Our Story
Elkins East Chapel was built in 1984 on four spacious acres on Highway 72 at Mitchelltown Road in the Center Star community. A fully-operational and traditionally-furnished funeral home, East Chapel offers a large lobby, two large parlors, and chapel seating for 250. The carport can easily protect nine family cars from the weather. A coffee lounge is provided for the use of our families and guests.
Stanley Elkins, a kind and gentle man, spent his life in service to others. He began his career in 1939 by working after school and on weekends at the Brown Service Funeral Home on Wood Avenue in Florence with Jewell Archer. He was drafted into the Army in 1943 and served as a surgical technician in the South Pacific until he returned to the funeral profession in 1946. He graduated in 1947 from Gupton-Jones Mortuary School in Nashville. He returned to the funeral home in Florence where he and a former partner purchased the Brown Service Funeral Home and the Chisholm Funeral Home in 1959, and 11 years later, purchased the Mays Funeral Home in Tuscumbia in 1968. In 1959, Mr. Elkins purchased the funeral home at 1535 Hermitage Avenue in Florence which is now known as Elkins Funeral Home. In 1984, seeing the need to provide the citizens of East Lauderdale County with a more convenient location, he built Elkins East Chapel.