As a child Kendall Blankumsee was not too fond of his last name. He thought it was too long, but as he got older, he grew to appreciate it.

“I grew to love it because it’s long, it’s unique and it’s memorable,” Blankumsee said. “If you meet one, you know it’s from the same family. It’s unique.”

Now Blankumsee, 31, is putting his unique last name on the map with his business — Blankumsee, Thomas and Wright Funeral Services in Quitman.

I met Blankumsee, a licensed funeral director and mortician, in kindergarten as a 5-year-old. We grew up together, graduating from Brooks County High School in 1998, and like most classmates, we went our separate ways. But thanks to technology and Facebook, we got back in touch.

After he graduated from Brooks County High School, Blankumsee, a Quitman native, went on to attend Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, majoring in business administration/management.

“I always knew I wanted to own my own business,” Blankumsee said. “In college I took up business management at Georgia Southern, so I knew it was something that I wanted.”

Blankumsee began working at a funeral home in Statesboro and fell in love with working in the funeral service industry, helping people during their time of grief.

“It’s something I prayed about, so I wanted to come back home and start a business,” he said. “I looked around and we needed another funeral home in Quitman.”

Before returning to Quitman, Blankumsee knew he needed to go to mortuary school. The problem was, at the time, there was not one in Statesboro until Ogeechee Technical College began offering the program.

 “I thought about mortuary science before that and planned on going to Gupton-Jones (College of Funeral Services) in Atlanta, but a school opened up in Statesboro and that was another calling for me to go into that particular field,” he said.

While a lot of morticians either grow up in the business or have been fascinated with death since childhood, for Blankumsee it was more about helping the families.

“A lot of people that are morticians have asked me what my story was and, you know, because some people grow up with ‘I like dead people,’ but my thing, I’m more interested in helping the surviving family deal with their loss of their loved one, helping guide them through that most difficult time,” he said. “Because most people, it’s their first time going through it. It can be a very trying and difficult time and I like to pride myself in easing their burden during that time.”

He knows that not everybody is as comfortable with death as he is, so he tries his best to help people understand it.

“The best way to deal with (death) is to be understanding,” he said, “to know that not everybody is comfortable around death, to be understanding and walk them through the situation slowly and explain everything very slowly, like what’s going to happen, things that they can expect. Those are the best ways to deal with someone who is afraid of death. Not everybody is as comfortable around a dead body as I am.”

After graduating from Ogeechee Technical College and returning to Quitman, Blankumsee went into partnership with two more Quitman natives, Jones O. Thomas and W. Gerald Wright to open Blankumsee, Thomas and Wright Funeral Services last April.

So far, business has been steady.

“We are right there in the mix and you can’t ask for anything better,” he said. “We’ve had a great first year. I know business, if anything, it takes time to start and it takes time to build trust, so I’m very patient and going to trust that Blankumsee is a name you can trust when it comes to funeral services.”

Blankumsee is also excited to be back  home.

“It was very nice to come back and be around hometown people,” he said. “I missed Quitman a lot. I’ve been to bigger cities, but they weren’t quite home because home is home.”

Blankumsee didn’t come back to Quitman alone. His new wife came with him. Blankumsee married last April, a few days after his business opened, and his wife is not new to the mortuary business either. The funeral home that Blankumsee worked at in Statesboro is owned by his wife’s family.

Blankumsee’s wife, Rey, now works in a job that is the very opposite of her husband’s. While her husband’s job deals with death, her job deals with birth.

“She’s a new nurse at Smith Northview,” he said “She’s in the labor/delivery department out there. She’s around babies.”

While the Blankumsees are planning to have children soon, Kendall does have a son, Zaquez, who is 14 and will be a freshman next year at Brooks County High School.

“ It’s very rewarding (to be a father),” Blankumsee said, “to watch him grow and learn and do new things, to see that he can see in me that no matter where you come from you can still change the world, one person at a time, one thing at a time, and you can still live your dreams because some dreams do come true. That’s rewarding itself for me to try and make an example out of life for him.”

In their free time, the Blankumsees like to travel, but with running a funeral home, according to Blankumsee, there’s not much free time.

“We try to just get away and relax, just have some family time and wind down,” he said. “The best part is to let someone else run the business when you’re away from it and not be a prisoner to the cell phone, but when you run a funeral home, there’s not much free time. You never know when someone’s going to pass away. We go out to Vegas a lot and travel. We flew last year about six or seven times.”

Blankumsee also works with the Brooks County Chamber of Commerce in his free time.

“I really love my work. I love my family, my community and giving back to my family, my community,” he said. “I think, even though Quitman is a small town, it has very, very big opportunities to do very big things. I am willing and able. I want to make Quitman a stop on the map. Just because you come from a small town doesn’t mean you have a small mind, and people in town have big ideas and I’m ready to work with them so we can do some big things in Quitman.”

On the Web:

http://www.btwfuneralservices.com/