By AUSTIN SMITH
Few businesses have been in the College Area as long as Featheringill Mortuary and even fewer truly represent what it means to be a family business.
Teri Featheringill, the third-generation head of the family business, gracefully took on the responsibility to continue the family legacy not out of a sense of duty, but rather having been raised with a passion for helping others that she couldn’t ignore.
“You kind of just flow into it.” she said. “You grow up and you’re around empathetic, and compassionate people, and you grow up that way – liking to take care of people and helping them out”.
Featheringill’s grandfather was the first to delve into the death care services industry as he migrated from Missouri to California just before World War I. He was working as a dental assistant during the day and moonlighting in a downtown San Diego mortuary where he gained the medical knowledge that would be the baseline for what was to come.
The patriarch moved himself and his young family to an apartment above the old Johnson Saum mortuary on 4th and Ash where Teri’s father would grow up before heading to and graduating with a business degree from SDSU. In 1962, they purchased an empty lot along El Cajon Boulevard to begin their own business venture.
A lot has changed in the College Area since then but many things, according to Teri, have remained the same. She recalls there being a lot more trailer parks and much less traffic, but her father and grandfather knew everyone in the area and they knew everyone would remember the name Featheringill, so they kept it simple when naming the family business.
As a child, Teri would get teased at times for the work her family did but she never took offense to it because she knew many were grateful for the work in which her family was involved. And, “when people needed us, they wouldn’t be complaining about what my dad did,” she added.
Nowadays, she calls on the compassion and empathy her father exemplified to support members of the community in their times of grief and loss. Those examples and lessons were more necessary than ever during the pandemic, especially in an industry where you rarely say “no.” The restrictions placed upon businesses not only affected how many visitors could attend services but limited how many of the deceased they could take in as well.
“I had some directors that were just like ‘Teri, I can’t tell these people that we can’t take their loved one. We have to do this.’ But what can you do? We figured it out and we made it.”
Even though there was very little guidance on how to do it, Teri, along with her family and staff, adapted their operations to adhere to the pandemic restrictions while still providing those desperately needed services to the community. No one was laid off and they never closed.
Teri leans on that commitment to service. When asked what she wants the family legacy to be, she replies simply with, “integrity, trust, and comfort.” As she ushers the fifth generation of Featheringills into the family business, it would seem that the family legacy is in good hands.
—Austin Smith writes on behalf of the College Area Business District.
