John Reed Then

John Reed Today

Courtesy of:

Charleston Gazette-Mail

By Sandy Wells

Staff Writer

WEBSTER SPRINGS, W.Va. -- He grew up in Pinch, on Elk River. "I've lived on Elk River all my life, at one end or the other."

He works in Webster Springs, a quiet little town that once teemed with coal miners and lumberjacks. Today, fewer than 1,000 people live there. He runs a business on a side street not far from the fire station and mayor's office. Nothing is very far in Webster Springs.

John Reed likes small town life. "Elk River has a certain attraction that's kept me here," he said.

In May, he flies off to Hong Kong. In November, he spent a week in the Philippines. He travels across America. He's racked up 20,000 air miles since October. "I'll probably hit 60,000 miles this year," he said.

In Webster Springs, he's director of the Dodd and Reed Funeral Home. He also owns Adams-Reed Funeral Home in Cowen.

On the road, he's head honcho of the National Funeral Directors Association, the largest organization of its kind in the world.

Last October in Orlando, Fla., Reed was installed as the group's 114th president, only the second West Virginian in the organization's history to win the office, the first from the state in 125 years. "It's just me and Charles Watkins in 1916," he said, "so it's quite an honor."

Reed worked his way to the top. He held every state office then was elected to the policy board of the national association. After serving two years of a three-year term, he won an at-large seat on the executive board. Next, he filed for secretary. He lost by 57 votes.

He didn't give up. "I'm a small, rural funeral home director with desires and interests in common with about 80 percent of our members who have operations our size. I campaigned differently." The second time, he won by 60 votes. Next, he moved up to treasurer, then to president-elect.

If Charlie Dodd could only see him now.

Reed's mentor, Charles E. Dodd, died in December 2007 at 96. They connected early in Reed's career, not long after his graduation from mortuary school.

The story of Reed's journey to president started as a 13-year-old in Pinch. He passed Hafer Funeral Home every day on his way to school. "This was back when funeral homes provided ambulance services," he said. "One day, they asked me to ride with them in the ambulance to help them carry a lady down some steps."

He was hooked. "After that, I would ride my bike two or three miles to the funeral home any time I could take an ambulance trip. On Saturdays and Sundays and every day after school, I would be there washing cars and parking cars and helping with services. When I got out of high school and it was time to decide on a career, this is the only thing I was interested in."

He graduated from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, worked briefly at a funeral home in Rainelle, then signed on with Dodd and Hurt in Webster Springs in 1971. "Charles Dodd was from Elkview, so we had that in common," Reed said. "People would refer to him as the dean of funeral service in West Virginia even though he was from a rural town.

"He was revered in our profession as one of the great innovators. He knew this profession inside out. It was his life's work and he studied it intensely. He always said he had one of everything ever made in the funeral profession because he was never afraid to try something new. He said he never went to a meeting or convention that he didn't bring something back home that he could use."

One thing Dodd instilled in him, Reed said, was the importance of involvement in professional organizations. Dodd was president of the state association in 1955 and served as district governor from 1979 through 1981.

Reed bought an interest in the business in 1973 then bought all of it with his wife in 1984. They renamed it Dodd and Reed.

 Looking back on the funeral business he knew as a novice, Reed said he never expected such extraordinary change. "I never dreamed in the mid-1960s that funeral services would be like they are today. When I started, a funeral home might have had an organ, an electric adding machine, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and an old phonograph. That was the extent of the technology.

"Now funeral homes have elaborate music systems, webcasts, flat-screen TVs and PC programs to customize folders. We can transmit services live on the Internet over a secure connection so family members who can't be there can be involved in the service.

"Baby Boomers want simpler services that are more relevant, a celebration of the person's life instead of the cookie-cutter funeral I knew."

As national president, he will guide his membership through three major issues. "The environmental folks are waging a war to ban formaldehyde. There isn't an alternative chemical that does an adequate job. We aren't fighting the ban. We're just coming up with better practices to minimize our exposure."

Funeral directors also face a push from environmentalists for "green burials" that prevent such unnatural additives as embalming fluid, steel and concrete from going into the ground.

A third issue involves the unethical handling of funds entrusted to funeral directors for pre-need funerals, he said.

National office isn't the only obligation that keeps Reed on the move. He belongs to the Region III Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a roster of federal employees activated to deal with the aftermath of airline crashes and other major disasters involving human remains. As a squad leader, he spent two weeks in Louisiana setting up emergency morgues after Hurricane Katrina.