Mark Bailey, funeral director at the Rendon-Bailey Funeral Home on East Baltimore Street, is part of a new generation of funeral directors.
Bailey, a former Maryland state trooper who was seriously injured in the line of duty, and his partner, Pluty Rendon, have opened a funeral home in an area that is moving away from tradition and toward gentrification.
“We are still a small home,” Bailey said of the business started near Patterson Park. “I?m extremely flattered when people come to me and trust me with their precious family member.”
As the city?s population grows, some question if the main threat to religious and ethnic niche funeral homes comes more from a younger generation of mainstream funeral directors than from corporate chains.
The question is not a frivolous one, said Dan Isard, a nationally known funeral consultant and industry analyst.
“I think that as a people Americans are assimilating,” he said. “When you look at interracial marriages, mixed religions, different ethnicities, you have more questions about what homes the family will use. We are finding more Catholics going to Protestant homes, Jewish homes having Christian customers. I expect this to continue.”
Could Baltimore be different? Perhaps.
“This isn?t prejudice or bigotry or bias,” said Todd VanBeck, nationally known funeral author and industry consultant. “People in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston ? they want to connect to people who know their families.”
Las Vegas and other more homogenized cities don?t have those traditions, so the ethnic funeral home is almost as dated as home funerals.
Not so in Baltimore, report many funeral directors who are enmeshed in their communities.
“Baltimore is so strong in Little Italy and other neighborhoods,” said Bill Davis, vice president of Henry W. Jenkins and Son in Monkton, the oldest continually operating funeral home in the U.S. “It is going to be quite some time before people stop going to the firms they know. I think we have a long while before major change is going to take place.”
