UFDA (Utah Funeral Directors Association)

Our new 2025-2025 UFDA Board

Getting close to wrapping up day 2 of annual convention meetings. Thanks to all who have participated, planned and contributed in any way. Photo: Sergeant Major Keith Moon, speaking on intent based leadership.

Day 2 of the Midwinter meetings has arrived and Rusty Lindquist is our first speaker of the day. Rusty’s life story and vision for motivating ourselves and those around us is inspiring. What a great way to start our Saturday morning and a great way to get CEU’s!

The Midwinter banquet was a hit tonight, especially the prizes. Johnny Lillywhite helped us draw the prizes and was ecstatic to draw his own name for a Bread Basket that was almost bigger than he is!

Midwinter meetings are underway in St. George! We’re kicking off the morning with a Content Creation Boot Camp. Aaron Butler with Domanicare is helping us understand why content creation connects us to the families we serve. How do you connect with your community?

Thanks for the great time at our UFDA District III meeting!

Check out our upcoming UFDA District Meetings! Hope to see you there. Please RSVP

UFDA Executive Board Members at the NFDA Leadership Meeting in HOT Arizona June 25th - 28th

Welcome 2023-2024 UFDA Board of Directors! Front row: Andrew Anderson, Jeremy Layton, Travis Greenwood, Brian Bartlett. Back row: Laurie Abraham, David Hess, Tyler Morrison, Frank Lillywhite, Jackie Nickle and Tyler Russon.

Time to register for the 111th UFDA Annual Convention! For any questions, email is at ufda.org

Reminder that Midwinter Meetings are Jan 12-14, 2023. To reserve your room at the Best Western Plus Abbey Inn for the UFDA special rate, book by Dec 12, 2022!

Congratulations to Triston P. Franklin COO for receiving the UFDA Emerging Leader Award November 2022

Triston P. Franklin, associated with Myers since 2016, was born in Ogden and grew up in West Haven, UT. He graduated from Roy High School. He served a full-time LDS mission in the Jackson, Mississippi area. Upon returning home from his mission, Triston’s desire to serve others continued and he joined the Myers team. He graduated from Salt Lake Community College with his Mortuary Science Degree in 2019. Triston loves playing and watching sports. He also loves being outdoors and going on adventures with his wife, Rikki; and their dogs, Rocco and Max. Triston currently resides in the Roy area and looks forward to serving families for many years.

Funeral Directors, we hope to see you at our upcoming District I & II mtg.!

NFDA CONFERENCE TAKE-AWAYS FROM TRAVIS GREENWOOD. I attended NFDA Leadership in Orlando, Florida. This was my first experience at Leadership. I believe all but five states were represented at the conference. I was also impressed by the care that all attendees have for funeral service. In visiting and listening to the other states representatives and the speakers…I know that we share a lot of the same concerns with others around the country. I appreciate the opportunity I had to attend.

A couple of take-aways.

1. Staffing. We need to be creative in how we hire and retain staff. In a survey done throughout the country, the main reason people leave their employer is because they didn’t feel like management or owners cared about them. The world is changing, and we need to adapt. There is a war for qualified staffing.
2. Board membership takes a lot of time and energy. We as board members should always be recruiting for the future of our individual boards. Make board membership sought after. Share what is going on and voice the benefits of UFDA and serving on the board. Value needs to be shown.
3. Think differently to solve problems. Come up with the worst idea and start from there. It inspires other ideas that maybe haven’t been considered in the past.
4. What is our vision of ourselves? What do we do for the community and those we care about? Take time to write it down. Then, using whatever relevant means find out what the community and those we care about believe we do for them. After this exercise you will see a difference in what you believe you are and what those around you think you are. That is the marketing gap. We need to close the gap of what we are for and what the community believes we are for. This is done through digital media. What is the UFDA doing? Need to share, the more personal, the more remarkable.

Funeral directors who’d like to join us save the date for District IV’s meeting coming up on Thursday, Sept. 22nd, 2022. Hope to see you there!

Utah Funeral Directors, Save the date and come join is at District I &II meeting on September 15, 2022

Funeral Directors take note- Come join us for our District III Meeting on September 1st!

The UFDA executive board attended the NFDA 2022 Leadership Conference Here is Brad Walkers take-away’s…I always love NFDA’s Leadership Conference. There is so much to learn and it is inspiring to be surrounded by so many who are striving to do what is best for our profession. My favorite segment is always when we break-out by the office we hold. Our discussion was mostly focused around finding, hiring, recruiting, and retaining licensed Funeral Directors.

Most in attendance admitted that this may be the most difficult challenge we are now facing. Finding often means creating opportunities where those who are young (high school students, middle school students) are exposed to funeral service and encouraged by local funeral directors to explore this option for their future. This doesn’t solve an immediate problem, but it does help us to realize that we should be looking now to bring a new generation of directors to our profession. Nationally there are some who are looking to lower regulations and laws just to bring more help in quickly. This ideology lowers professionalism, compromises ethics, and is a disservice to the families we serve. If we wish to be treated as a profession and as professionals we need to continue to expect certain standards, high ethics, an expected level of education, and professional expectations for those striving to become funeral professionals.

Our keynote speaker had a quote that I loved. He said “It’s not about being the best company IN the community. It’s about being the best company FOR the community.” I love knowing that we strive as professionals to help serve and give back to our communities and the people we serve. I hope that we continue to hold high ethics, maintain professional standards, and keep best practices for our profession and the people we serve.

July 12th, 2022 - The election results are in!!! The Utah Funeral Directors Association is proud and excited to congratulate our very own Immediate Past President Brad Walker in winning his campaign as the newly elected 2022-24 At-large Representative to NFDA Board of Directors!

We are so excited for our Annual Convention coming April 27-28 at the Thanksgiving Point Show Barn. We have some great things lined up! More information will be in this week's newsletter.
Please register today!

Midwinter Schedule
Deadline to reserve hotel room is Friday, December 17.
https://www.bestwestern.com/en_US/book/hotel-rooms.45072.html?groupId=J37SD5W8

We have some great things planned for our Midwinter Meetings, January 14-15, in St. George. Please join us! Registration is now open.

Don't forget to come to our District I & II Meeting coming up tomorrow, Thursday, September 23 from 5-9 at Boondocks in Draper.

Our District III Meeting is coming up, Thursday, September 2. All District III members are invited; please RSVP by Friday.

Thanks to all who have provided responses to our survey on the new law regarding DCs. If you haven't yet, please take a moment to reply to the 5 short questions. We'd love to hear from everyone by Friday!

Feedback Requested We would love your feedback on this short 5 question survey to help us better serve you. (Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash.com)

We recommend you share this video link on your own social media accounts to help get the word out about this assistance for families who've lost loved ones from Covid-19. Registration for assistance opens Monday.

#FEMA: Providing Financial Assistance for COVID-19-Related Funeral Expenses The COVID-19 pandemic has brought overwhelming grief to many families. At FEMA, our mission is to help people before, during and after disasters — and we are...

NFDA is urging us to contact our senators and representatives to urge them to support the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2021 to protect all family-owned businesses.

They've made it very easy with this link:

GovPredict - Take Action

Thank you for for your patience, wisdom, support, caring, & compassion!
Thank you for working 24/7 to help families who've lost loved ones and doing all you can to provide a perfect end of life memorial & celebration -- all while sacrificing sleep and time/holidays away from your own family!

Wishing all of our members a great National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day -- you all deserve a great big thank you!