Yes It’s True: Our funeral homes, banks are feeder fish

“But Monopoly is so much fun and I’d hate to blow the game.” — Phil Ochs, “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends.”

I learned in my salad days of studying history, that President Theodore Roosevelt earned a reputation more than 100 years ago as a “Trust-Buster,” halting businesses from becoming too big and beyond government regulation. Yet these days it seems companies are consolidating more than ever, and large firms are swallowing up smaller ones in an exceptionally dog eat dog capitalist system.

We folks in Wayland haven’t escaped this phenomenon, even though we’re still regarded as rural America with bedrock small town family values.

The latest episode in these developments around here is the realization that Cook-Kubiak Funeral Services in Wayland, Dorr and a few other West Michigan communities has been devoured by one of the largest cremation, cemetery and funeral businesses in the country, Digital Memorial, based in Houston, Texas.

According to material on its web site, “Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral, cremation and cemetery providers that include affiliates of Service Corporation International, 1929 Allen Parkway, Houston, Texas. With over 2,000 locations, Dignity Memorial providers proudly serve over 375,000 families a year.”

This is quite a ways from the old Archer-Hampel Funeral Home from half a century ago, which evolved into Hampel-Kubiak and then Cook-Kubiak. There is absolutely nothing illegal going on here, but it makes me sad to sit by idly and watch friendly local hometown business give way to owners who don’t live here and maybe even are headquartered thousands of miles away. When you lose that personal touch to the huge impersonal approach, you do risk some future unpleasantness.

We’ve also witnessed these kinds of developments with our banks.

There was a time a couple of generations ago when the only game in town was Wayland State Bank, which grew to add on branches at Gun Lake, Hopkins and even Clarksville. That institution eventually morphed into United Bank, which moved its headquarters to Grand Rapids, but at least its CEO still is Arthur C. Johnson, a Wayland High School graduate.

Then Hastings City Bank and Byron Center Bank came to town. The former kept its headquarters in Hastings, but continued to add branches in other area communities to become Highpointe Community Bank. The latter was swallowed by Chemical Bank of Midland and then TCF, which is based in Detroit.

The pattern is the same as the funeral businesses, at first small and local and later subsidiaries of bigger and stronger players in the marketplace, but also perhaps less responsive to our needs and wants right here.

Let’s not forget that our cable TV services started local and small and grew exponentially into Charter Communications and now Spectrum.

The centers of business and finance continue to get further away. And, as the Vanilla Fudge and the Supremes sang 53 years ago, “There ain’t nothin’ I can do about it.”

“Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” — With apologies to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.