 ARENAC COUNTY - Where to start? My name is Roberta House-Forshee. I acquired the last name from my late husband Tyler Forshee, a fourth-generation “Forshee” at C.L. Forshee and Sons Funeral Homes, Inc., in rural Twining and Au Gres, Michigan - combined population less than 1,500. Near as I can figure from old records and snippets of newspaper clippings that were saved over the years, the business began in approximately 1915, originallyestablished as a furniture and undertaking business by Claud Forshee. The two-story building was located on Main Street in Twining, across the street from the current food market, where the owner sells groceries to customers through a glass window when the electricity goes out in town. The funeral business continued with Claud’s nephew, Clare Forshee, 2nd-generation, who eventually opened a parlor on Lee Street, just east of the highway and south of the railroad tracks in town. My late father-in-law, Clayton John Forshee continued the tradition, as did my husband, Tyler, bringing the business to its current status with a funeral home on Michigan Avenue in the harbor town of Au Gres and a on M-65, just north of Twining on the main highway. When Tyler and I reacquainted ourselves with each other in 1995 as alumni from the same 400-plus, K-12 school district in Northeast Michigan, I was a divorce’ and he, a widower. I was just entering my 30s and he was somewhere in the middle. At the time, I was beginning a new chapter in my life. I had just finished a bachelor degree in English and Journalism at Madonna University, a Catholic college in the suburbs of Detroit. I had also passed my state examination to become a secondary teacher and figured I would spend my life teaching youngsters about literary works and writing. Fifteen-years later, the loss of my mother and husband two careers gone-by, I’ve learned that life doesn’t always give you what you plan or what you think you need when you need it. When my husband died in 2007, in no way shape, or form, was I considering keeping funeral business that had been a part of his family for a multitude of decades. I had my career as an editor of a weekly paper and was satisfied with my chosen path that went from teaching, broadcast media to print media. I enjoyed my work and was passionate about educating people on issues and topics that may assist them in their daily lives. Sure there was a lot of politics involved in small-town reporting, but all-in-all, life had been going along just fine before Tyler died. Now, my entire life was out of control, and I needed some continuity – I needed something I knew, and the funeral business definitely wasn’t it. Sure, I knew how to write obituaries. Reporters do that all the time. Sure, I could handle an insurance claim. I worked in insurance while putting myself through college. I knew what dead people looked like. I made many a calls with my husband to hospitals and private homes in the dark of night. I knew how to care for people and lift the injured, as I was a volunteer firefighter, and by gosh, I knew how to deal with emergencies, as I put in a short stint as a part-timer with the county E-911 center when I moved back to the rural setting. But could I really do this funeral home job? The death industry was experiencing the same economic pains as the rest of the country, and I wasn’t even sure if I was qualified or capable of handling grieving families, let alone the operations of a funeral home. Did I mention the national recession? I guess those worries and concerns became irrelevant when I received word one year after I buried my husband that I was no longer needed as editor. The answers were no longer a muddled mess and mound of confusion in my head. I had been praying for the answers, and I realized then that I wasn’t going anywhere, and I had to figure out real quickly how I was going to move the business forward. Step up, Kirsten J. Turner, who was hired in 2008 as our full-time funeral director, or “mortician” for the “old-schoolers .” As a female embalmer in a male-dominated industry, I had my own reservations of how well she or I, for that matter, would be received by the predominately traditionally-valued, agricultural community in which we served. We are all familiar with how quickly change is embraced, and while it took a couple of years of bumps, bruises and looks of shock “like we had the plague” as Kirsten would describe, we did it. We do it today, and we’ll do it tomorrow, not because it’s our job, but because it’s where we’re supposed to be. It’s our families, neighbors and friends in need of compassion and care when our phone rings, and it seems to be where we can make a difference in this journey of life, if only for a moment. Life isn’t about a plan. It’s about the journey. ~Roberta |
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