Member Spotlight Member Spotlight Spotlight on Cozean Memorial Chapel and Crematory – Farmington, Missouri Member Jon D. Cozean shared his experiences with running a successful funeral home. Tell me a little about how your funeral home was founded and how it operates today. Henry Rinke was a young immigrant from Germany in the mid-1800s when he traveled out west to “make his fortune.” While there, he soon became an apprentice embalmer. Once trained, he decided to move to southeast Missouri, where he established a funeral home in Flat River. He raised a family and as the town grew in size, he was elected to be the first mayor. In time, his oldest daughter married a young man who was studying the embalming business from her father. Soon, Rinke purchased a funeral home in nearby Farmington, which was renamed Farmington Undertaking Co.; today, the firm is licensed to do business as Cozean Memorial Chapel & Crematory. Originally established in 1864, it is the oldest business in the county and one of the oldest funeral homes in Missouri. I am Rinke’s great-grandson and a fourth-generation funeral director. Growing up living in an apartment over the funeral home business, I helped out with some of the chores of keeping the business operating. My first job as a small boy was to clean out the ash trays in the funeral chapel after visitors and family left. Both my mother and father worked each visitation and funeral, and I soon noticed how attentive they both were to the needs of the families they served. What do you believe distinguishes your funeral home from other funeral homes? Our firm offers a number of unique services. We are big on high-quality video graphics, which are displayed in the DVDs we project at funeral services. We also use high-quality graphics in the register books given to the families we serve. One of the features that takes a lot of time but is so appreciated by families are the pages 28 www.ogr.org | Fall 2020 Cozean Memorial Chapel & Crematory in Farmington, Mo. (OGR photo) that include photos of every flower piece or other items that are sent to the funeral home. This greatly helps the families when they write thank you notes to everyone who sent in items for the funeral. Florists also love this feature because when a customer tells them they won’t pay for a flower piece “because we did not see them during the funeral service,” we gladly supply that florist with a photo of the so-called “missing piece.” What does your funeral home do in order to create a strong community presence? Do you believe that is important?
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