In this issue: 

PEOPLE – Ann Wilbert Breux
“I believe funeral service is a calling. It’s a gift to serve people, and, in a small town like Plaquemine, it’s nice to know the person you’re sitting across the desk from. My father taught us how to meet the people and to pay attention, and he taught me the importance of being a good businessperson,” she added. Currently, Wilbert Funeral Home serves 250 families a year, with a 20% cremation rate. She credits her father as her teacher and mentor, and “Johnny Boy Wilbert,” as her dad is known, is now retired.

PLACES – Hart’s Mortuary
Founder, Jesse B. Hart proved innovative from the onset and soon added a chapel, anticipating that mortuaries were quickly evolving into full-service funeral facilities. Innately progressive, Hart provided Macon’s first horse-drawn ambulance and later the city’s first automobile ambulance. Joined by brother J. Freeman Hart in 1908, the firm, unshaped by the norms of the era, hired a first female embalmer in 1911, and later both brothers served terms as president of the Georgia State Funeral Association.

PASSIONS – Lisa Scott-Coleman
I ask Scott-Coleman if her fiancé’s funeral is what got her interested in funeral service and she replies candidly, “No, not precisely.” She goes on to explain, “It wasn’t the experience of the funeral, though I’d always been curious about funerals. I wanted to help others dealing with the same feelings.” That’s when she unknowingly started down the path to what would one day become the Lisa Scott Funeral Home, P.A. in Havre De Grace, Maryland.