Tod and Lucy Smolyk got married on a chilly November afternoon in 1941, a small civil ceremony attended by two guests in downtown Edmonton.
As soon as they exchanged their vows and slipped on their rings, the couple rushed back home with their guests for the 6 p.m. launch of their new funeral home.
Park Memorial Funeral Home quietly opened its doors Nov. 29, 1941, on the corner of 97th Street and 111th Avenue, a block away from the Smolyk home.
Friends brought sandwiches and drinks to celebrate the union and the realization of Tod’s dream.
The 24-year-old had knocked on doors in the neighbourhood and convinced 12 shareholders to invest $100 each in his business. One of those investors was Lucy, his future wife.
Tod was strapped for cash, so he pledged his embalming instruments to the company. For construction, he scavenged city dumps on weekends and pulled nails out of boards, hammering them into his new building.
At the time, funeral homes largely bore the names of their owners, favouring certain religions and ethnicities. Tod, however, chose the name Park Memorial to be neutral and to welcome all families.
Over 75 years, new locations have sprung up across Alberta in Lamont, Mayerthorpe, Smoky Lake and Vegreville.
The Edmonton site is now a modern full-service facility, equipped with a chapel, reception centre and crematorium, still staffed by two generations of the Smolyk family.
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“I’m the last person on the list that people ever want to see. Even a dentist is above a funeral director,” says Jerry Smolyk, who became president of Park Memorial after the death of his father, Tod, in 1976.
“But I’ve always tried to do my best for people. I like to be able to look at myself in the mirror.”
As a toddler, Jerry played with his toys under caskets. Sometimes, he would venture into the basement. The light switches were out of reach, so he stumbled in the dark among rows of caskets.
At age 15, Jerry’s first official funeral directing job was organizing almost 100 pallbearers for some of the 17 Chipman, Alta., high school students killed in a devastating bus crash.
Sleep was in short supply during university. Jerry staffed the funeral home alone from midnight to 8 a.m., welcoming grieving families from the nearby Royal Alexandra Hospital.
In the 1960s, eastern Canadian and American funeral conglomerates were taking over Edmonton businesses, prompting Tod to approach his son, Jerry, about taking over Park Memorial.
Jerry agreed. For two years, he studied mortuary science in Miami, where lessons included rebuilding an ear and patching up a bullet hole.
Soon after, Jerry and his wife Midge had two daughters, Kirstie and Lindy, who both grew up at Park Memorial.
“There’s not a night where the funeral business doesn’t come up,” laughs Kirstie Smolyk, who is now Park Memorial’s vice president. “That’s our life. There’s no escaping it.”
For many families, grief is like a fog, obscuring their judgment and making difficult decisions murky.
Staff at Park Memorial understand that and work hard to ensure that families are guided with empathetic professionalism. Their philosophy is rooted in compassion, ethics and community.
And it shows. Park Memorial has won Northern Alberta’s Consumer Choice award for excellence in funeral service every year since 2010.
“There’s one chance to get a funeral right,” Kirstie says. “It’s emotionally charged and we want to do exactly what the family expects.”
There have been moments of levity that punctuate the grief. A Marilyn Monroe impersonator once appeared unexpectedly at a filmmaker’s funeral. At another service, a group of bikers dropped their pants and mooned the casket.
“One lady took off her bra and threw it at the casket,” Kirstie laughs. “She said ‘You’ve always been trying to get this off me. Here you go, you’ve got it.’ ”
But Kirstie’s voice cracks as she recounts one of her more searing memories: A eulogy delivered by a young mother, whose car was hit by a truck, killing her husband and two children.
In front of packed pews, the mother recited Robert Munsch’s I’ll Love You Forever.
“Never in my life have I seen anyone as strong as this woman,” Kirstie recalls.
The sorrow of death can be overwhelming and the Smolyks acknowledge it isn’t easy. But after 75 years, they’ve received something special in return.
“I get up in the morning and I wonder what today’s going to bring. There’s never a dull day,” Jerry says. “The day I stop learning is the day they put dirt on my casket.”
This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of Park Memorial Funeral Home.