Staff photo by Kevin Sweeney Bruce Savoy, general manager of the Minnesota Valley Funeral Home, is announcing his retirement after a 40-year career at the funeral home.

NEW ULM — Bruce Savoy, general manager of the Minnesota Valley Funeral Home, is announcing his retirement after a 40-year career at the funeral home.

Savoy, who is 67, said his last day at the funeral home will be Feb. 28. Eric Warmka, one of the current funeral directors at Minnesota Valley, will take over as general manager.

Savoy has spent his whole career at Minnesota Valley. He started as an intern in 1977 while getting his degree in Mortuary Science at the University of Minnesota. When he became licensed in 1978, he was hired on in New Ulm. He served as a funeral director until 1992, when he was named general manager.

Savoy said he has “loved every minute of the 40 years.”

“Sure, nobody likes getting up at 4 o’clock,  3 o’clock in the morning, but that’s part of it,” he said. “You go through some very difficult situations, but families at that time are looking to you for guidance, and you can be of monstrous, monstrous help to them.

“I’ve looked at it as being on the ground floor, the basic step for putting those families back together, so they can go on after a critical time in their life.”

Funeral directors develop very close relationships with the families they serve over a short period of time, and those relationships can last a long, long time, Savoy said.

As rewarding as he finds the job, Savoy said there are not a lot of young people entering the profession, and it is creating a shortage of funeral directors, especially in rural areas. Many are put off by the nature of the job, dealing with the dead, but part of it is the fact that many of those entering mortuary science programs in college come from family-owned businesses, and intend to work in them. Others prefer to live and work in the metropolitan areas.

Savoy said he will be staying in New Ulm, doing a little traveling and spending time with family, but he will be available to help out at the funeral home if needed.

“We are already short staffed. I would hire two more funeral directors if they were available,” he said.

Since he started in 1978, Savoy has seen the business grow in facilities and in number of funerals.

During his internship, Minnesota Valley Funeral Home was a small brick building in what is now the south parking lot of the North Chapel. In 1978, his first year, the funeral home expanded, in its current location at Third North and Broadway, into what used to be Stoltenburg Motors.

“In 1994 we were able to purchase the old bowling alley, and convert that into the funeral home, and the little antique store on the corner. We were able to buy all the property up to the corner.”

About the same time, Minnesota Valley Funeral Home traded its Sleepy Eye operation to Firle Funeral Home for its Nicollet facility. A few years later the funeral home rebuilt its facility in Gibbon.

Finally, in 2013 the funeral home purchased the South Chapel at 7th South and Broadway from Schmucker Funeral Home, which had taken over for Firle. It also added a crematory to its North Chapel facilities

When he started, Minnesota Valley Funeral Home did about 120 services a year. Now, it is doing nearly 300.

Minnesota Valley Funeral Home remains a unique institution. It is a cooperative, formed by local business people in 1929 to provide funeral services at a reasonable price to its members. It cost $5 to become a member back then, and the entry fee remains at $5 today. Patronage dividends are paid back to members in the year after a service is performed to the member or person covered by the membership. It is governed by a board of directors.