The new and former owners of Wallowa County's funeral chapel pose outside the front door Nov. 14, 2023. At left is Kevin Loveland, owner of Loveland Funeral Chapel and Crematory. At right is his predecessor, Lee Bollman.

ENTERPRISE — Kevin Loveland is expanding into Wallowa County.

Loveland, owner of a funeral home at 1508 Fourth St., La Grande, has purchased the former Bollman Funeral Chapel and Crematory in Enterprise. It now has the same name as the La Grande funeral home: Loveland Funeral Chapel and Crematory.

Lee and Renita Bollman sold the business to Loveland in June — but it’s only now that the name change is official.

Loveland said he received a letter from the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board approving the change of ownership and authorizing him to use the Bollman building.

Loveland, who serves on the board, has been a bit miffed at the delay.

“I said we’ve been waiting for months,” he said. “I told them you need to notify us when it goes into effect.”

Long in Enterprise

Bollman said his parents, Lenthal and Jo Bollman, bought the Wallowa County business from Clarence Booth in 1948, and he bought it from his parents in 1978.

Lee Bollman said when Booth started the business there was a lot of competition.

“Back in those days there were like five undertakers here,” he said.

Lenthal Bollman died in 1999, and Jo Bollman lived until 2022, just days short of her 102nd birthday. Lee Bollman said he decided to put the business up for sale, “because I’m 74 years old and the government tells me I’m going to die in four years, so I want to enjoy my retirement.”

He also said his two sons and one daughter have never had any interest in the funeral business, so it had to change families.

Wallowa County ties

Although Loveland has long been a funeral director in La Grande, he does have ties to Wallowa County.

“I have a lot of family who homesteaded up here,” he said. “The Martins and the Wisdoms are both my family. Marjory Martin was a longtime county clerk. Roy and Grace Martin were my great-great-grandparents, out of Lostine.”

Now with two funeral homes, he’s not considering any further expansion.

“This is probably all I will do, these two funeral homes,” he said, saying that he and a manager will handle the two. “I don’t think I would want to have three or four.”

Loveland, who graduated from high school in 1989, went right into the funeral business. He graduated from mortuary school in 2002 and became a licensed embalmer and funeral director the next year. Before that, he sold caskets, which was how Bollman got to know him.

Loveland bought the La Grande funeral home in October 1999.

“It was deer season of ’99,” he said. “That’s how I remember it. I’m a hunter.”

The transition

Loveland said the Bollmans will still be around, noting that their familiar faces will continue to help grieving families.

“Lee and Renita are going to stick around and help,” he said.

The Bollmans already are helping.

“Lee knows everybody,” Loveland said. “I go to pull a file and Lee already has it memorized. He is a very organized person. Transitioning of the paperwork was easy because Lee had everything organized.”

Loveland said all the files were computerized.

“The whole business was on one zip drive,” he said.

Only the name changes

Loveland aims to assure those in Wallowa County that only the name of the funeral chapel will change; no agreements the Bollmans had for prearranged funerals will change.

If there’s one thing his experience as a casket salesman taught him it’s that the plush and often expensive nature of caskets is more for the survivors than anything.

“It gives people peace of mind,” he said. “It’s really not about the product you purchased. It doesn’t matter if it’s the least-expensive casket or the most-expensive casket. The most important thing is that you allow people to gather and say goodbye. That is hands-down the most important thing we can teach a community — they don’t have to buy fancy headstones or fancy caskets, but people want to gather and they want to remember that person and reflect on their life.”

He has personal experience in that.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “You could be dealing with guys like my dad, who said, ‘I don’t want a funeral; just burn me and throw my ashes up in the mountains.’ The thing is, the funeral was not for my dad. The funeral was for the rest of us. What I told my dad is, ‘We will respect your wishes, but there’s going to be a funeral.’ You can still honor people’s requests, but just trying to convey that message is pretty important.”

Loveland and Bollman said they encourage people to make prearrangements for funerals both to lock in the costs that could otherwise change and for a person to ensure they get the kind of service they want.

“The one thing you really have to sell is those prearranged services that people do, those really do help out when they tell us what they want before they die,” Bollman said.

Loveland agreed.

“And then they pay for it. That’s probably one of the best gifts you can give to a family is to prearrange your funeral in advance so you don’t have to burden your family with that during their grieving time,” he said. “More and more are doing that on a yearly basis.”

The two funeral directors agreed that a memorial service with cremation costs about $5,000-$6,000, while it’s about $10,000-$11,000 for burial with a funeral plus the cost of the headstone, which comes from a different company.