On the Job: Erin Whitaker

Name: Erin Whitaker
Degree: Chemical engineering, 1999
Title: Funeral director at Whitaker Funeral Home
Years on the Job: Four

Erin Whitaker, ChE 99, thought she had it all figured out. After getting out of Tech, she worked for eight years at Eastman Kodak in New York and Colorado, then hightailed it to Vienna with the University of South Carolina’s international MBA program. Before moving to Charlotte, N.C., to start work with Bank of America, though, she found herself working part time at the funeral home her family had owned in Newberry, S.C., for decades.

That was in 2008. Now a third-generation funeral home director, she couldn’t be more surprised at the detour her career has taken—and she couldn’t love it more. “The reward and satisfaction you get out of helping a family, these families, your community—I mean, these are people I grew up with,” she says. “It gives back to me more than I could ever give to this profession.”

No average day
Your day could start from an hour after you leave work and carry right over into the next day if you get a death call or have to make a removal in the evening. It could be 2 a.m. that it starts, it could be 4 a.m., it could be 6 a.m. There’s office work that has to be done, decisions that have to be made for the business, and if I’m not working a service I’m usually focused on that. I could be meeting with a family and then working at a funeral service and then coming back for a visitation that evening. What you learn to do is prioritize what has to get done to make sure you do that, then you learn how to fill the time in between services, making sure the next time you do get a call your bills aren’t late.

A family affair
My grandfather started Whitaker Funeral Home, and my father took over the business. My mother’s licensed as well. I’m technically a third generation. I have three sisters, none of whom have shown any interest in working in the funeral home. And I’ll tell you, when I left from high school I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this. I wanted to get away and go.

Keep it together
We never become numb to it. I have to not tuck emotions away, but learn to deal with them. I’ve sat at the back of a funeral and cried before. It does affect us in different ways. I have a family who understands. Even though my sisters aren’t involved in the industry, they grew up with it. I question God. I’ll be honest—I don’t understand things. Death is something I wish we didn’t have, but it’s a part of life. I can’t change the world on a grand scale, but for a moment, by understanding the family and what they need, I can change their world and make it a little bit better. And the other side of it is, I get to see tremendous amounts of love. You get to hear stories that are hilarious that a lot of people don’t get to know. I get invited in, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a lifetime.

All for love
Life is about the love we share with one another. None of us want to hurt, none of us want our loved ones to hurt. The truth is, if we don’t love someone, then we don’t miss them when they’re gone. We wouldn’t want to give up that love, so we accept the pain of missing them and hold onto that love to help us through the tough times.

Unusual suspect
You meet someone on an airplane and they say, “What do you do?” You say “funeral director,” and it’s very interesting to watch their face because they’re not sure how to respond. I think that it’s less that I’m a female and more that I’m just a funeral director. And then if they find out I have a chemical engineering degree from Georgia Tech, they’re kinda like, “OK, what?”

Winding road
Life takes you on a path and we have to go with it, and mine brought me back home. It’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t have been happy coming straight out of high school into this role. I needed to go away and experience all that I did. I cannot foresee me doing anything else. There’s nothing out there that I want to do. I truly love and am very passionate about what I do. But, that being said, I know that life is about change. I would never say never, only because I don’t know where my life is going. I never thought it was taking me to Atlanta, I sure never thought it was taking me to Rochester, N.Y., in the cold winter, Colorado, Vienna, Austria, then back to Newberry. For me to ever think I could plan that part out, I’d be crazy.

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