Honan Funeral Home Celebrates 100th Anniversary

By Jan Howard

The Honan Funeral Home is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In 1903, William A. Honan, Sr, father of the current owner, founded the Honan Funeral Service, following his licensing by the State of Connecticut.

To date, three generations of the Honan family have been involved in the business.

Mr Honan, Sr, was born in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown in 1881. Following his education in the one-room Walnut Tree Hill schoolhouse, he was hired, along with his sister, Margaret Honan, by the Levi Morris family of Main Street.

He became a clerk in the Levi Morris General Store and Margaret was a maid. They both lived with the Morris family.

Mr Morris, in addition to being a storekeeper, “had a side business of taking care of funerals,” William Honan, Jr, said. “I know of some funeral homes that were connected with furniture stores.

“As well as clerking in Mr Morris’s store, my dad helped Mr Morris with his undertaking duties,” Mr Honan said.

“It was also part of my dad’s duties to deliver groceries and foodstuffs to the farmers in the outlying farms. He would deliver the farmer’s order in a horse and buggy and at the same time collect an order to be delivered the next week.”

In 1902, Mr Honan enrolled in a traveling embalming school in New Haven. “The traveling school would go to different cities and teach the rudiments of embalming and funeral directing. The course only took about five months. Following the completion of the course in 1903, my dad was licensed by the State of Connecticut. He was the first embalmer in Newtown.”

At that time most people died in their homes, Mr Honan said, and everything to prepare them for burial was done in the home, usually in the room in which they died. The wake and funeral were also held in the home. “It was my dad’s duty to embalm the bodies and assist in the funeral,” Mr Honan said. “He learned from Levi Morris.”

In 1912, Mr Honan, Sr, married Margaret Hayes of Sandy Hook and bought a two-family home at 58 Main Street, Newtown.

“My family lived on the right side of the house, and the left side was rented,” Mr Honan said.

Behind this house was a garage and extra rooms, where he stored equipment used in his embalming and funeral directing business.

Shortly after purchasing the house on Main Street, Mr Honan left the employ of Mr Morris and established his own General Merchandise, Feed and Grain store in Hawleyville. In 1940 he was named postmaster in Hawleyville, a position he held for 12 years. In 1955 the entire building was rented by the Post Office Department, and the store was closed.

In 1938, Mr Honan tore down the garage and storage rooms behind his home at 58 Main Street, and constructed a two-story building, with a funeral home on the first floor and an apartment on the second.

“This was the first funeral home in Newtown,” Mr Honan said.

About 1960, a branch of the Wilmont, West, and Goulding Funeral Home of Bridgeport opened near the Country Club, but it lasted only ten years, he said. Since 1970, the Honan Funeral Home has been the only funeral home in town.

In 1947, Mr Honan joined his father in the operation of the funeral home. A graduate of Newtown High School and Providence College, he trained for a year at the New England Institute of Anatomy in Boston. He also served in the United States Navy during World War II where he served as a lab technician.

Mr Honan said he had considered other careers. “When I started college in 1941, I didn’t want to be a funeral director,” Mr Honan said. “Dad wanted me to go into dentistry.” However, he noted, “A prominent dentist in Bridgeport told me to stay with Dad.”

While at the New England Institute of Anatomy, Mr Honan said they would go to Tufts Medical School, where they learned embalming techniques. His course of study also included a course on rules and regulations for funeral homes, how to direct funerals, and restoration of injured bodies, among others.

“Today people can say they want a closed casket,” Mr Honan said. “But years ago, an open casket was part of the culture.”

After graduating, he worked at Fairfield Hills Hospital for a while and took courses at Bridgeport University in bookkeeping and accounting.

In 1947, he married the former Jeanne Craffey of Boston. Last year they celebrated 55 years of marriage. The couple has eight children: Joan, Maureen, Jack, Eleanor, Patricia, Daniel, Rita, and Bridget.

Mr and Mrs William A. Honan, Sr, both died in 1966. In 1969, William Honan, Jr, moved the funeral home from 56 Main Street to the two-family home his parents owned at 58 Main Street, where he made extensive renovations.

“We completely gutted it,” he said. “It was a lot of work, all new plumbing and heating, and we converted the upstairs into an apartment.”

Following the extensive renovations, the new funeral home opened in 1970.

In 1982, Daniel T. Honan, one of eight children of William and Jeanne Honan, joined his father in operation of the funeral home, following his graduation from American Academy, McAllister Institute of Funeral Service.

William A. Honan, Sr, and William A. Honan, Jr, served the town of Newtown in various capacities. Mr Honan, Sr, served three terms in the State Legislature as state representative. He also served on the Board of Education for more than 30 years, 15 as chairman.

Mr Honan, Jr, served 12 years on the Newtown Park and Recreation Commission, nine years as chairman, and 12 years on the Legislative Council, four years as chairman. He was also a member of the Town Hall Board of Managers.

The Honan Funeral Home is a well-known landmark on Main Street, and with continuing family involvement appears will remain so in the future.