12/15/2023
This history is beyond interesting.. 😎
This one will give you the Heebie Jeebies. You won't find it listed on the Parks and Tourism brochure, it was the Mortuary Museum in Heber Springs, Arkansas. Who knew Arkansas had a mortuary museum? It was hidden in plain sight..
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this museum was located at 108 South Fourth Street (as seen in the picture below) and was the original site of the Olmstead Funeral Home, which was established in 1896 and is the oldest existing business in Cleburne county.
Inside the building itself was a small glimpse into history of how early funeral homes operated and how they cared for the dead. There was a photo gallery of Olmstead hearses from 1898 and in the center of the museum was an original 1896 horse-drawn hearse said to be the finest of it's kind.
There you would find books from the early 1900’s on embalming, early cosmetic kits, antique embalming equipment, portable victrolas with funereally appropriate shellac disks for graveside services, a Porti-Boy embalmer, shipping crates for bodies, and sealed metal caskets, one of which being hand made from cypress wood.
The museum is no longer there, but the name still lives on. For more than 125 years the Olmstead name has been part of Heber Springs, longer than the name Heber Springs (the town was still called Sugar Loaf back in 1896).
The history of the name and establishment started with Thomas Edward "T.E." & Mary Elizabeth Olmstead making a trip to Cleburne County before the turn of the century when Mary had a mysterious illness. The two traveled by covered wagon seeking the medicinal mineral springs in Sugar Loaf, a spring that was known for its "health-giving" qualities.
T.E. had hoped this spring would help his wife, but it turns out that Mary wasn't ill at all, she was pregnant with their fourth child, Ralph Wayne Olmstead. The young family liked the town so much and never left.
At that time, T.E., worked for the railroad, doing what was known as trade embalming. If there was a death in the town where the railroad passed through and the body needed to be shipped, he would do the embalming and put the body in a coffin and put it on the train.
When the business first opened, the operation included a funeral service which did embalming and undertaking and had its own wooden horse drawn hearse. The building also housed T.E.'s hardware store, the Heber Post office, and a livery stable. They sold building materials, paint, wallpaper and furniture.
When T.E. became mayor, that facility also became the mayor's office, living up to that death and taxes saying. A fire destroyed the original building in 1909. It was rebuilt by T.E. the next year in 1910, it's one of the city's early stone commercial buildings.
T.E. and Mary had two more sons, Cloyd E. and Vern L. Olmstead. All three of their sons started working earily at their father's business.
Ralph graduated from Worsham College of Embalming and Funeral Directing in Chicago in 1916. He became director of funeral affairs and assumed ownership of the family business when T.E.'s died in 1923.
Ralph and Vern established Olmstead Brothers Chevrolet Company in 1921 when automobiles became in demand. The business was forced to close in 1941 due to World War II when automobile parts or workers or fuel were not available.
Vern then went to work for the goverment as head mechanic in defense plants throught the war. Ralph sold his share of the auto dealership to Vern, and built a larger funeral home at 601 W. Main Street. Later, Ralph founded the Olmstead Ambulance Service, which served the entire county and surrounding areas.
In 1957, Ralph became a stockholder in Memorial Insurance Company of America, an Arkansas based funeral insurance company. The company still exists today and lists Olmstead Funeral Home as one of the top three funeral companies in Arkansas.
Ralph's wife, Julia Carr (Phelps), became a licensed funeral director and worked in the family business. Their son Tom (born December 7, 1930) accompanied his father to the business and became interested at the age of four. He embalmed his first body when he was 14 years old and at the same time directed his first funeral by himself.
Tom completed his formal training in 1950 at the Dallas Institute of Mortuary Science of Dallas, Texas. The same year he married his wife JoAnn, who continued the family tradition by becoming a licensed funeral director. Tom continued to work by his father's side until Ralph died in 1971. He became sole owner of the business and assumed the titles of President and CEO of Olmstead Funeral Home, Inc.
In 1980, the Olmstead's opened Woodland Memorial Park in the western part of Cleburne County near Edgemont. A funeral visitation facility and chapel were added to the park in 1984.
Tom passed away June 27, 2011, he was a past state board member of the Arkansas Funeral Directors and Embalmers. He was appointed by Governor Bill Clinton as legislative committeeman for Arkansas funeral directors, representing Arkansas in Washington with matters relating to the funeral industry. He was named as Funeral Director of the Year for 1980-1981, received the Morticians of the Southwest Award, and was past president of the Arkansas Funeral Directors Association.
In the recent past, he wrote his book My Life as a Funeral Director and established the Olmstead Funeral Museum. He was a 32 degree Mason and a member of the Sugarloaf Lodge No. 414 of the Masonic Order. He was a Shriner, having served as president of the Atoka Shrine Club of Heber Springs. He was one of the organizers and past president of the Heber Springs Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. Tom was also a retired co-chief of the Heber Springs Volunteer Fire Department, having served for 25 years.
Tom's younger brother, Wayne, also grew up in the business. He became a minister and the Episcopal priest for St. Edmund's Episcopal Church of Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
Tom's son's, Russ and Waren are the fourth generation of Olmsteads and licensed funeral directors in the business. Waren's son, Warren Thomas and daughter Sarah Grace, joined their father and grandfather in the family business, so that's a fifth generation of Olmsteads running the family business.
Warren Olmstead became the Cleburne County Coroner & owner of Olmstead Burial Vaults. He was the coroner when Country music singer Mindy McCready committed su***de at age 37 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
McCready was found dead at her home on her front porch at 1132 Fox Chase Drive in Heber Springs, the same place where David Wilson, her former boyfriend and the father of her younger son, had killed himself one month prior on January 13, 2013 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound as well.
The Olmstead Funeral Home is one of the oldest family owned funeral homes in the state of Arkansas and has a quite interesting history. Five generations standing the test of time.
😎
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Jim Stipe Productions, PLLC
(This post falls under the Fair Use Act of 1976 for media publication.)
