Meet John Finlay of Legacy Tribute

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Finlay.

John, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a small town north of Dublin, in what is known as Ireland’s Ancient East. My family has been in the casket and funeral home business for many years, and as a kid I worked in the family business on weekends and during school holidays.

Surrounded by all this ancient history, funeral customs and traditions I developed an understanding and appreciation for the importance of funeral customs and the importance on a daily basis for the role of the funeral director in helping a family through such difficult times, helping them to celebrate and commemorate the life of a loved one.

Together with my father and my brother, we expanded our business to become one of the leading funeral supply companies to funeral homes in Ireland and the UK. We also began supplying funeral homes here in the United States, and in 2007, my wife Sinead and I moved to the United States, together with our 3 children – Jack, Alannah & Eabha. We settled in Scituate, a town that we are so happy to call home.

Has it been a smooth road?
Life is always going to bring challenges – in the first few years after we moved to the United States, I lost 3 very close friends at different times to illnesses. It was a very sad and difficult time when friends in their 40s were struck down by cancer and ALS.Flying back to Ireland, I cried and grieved with old friends and wondered about how life can be so cruel. What was really helpful to all of us was having the opportunity to come together for a couple of days for the wake and funeral, time for us to spend together, to laugh and cray and remember together, and to accompany our departed friends on their final journey and to lay them to rest. And have the opportunity to say goodbye.

They were tough times but they helped me develop an even deeper appreciation of why funerals and proper farewells are so important – they help us not only to celebrate and commemorate the life of someone we loved, but also to share the loss with others, and to begin to heal and move forward.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Legacy Tribute provides caskets and memorial tributes to funeral home customers across New England. We specialize in a line of specially designed products to enable families to choose a casket or memorial tribute tailored to reflect a loved one’s heritage and their sense of identity.

We started out with some Irish and Italian caskets, but today families can choose from a unique collection that also now includes Chinese, Portuguese, Orthodox, Greek, Cape Verdean, Azorean, Puerto Rican, Ghanaian and even Hindu designs. In addition, we also specialize in designing beautiful tributes for Veterans, as well as a line of Environmentally friendly caskets.

In addition to caskets, we also provide unique cremation urns, jewelry and many personalized products and options. And anything we don’t have or have not yet designed, we will do – basically anything within reason that a funeral home or a family requests, we will do everything we can to make it happen.

What makes me most proud of at Legacy Tribute, is when we hear back how much one of our caskets meant to a family at what is, of course, an incredibly difficult time. We work hard every day to support our funeral home customers, so it really is great to know that sometimes what we do can help to make even a small difference.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
While our office is based in Scituate, our operations center is located in Taunton which is much more suitable for distribution, Scituate is not the most accessible town, however, it really is worth it when you get here!

We provide training and merchandising support, so we love to invite our funeral home customers to visit our merchandising center and showroom here, but we also like to take the time to show them around Scituate and the surrounding area.

It really is a wonderful place for our customers to come visit us, maybe stay down at the Inn at the harbor, which is a wonderful hidden gem! The other big attraction, of course, is the selection of great restaurants and our famous Scituate lobster and local Duxbury oysters.

Legacy Tribute is all about family, which is something that customers comment on when they get to know us. We are a family owned and operated business, and we work with funeral homes that are owned by local families, who in turn help families in their local communities at a very difficult time. We hope that what we do can help even a little to help commemorate the life of a loved one.

Contact Info:

• Address: 11 Booth Hill Rd
• Website: www.legacytributeusa.com
• Phone: (617)874-2883
• Email: john@legacytributeusa.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/legacytributeusa/

Image Credit:
A.Frates Photography, Carver MA

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