After four generations and 113 years, Perkins-Parker quietly changes hands

October 3, 2020  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

Perkins-Parker Funeral Home at 48 S. Main St. has been in operation in Waterbury since 1907. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti.

Amidst the actual din on South Main Street and the figurative blur of the headlines this week, a mainstay of the Waterbury community quietly shared momentous news. 

Chris Palermo gives a history talk at Hope Cemetery in Waterbury. File photo by Gordon Miller.

In a Facebook post to the Perkins-Parker Funeral Home’s online site, funeral director Chris Palermo wrote: “I am pleased to announce that Monday, September 21st, I closed on the sale of my funeral home and all assets with Jim Kennedy, owner of LaVigne Funeral Home in Winooski. Following 41 years in funeral service, 37 of those years as a business owner, I came to the realization that it was time for me to seek a change of pace and an opportunity to live some life on my own terms. It is truly bittersweet on many levels.” 

Palermo shared his decision two weeks after closing his chapter in his family’s historic downtown business that intersected with virtually every family in the community for more than a century. 

The funeral home that anchors the corner of South Main Street and Foundry Street will continue to operate as Perkins-Parker Funeral Home and Cremation Service, Palermo said. It joins the LaVigne operation that runs a funeral home on Main Street in Winooski and Champlain Cremation on Williston Road in South Burlington. 

“I am truly thankful for my years of service to the families of central Vermont and the trust and faith they put in me and those who worked with me,” Palermo said. “It’s been a remarkable and fulfilling journey.”

The LaVigne operation has been owned and run by funeral director James Kennedy since 2013. Like Perkins-Parker, the LaVigne funeral business has endured for generations and is currently in its 131st year of operation, Kennedy said in an interview Friday. 

“In both cases, I’m the first non-family member to own the businesses,” he remarked. 

Kennedy said the company will share staff for now with longtime Perkins-Parker funeral director John Woodruff remaining to manage the Waterbury location. The company employs four full-time employees in Winooski and Kennedy said he eventually would like to hire another staff member for Waterbury. 

Young Chris Palermo. Courtesy photo.

A long history

In his farewell message, Palermo remarked on how what he thought of as an unlikely career choice became his life’s work. “As a child growing up around the business, I never saw myself working in funeral service. Four generations, 113 years of continued family ownership and management, it has been truly a remarkable journey and a vocation I have cherished every day,” he wrote. 

Focused on preparing to spend time at his family camp in Norton, Palermo instead of an interview shared a written history of the multi-generation family enterprise. He figured that the funeral home served almost 4,000 families in the time he led the business founded in 1907 by his great-grandfather Vernon L. Perkins of Warren, a graduate of Green Mountain Seminary in Waterbury Center. 

Business founder Vernon L Perkins. Courtesy Photo.

Perkins first worked in his family business in Warren that included a general store and lumber mills there and in Hancock. He moved to Waterbury in 1900 where he and his partner Will J. Boyce owned a sawmill in Fayston, a box factory in Colbyville, and in 1907 started a furniture and undertaking business. By 1911, Perkins sold his interest in the lumber business to focus on the furniture store and funeral trade. Perkins also served the community as a selectman, village president, and state legislator in both the House and Senate. 

In those days, the furniture and dry goods operation occupied the ground floor at 46 South Main Street; the funeral operation was upstairs on the second floor, Palermo said. 

Vernon Perkins’ youngest daughter, Norma, in 1921 married Charles Parker, who became a licensed mortician and succeeded Vernon following his passing, Palermo explained. 

In the mid 1940s, Parker purchased the property next door which originally was the village fire house and later became the Town Hall hosting everything from high school basketball games, boxing matches and Town Meeting, Palermo said. With locker rooms on the first floor, two jail cells in the rear of the building, and space used to put on plays upstairs, it truly was a multi-use facility, Palermo recounted. 

“The building went dormant following the construction of a new gymnasium at the then high school on Stowe Street and was renovated to become the funeral home in 1957.”  

Charles Parker died in 1969 of a heart attack while conducting a graveside service in Hope Cemetery, Palermo recounted. His children, Craig “Rusty” Parker and Priscilla Parker Palermo inherited the family businesses. 

Charles Parker. Courtesy Photo.

Palermo explained soon was tapped as their successor: “In 1979, I was approached about becoming the next generation to work in the family business. A recent graduate of UVM, I agreed to come and work for a year to see how I liked it and if it liked me,” he said. 

After Rusty Parker’s death, Palermo was left in charge. At age 27 in June 1983 he purchased the company. He ran the furniture store until 1991, closing it to focus on funeral service and a newly acquired monument business. Looking back, Palermo called it “the best decision I could have ever made.” 

Now looking ahead into his retirement, Palermo said he plans to remain active in the funeral business community as president of the Vermont Funeral Directors Association which involves representing and advocating for his peers before the Vermont Legislature. “Beyond that, it is time to live life, enjoy time with family, travel when it’s safe and look forward to new opportunities,” he said.