Ryan M. Buckland, Immediate Past President
Editor’s Note: New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association Immediate Past President Ryan M. Buckland delivered these remarks during the association’s General Session at the 2026 Funeral Directors Convention and Expo.
When I accepted the responsibility of leading this association, I understood I was inheriting a legacy far older than my tenure. Men and women before me built this organization on a simple but demanding foundation. Those foundations were that our work is sacred, our standards are non-negotiable, and our calling extends beyond any single funeral home or family we serve. I have tried, in my time, to honor that foundation. Whatever measure of success we have achieved these past years belongs not to me, but to all of you who showed up, who served, who carried this association forward on your own backs when it would have been easier to stay home.
Our industry is changing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not paying attention. Cremation rates continue to climb. Families are asking for less ceremony and more convenience. Private equity is buying up funeral homes that carried a family name for three generations. Technology promises to make grief efficient, as though grief were ever meant to be efficient. The pressures on our profession are real, and they are not going away.
But this is what I need you to hear today. A change in the industry is not permission for a decline in character. We can adapt our services without abandoning our standards. We can embrace new technology without losing the human touch that a family needs when they walk through our doors at the worst moment of their lives. We can compete in a changing marketplace without cutting corners on the excellence this profession demands. The families we serve do not care how the industry is evolving. They care that someone showed up with integrity, with compassion, and with the competence to guide them through something they have never faced before and pray they will not face again for a long time.
Excellence is not optional simply because the business model is shifting under our feet. Character is not negotiable simply because margins are tighter than they used to be. If anything, in a season of change, our character becomes the very thing that distinguishes us. Anyone can lower a price. Anyone can automate a process. Not everyone can sit with a widow at two in the morning and mean it.
I think often of the theologian Howard Thurman, who spent his life teaching that a person's true worth is measured by an inner integrity that outside pressures cannot touch. In his address to the graduates of Spelman College, Thurman spoke of a kind of inner authenticity he called the sound of the genuine, and he told those young people that once they found it, it would be the only true guide they will ever have. I want that same word for every director, embalmer and apprentice in this room today. Let the sound of the genuine in you be louder than the noise of an industry telling you to cut a corner. Let it be louder than a competitor undercutting your price, louder than a corporate buyer promising you an easier way, louder than every voice suggesting that character is a luxury this business can no longer afford. It cannot afford to lose it. Whatever changes around us, the sound of the genuine inside each of us must remain the compass by which we serve.
So here is my second charge to you, as important as the first one and that is, we cannot do this alone. There has always been a temptation in our profession toward isolation. Funeral directors are trained to be self-sufficient, to solve problems quietly, to carry burdens without complaint. We are the ones families lean on, and so we rarely allow ourselves to lean on anyone else. But that same instinct, left unchecked, can convince us we do not need each other. That is a lie, and it is a dangerous one.
I am reminded of the words of the poet John Donne, written centuries ago and still true tonight: “No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” He went on to write that “any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” Donne was writing about mortality, but he could just as easily have been writing about this profession. We are not islands. Every funeral home in this room is connected to the ones beside it. When one of us fails to uphold this profession's standards, all of us feel the diminishment. When one of us succeeds through excellence and integrity, all of us are elevated by it.
Think for a moment about what it would mean for us to actually live as though we believed that. It would mean the young director just starting out picks up the phone and calls a veteran across town, not as a competitor to be watched warily, but as a colleague to be learned from. It would mean the funeral home with three locations and the funeral home with one both show up to the same continuing education session, because excellence is not rationed by the size of your business. It would mean that when legislation threatens the integrity of this profession, we speak with one voice in Trenton instead of 40 scattered ones. That is what it looks like to actually believe that no man, woman or funeral home is an island.
This association exists because someone, decades ago, understood that truth. They understood that we are stronger together than apart, that our collective voice matters in the Statehouse, that our shared standards protect not only the families we serve but the dignity of this entire profession. That has not changed and it will not change, no matter how the industry around us continues to shift.
So my charge to you as I close this chapter is simple. Keep meeting. Keep mentoring the next generation of directors coming up behind you. Keep holding one another accountable to the standard this profession requires. Keep listening for the sound of the genuine in yourselves, and keep showing up for each other the way you showed up for me. The industry will keep changing and that is certain. What is not certain, what must never become uncertain, is whether we will change with it while still holding the line on who we are.
It has been the honor of my professional life to serve as your President. I leave this office grateful, humbled and confident, not because the road ahead is easy, but because I know the people walking it.
No man is an island. And neither is this association.