Three funeral homes — one each in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming counties — were recently honored by the National Funeral Directors Association.
Honored with the 2019 NFDA Pursuit of Excellence Award were Jennings-Calvey Funeral and Cremation Services in Clarks Summit; E. Blake Collins Funeral Home in Wilkes-Barre; and Sheldon-Kukuchka Funeral Home in Tunkhannock.
Jennings-Calvey was one of only five nationwide to receive the highest honor, the “Best of the Best Award,” for its Good Grief Art program, a research-based program.
For the last five years or so, the funeral home holds a semiannual, 10-week oil painting class led by Dalton portrait artist Marylou Chibirka in which mourners painted someone or something lost.
“About two years ago, for example, one woman said out loud, ‘I don’t know why, but I stopped crying so much,’” Chibirka said.
The student’s proclamation triggered a chain reaction. Other students piped up to say they felt the same way, too.
This is the 10th consecutive year Collins’ funeral home has won the award, which qualified the company to be inducted into NFDA’s Hall of Excellence along with six others.
“We like to believe it sets us apart,” said E. Blake Collins III, whose great-grandfather, Joseph F. Collins, founded the funeral home in the Parsons section of Wilkes-Barre in 1913. “We’re committed to what we’re doing and this is proof that we go above and beyond the normal things that need to be done.” Louis Marcho, licensed funeral director at Sheldon-Kukuchka, said it was an honor for the funeral home to get recognized, especially since only five others in the state earned the award.
To earn the award, the funeral homes had to meet criteria in six categories: basic requirements, leadership and staff, family outreach, community service, professional service and public relations.
Sheldon-Kukuchka donated grief resource books to the Tunkhannock Public Library, held a Memorial Day lunch and offered an appreciation breakfast for clergy members who often conduct services at the funeral home.
“The award represents what we do on a daily basis here,” Kukuchka said.
The NFDA will present its 2019 Pursuit of Excellence Awards at a convention in Chicago this October.