“We hear stories every day about people’s great-grandmothers,” said Ryan Kidd, the funeral home manager. “We still have people who come in here who said they used to work for the Webbs to some degree.”
When the original owner David Webb first opened his doors in Hamilton in 1900, he conducted only five funerals. Now the parlor averages about 200 services a year.
They also used to run the city’s ambulance services, and Noonan recalls delivering at least a dozen babies since he got into the funeral business at the age of 13 and “two of them were named after me.”
After the funeral home passed hands and partners several times, Noonan took over in 1992 and decided to keep the historical “Webb” name and well-known two white hearses that replaced the original twin white horses the business was known for. “It’s like Ivory soap,” Noonan said.
But being so close to so many people in the community has gotten more difficult emotionally as the years have passed.
“Through the years you start burying friends and it gets harder as you get older,” Noonan said.
In 1900, there was a one-stop shop for ambulatory and funeral needs, and that was Webb Funeral Home.
Founder David Webb conducted only five funerals his first year in business working out of a corner office on Main and C Street in Hamilton. His wife, Alta, was his constant companion, helping conduct “death calls” day and night as the business also ran much of the ambulance calls for the city, said Noonan.
The building that houses the business has changed little since it was first acquired in 1931. The Webb family once used the second floor as its residence, now converted into offices. The old mansion still resonates history, boasting much of the original woodwork and architecture. The crystal chandeliers that greeted grieving families for 79 years in the entry way are still lighted, but have been converted to electric.
“We’ve tried to keep the character and that homey feel,” said Kidd.
But much about the funeral business has changed over its 109-year history.
Noonan, who sold the business to Keystone 10 years ago but still acts as a director, said he still remembers making ambulance calls in the dead of night and in the snow. Vividly he recalls nights delivering babies with only the light from a singular bulb hanging on the ceiling and the smell of the clean linoleum floor.
Mostly he remembers the people, “down to earth” folks who migrated from Tennessee and Kentucky and knew how to work hard.
“The old story was if you took all the Kentucky and Tennessee out of Hamilton there would be nothing left,” Noonan said with a grin. “But that has all changed now.”
Through the early 1900s and even up until 1967 when Noonan first joined the funeral home, he can remember the sadness from infant funerals, when “it used to be nothing to have a baby funeral” because so much could go wrong with a birth. Now medical technology has made these grievous times ... few and far between, he said.
But what has maybe affected business the most has been the boom of Hamilton’s population and federal regulations that guide what a funeral home can do, said Kidd.
What has never changed is the company’s commitment to the community, Noonan said.
“There is the quality of work and the traditions we uphold and the families have the respect for the business and the heritage here,” he said.
Webb-Noonan is located at 240 Ross Ave. in Hamilton. For more information, call (513) 894-9919 or visit www.webb-noonan.com.
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