- April 24, 2024
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How do you knock down a concrete wall that’s over a foot thick?
“With a concrete saw and a big sledgehammer,” 58-year-old Paul Chambery said.
With the help of his 52-year-old cousin Tony Chambery, the duo set to work on turning a property that used to be a bank into their dream business — a funeral home.
The Chamberys did most of the work themselves. The biggest project was turning the old bank’s drive-through into a chapel.
“It was a lot of work, and it was just us two,” said Paul, who moved to Palm Coast from Long Island, New York, in 1989. “It was a lot of blood and sweat and quite a few tears, but we did it because it was our dream. It was my dream and then it became (Tony’s) dream. I wanted to own my own funeral home so I could serve the families the way they deserved to be treated.”
Three weeks ago, the Chamberys celebrated the opening of the Chambery Family Funeral Home, located at 14 Palm Harbor Village in Palm Coast. The home is fully equipped with embalming services, quiet rooms, a celebration room and a drive-through-less chapel.
Paul worked for Clymer Funeral Home and Cremation for 10 years before he approached his cousin, a mortgage banker, with the idea of opening up a business together. Tony, who moved to Palm Coast nearly a year ago, helped secure the funds. He currently handles the financial side of the business while Paul is the home’s funeral director.
Paul fell in love with the business while working at Clymer, and although he’s constantly surrounded by death, he sees his job as a celebration of life.
“The days of the morbid funeral director are gone,” Paul said. “We pride ourselves on personalizing our services to whatever made the deceased him or herself.”
The home, which offers discounts to funerals involving members of the military and law enforcement, provides prayer cards, memorial folders, tribute DVDs and will even include themes to a funeral service.
“We have a funeral coming up where the family wanted to know if they could bring the gentleman’s Harley,” he said. “If that’s what made him, him, then we’ll wheel it right through the chapel and place it by his urn.”
There are circumstances, however, when the job becomes difficult, he said. But he’s always willing to go the extra mile to help out a grieving family.
“One time I did a funeral for a baby who had passed away,” he said. “The mom didn’t want to see her baby in a casket. I asked her if she had a crib and told her to bring it in. I asked her what position he slept in, and when I laid him out, he looked beautiful.”
Regardless, he's always asked why he does it: why he purposefully surrounds himself with death and why he’s willing to go the extra mile for a family. It's not for the dead, he said.
“There’s nothing I can do for the deceased,” Paul said. “But if I can make a really hard time in someone’s life a little bit easier, that’s why I do it. I do it for the living.”
