Your Incredible Neighbors: Growing up in a funeral home inspires memoir, offers hope

In retirement here in Green Valley for more than two dozen years, Doris Steffy, 82, served as a grief counselor with Corondelet Hospice for 14 years. She continues to be active in Valley Presbyterian Church programs and lives at La Posada.

In her life before Green Valley, Doris taught physical education for 34 years and retired as a professor from the University of Northern Colorado.

She has three siblings, Keith (86) in GV; Freda (85) in Tucson, and Sam (77) who lives in Kansas and still drives a school bus.

Doris and her siblings literally grew up in a funeral home in Montezuma, Iowa.

Their father, Tim Steffy, died in 1937. He’d owned and operated a mortuary and a furniture store.

Their mother, Florence Pearl Smith Steffy, was a homemaker. She had helped out some in both businesses. The new widow chose to live and move forward under difficult circumstances.

In spite of the Great Depression and living in an era where most women were expected to stay at home, Mrs. Steffy decided to go to Hohenschuh Carpenter College of Mortuary Science in St. Louis, 300 miles from her home to obtain the proper credentials and a license to carry on the funeral home and work her husband had started.

Keith, then 16, and an aunt ran a tight ship at home for the nine months it took Steffy to break down gender barriers and complete her training.

She took classes in microanatomy, bacteriology, embalming, restorative art, and more.

A real “pioneer” in the field, Steffy already had a degree in English, but she was the older and one of only two women in the mortuary school classes along with about 50 men.

Ran business for 40 years

Steffy completed her studies and passed her state board exams, returned home and became a qualified embalmer in the state of Iowa. She ran the funeral and the grocery business for 40 years.

The family lived on the top floor of a three-story white frame house that also housed the funeral home. The casket display room was up five steps from the main floor with caskets lining the walls with a double row down the center. The preparation room was stark, white, cold, and sterile; a room Doris didn’t like to be in.

All of the children had many responsibilities, helping their mother. They ushered, arranged flowers, escorted family members at services and much more, doing whatever their mother asked of them. They also accompanied their mother on death calls.

Doris, who was 12 when her mother went away to school, knew she wanted no part of a career in the funeral business. She preferred working in the furniture store but dreamed of exploring other avenues. Fortunately, her mother was supportive of Doris’ goals.

Moving memoir

Recently, Doris completed a moving memoir about her mother’s life. “Mrs. Steffy, Our Mother, the Mortician” is the result.

This sensitive and even witty book about her mother’s life is based on the copious scrapbooks her mother kept covering a 40-year period. Each scrapbook contained 50-85 pages of obituaries and notes, spanning her career history.

Steffy saw herself as “a person…put on this earth to comfort all mankind.”

Many conversations between mother and daughter also shaped the book which provides a look at two amazing women as Doris and her mother grow and mature in new ways.

“Death is something everyone must experience.”

Funeral business professionals are every aware of this, recognizing just how precious life can be.

Doris recounts, “Our mother was a funeral director…but was as at home in the kitchen as in the cemetery. Mother had a great sense of humor. Her first love was theatre. Her makeup skills showed in her preparation of bodies for viewing.”

Doris said her mother always “stood proud, held her head high, and had incredible physical stamina and the social graces of a first lady. She was a tower of strength as she helped families through the many grief stages.”

These include shock, depression, and pre-occupation with the sense of loss, anger, and guilt.

Doris wrote the book to honor her mother and hopes it “will give renewed hope to those who have lost a love one…” and an understanding of her mother’s great faith in the resiliency of the human spirit.”

Editor’s Note: Although the book is a memoir, some names were changed to protect the identities of certain clients and neighbors.

Ga‘l P. Mustapha is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.

The details
Doris C. Steffy’s book, “Mrs. Steffy,” is available for $16.95 and can be ordered in most book stores or through the publisher at www.wheatmark.com online.

Half of the proceeds go to the Arizona Instructional Resource Center of the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix.