
    “Ike learned how to embalm and had an embalming room in the basement of his furniture store, but in those days, most of the embalmings were done in the home,” Duncan said. “He eventually saw the need of a funeral home, and in fact, the current funeral home was built specifically as a funeral home. It was never meant for anything else.”
    Graves’ son, Sidney K. Graves, later joined the family business.
    “He took over the management part of the business in the 1960s,” said Duncan. “They purchased the Laing Funeral Home in Mars Hill in the late ‘50s-early ‘60s, and Sidney operated the two for many years. My father, Richard H. Duncan, worked for them right out of high school. He had a very close relationship with Harold, and when Ike found out my Dad was looking for a funeral home of his own, he sold him the Mars Hill business in 1969.”
    In 1982, Rick and Richard Duncan together purchased the Graves Funeral Home in Presque Isle.
    “That’s when we merged it together and it became the Duncan-Graves Funeral Home,” said Duncan.
    In 2002, Duncan added a reception area, handicapped bathrooms and a foyer onto the Presque Isle site.
    “We constantly updated and tried to bring the most modern technology to the business … anything that we thought was going to make this experience that much easier for people, we tried to do,” said Duncan. “We used to have a full showroom with full-sized caskets and we instituted a casket selection room where there weren’t really any caskets in it but rather scaled-down models, or end cuts, which were a sampling of the interior, as well as a photograph of the exterior. It was less stressful for people when they went in there to make a selection.
    “The carpeting was always dark in a funeral home and you have dark curtains, and we turned everything into light furnishings, light paint on the walls, soothing music that was playing all the time — not necessarily funeral dirge music,” he said, noting that his brother, Dirk, worked with the family business for about 15 years. “Slide shows and electronic media presentations were also incorporated over the years.”
    Duncan sold the business to Doug Hunter in 2012.
    “I had been doing this since 1974, and it’s the kind of business that’s very rewarding, but it’s a very draining one, as well,” said Duncan. “The older I got the more I was affected by the families who were grieving. It was bothering me more and more all the time, and I got to the point where I felt I had to get done. Eventually I was burying my friends and it was hard to separate the business and personal side.”
    Hunter said the funeral home now has the capability of video streaming funeral services live on their website.
    “We can do it remotely at churches, as well, as long as we have an Internet connection at the church,” he said. “For families who have loved ones that live away or just can’t make it back for the service, it’s very nice. We can even Skype the service. With Skype, you can communicate back and forth, and it’s just a way for those who are away to be part of the service.”
    The first service to be streamed online was that of Hunter’s father, Roger, who died in August 2012.
    “Dad was originally from Presque Isle, and when he passed away, he had a lot of friends in Florida because he and my Mom were snowbirds,” he said. “I had seen people streaming services before and knew it was something we were going to do, but with Dad, I decided we needed to start then.”
    Other special touches Hunter and his staff provide include memorial folders and portraits for every service.
    “We do a 16-inch by 20-inch portrait,” he said. “It looks like an oil painting, but it’s actually a print. We do that for every service and we don’t charge for it. We put it in a gold frame that we keep, but the family takes the portrait home with them. We use that same print for some memorial folders that we do. They’re large trifolds that are essentially programs for services. They’re unlike anything that’s done anywhere in the state, and they’re really nice and personalized.”
    Duncan-Graves Funeral Home also offers DVDs of the tribute slide show.
    “Moving forward we’re going to continue to offer more personalized services and try to change to the needs that families want from us,” Hunter said. “We do a lot of receptions now that we hadn’t done in the past. I think it’s better to have the reception wherever the funeral is — whether it’s at the funeral home or a church — because you don’t lose people. If a reception is at someone’s home, they need to clean up and get the home ready and it can be stressful during an already stressful situation.
    “Having it at the funeral home is easy because we do all the work. We have a dedicated reception room and the catering comes to us; we don’t do the food preparation ourselves,” he said. “Typically the grocery stores cater it and bring the food in, and it works a lot better for families than doing it themselves.”
    Hunter said it’s important to work as hard as possible to meet the families’ needs during such a difficult time.
    “For example, one lady was very well known for her chocolate chip cookies, so we used her recipe and had a local grocery store make them and we passed those out during her service,” he said. “Another time a lady was known for her clip-on earrings, so when women who attended her service came in they put on her earrings. It’s things like that that make a service really personalized. That’s what we’re trying to do with all of our services. We want to make them as meaningful as possible for the families in ways that are meaningful for them.”
    Ironically Hunter got into the funeral business because of Rick Duncan.
    “He had asked me to help him with some accounting work, which was my first profession, and then he asked me to help do some services,” said Hunter. “I enjoyed doing that, and one thing led to another, and I ended up buying Lancaster Morgan Funeral Home in Caribou.
    “At the same time I bought that, Rick knew that he was looking to retire in the future and he and I signed a purchase and sale agreement for the Duncan-Graves Funeral Home,” Hunter said. “Rick trained me, and he was the reason I got into this business. It’s interesting how it all came full circle.”
    For more information, call 764-0625, email info@duncan-graves.com, or log onto www.duncan-graves.com.