Benton Harbor City Cemetery

ST. JOSEPH — A pioneering downtown St. Joseph entrepreneur will soon be closing up shop after more than 40 years in business, but the community hasn’t seen the last days of Yore.“I’m better when I’m busier,” said Connie Yore, the owner of Days of Yore antiques and collectibles at 215 State St., who expects to turn out the lights by December. “You have to enjoy what you’re doing, whatever it is.”Apparently, Yore has found a great deal of satisfaction from her profession. She is the second-longest continually operating business owner downtown, trailing only Bagatini’s music shop.Her busy schedule outside of the business has included participation in the Silver Beach Carousel Society, the Heritage Museum and Questers International, an organization of antique enthusiasts that contributes to local restoration projects. Yore and her late husband, Mike, were among the founders of the now defunct Venetian Festival, that drew people to St. Joseph for decades. Connie Yore said she even came up with the idea for the annual ice festival.Days of Yore will host a Labor Day weekend retirement sale Friday through Monday, with prices 50 to 75 percent off.Yore, 74, will continue many of her activities, along with collecting and selling costume jewelry from her home. But she has decided that it’s time to step away from her retail business.“When you lock the door at six o’clock, it’s not over,” said Yore, who spends her days off searching for unique items at auctions and estate sales. “It is work.”The Michigan City, Ind., native (born Kominiarek, of Polish descent) first came to the Twin Cities 46 years ago so they could be closer to her husband’s mother, who lived in Benton Harbor. It was from her mother-in-law that Connie caught the antiquing bug, and she began by selling items from her basement.The Yores saw that the future of the area, which had relied on industries that were disappearing, was in tourism, something she said city leaders at the time resisted.“Mike was very good at foreseeing the future,” Yore said, recal... (Herald Palladium)

PETERSBURG — Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home, one of the oldest and largest family-owned funeral businesses in the Tampa Bay area, could be on the brink of a sale. Related News/ArchiveFoundation Partners Group reportedly has a deal to buy the 65-year-old independent chain, which owns five locations in Pinellas County and one in Hillsborough County.A report that Anderson-McQueen had signed a non-binding letter of intent appeared in a recent Funeral Service Insider, a trade publication. Foundation Partners, an Orlando company founded in 2010, operates 60 locations in 17 states, including Sun City Center Funeral Home and Right Choice Cremation in Brandon.John McQueen, Anderson-McQueen's president, confirmed a sale was being considered but declined further comment, calling it a private matter."Everything is up in the air," McQueen said.Richard Benton, Foundation Partners chief financial officer, told the Tampa Bay Times his company reached out to the state's Division of Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services to express its desire to buy Anderson-McQueen. Benton declined to provide further details of a possible transaction, citing a confidentiality agreement.If completed in accordance with a nationwide trend, locals might not notice a difference. Since the 1990s, funeral conglomerates have been buying up independent homes while retaining those family names. For example, both Moss-Feaster Funeral Home locations in Clearwater and Dunedin are owned by the NorthStar Memorial Group, a Houston-based company with 75 locations. Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in Clearwater and five Blount and Curry locations in Hillsborough County are all owned by Service Corporation International, the largest funeral and cemetery company in North America. SCI, also of Houston, acquired its second-largest competitor in 2013.PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Merger gives funeral corporation SCI a big piece of the Tampa Bay market"From a consumer standpoint, they shouldn't see any differences," said Keenan Knopke, the president and CEO of Curlew Hills Memor... (Tampabay.com (blog))