God helped lead funeral director home to Lynco

Jerry Stafford has come home.

"It's been an adventure, but I'm glad to be back at home," he emphasized.

Owner of Stafford Funeral Home in Lynco, the funeral director/embalmer had been working in Huntington, he and wife Lisa raising their children.

"I'd been praying about it for years," Stafford said of his desire to bring his family back to Wyoming County. "I knew the good Lord would put me where He wanted me to be, and if He OK'd it, it would be OK."

Stafford faced no small task in opening his own funeral home. Along with his dad, Jacob, the two began turning his father's old machine shop into a new business.

"We gutted it," he said, pointing out the gleaming floors, newly covered walls and brightly lit rooms. There remains no sign a machine shop was ever housed in the building.

While Stafford and his father did much of the work, they also had to have a contractor. They found it difficult explaining how they wanted the building renovated.

"It was like building a house in a house," Stafford said of the renovations.

"Fifteen years ago, I would never have believed I would be doing this," he said. "Now, I can't see doing anything else.

"I love to sit down with a family and do what I can to help. I really like what I do," he emphasized.

Stafford was an honor graduate of the Cincinnati mortuary science school, earning the top award for excellence in his class, but funeral director wasn't his first choice.

He began medical school, then decided it wasn't for him.

Stafford had learned to weld and work on equipment from the time he was a boy in his dad's machine shop. When the shop closed, he went to work in the mines as a chief mechanic.

His love of biology and anatomy, however, eventually drew him back to a business in which he could help people in their darkest hours.

"The downside of being a hometown funeral director is you know just about everybody that comes here," he explained. "The upside is helping people.

"What most people don't realize is, I'm a memory maker. They will never forget that final pass by their loved one. So I can create a good memory for them, or a bad memory," Stafford explained.

Stafford's business is thriving and he credits God with that success.

"Everything you see here, everything you see here, everything at my house, God provided it," he emphasized.

Fishing is Stafford's favorite relaxation. He recalls numerous fishing trips with his grandparents, especially his grandfather, McGarvey Blankenship, at R. D. Bailey Lake and Horse Creek Lake, among other locations.

"Daddy had to make a living and Pappaw was retired," he said. "We fished all over the place."

Family is important to Stafford and he jokingly notes, "We are the epitome of Westside."

The high school consolidated students from Baileysville and Oceana high schools.

His wife is a graduate of Baileysville, while he graduated from Oceana. His dad graduated from Baileysville, while his mom graduated from Oceana, and so it is for Lisa's parents.

The first piece of property they looked at upon returning to the county straddles the boundary line between Baileysville and Oceana school districts, he said with a laugh.

"If the good Lord calls me home today, I've had a good life," he said.