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REIDSVILLE — In 1898, it wasn’t such a stretch for a job building furniture to evolve into a career in undertaking.

What may be surprising is that the career burgeoned into a business that’s endured in Reidsville for 100 years.

That’s exactly what happened in the waning years of the 19th century when William Henry Wilkerson went to work building furniture for the Howerton Furniture Store in South Carolina. His specialty was coffins. Finely-crafted, wooden coffins fit for a heavenly hereafter.

That led William Henry to the Barnes School of Embalming, also in South Carolina, and eventually to his job as an undertaker at the Burton-Chance-Walker Furniture Store in Reidsville.

The year was 1909, and it was the beginning of a funeral business that is still flourishing today. Wilkerson Funeral Home on Richardson Drive will commemorate that anniversary next month, paying tribute to William Henry, who started it when he and his bride made that early 20th-century move to Reidsville.

Back then, it was common practice for the furniture store to care for the deceased as well. But primarily, people turned to the store for the coffin and embalming.

It was an old Southern tradition for bodies to lie in state in their homes. “That’s why they called it a wake,” says Ted Hopkins, the general manager at Wilkerson’s and the husband of William Henry’s great granddaughter, April Wilkerson Hopkins.

“Someone actually stayed awake to keep vigil over the body,” he says. “It was also known as a sittin’ up.”

But William Henry saw a new trend emerging — the use of funeral homes. They were called “homes” because they looked like real homes, only bigger, so more kinfolk and friends could come by and pay respects.

In 1922, William Henry opened the first funeral home in Rockingham County, says Ted Hopkins.

The bereaved no longer had to file past the settees, china cabinets and bedroom suites to select a casket. Wilkerson’s wasn’t strictly a funeral business. The same year that William Henry opened the funeral home, he bought a hearse that doubled as an ambulance, and he also ran Wilkerson Ambulance Services out of the business that was on Gilmer Street.

“It’s what all the funeral homes were doing,” says Hopkins.

It was not unusual to see a hearse, or several from different funeral homes, rushing to the scene of an accident.

William Henry had two sons, Robert and Henry “Pitt” Wilkerson, who took over the business in 1941.

“Mr. Pitt,” as Henry was called, became the figure-head for the business, and he was known around town for his husky frame and his pithy sense of humor.

When people chided him about his weight, he’d tell them: “I’ve buried just as many skinny men as I have fat ones.”

Suffice it to say that he buried more than a few in his career that spanned more than 50 years. By 1955, Pitt Wilkerson was joined in the business by his son Bobby. By then, the funeral home had moved into a stately mansion on Main Street.

Bobby Wilkerson and his wife, Florene, had two daughters and a son. One of the daughters, Drew, says her mother urged her son to go into another field — anything but the funeral business. It left so little time for anything but work.

Running the funeral home kept Bobby away most every night and holiday, remembers Drew McGee.

Drew says it didn’t occur to her mother that it might be one of her daughters who would join the family business. But in 1990, with Pitt semiretired, Bobby Wilkerson asked his daughter Drew Wilkerson McGee and his son-in-law, Hopkins, to join the business.

Drew’s husband, Don, also works at the funeral home, and Bobby Wilkerson’s sister, Barbara Barham, is among the 17 people they employ.

In 2001, the family built a new, 23,000-square-foot facility on Richardson Drive. Like their founder, the family continues to stay abreast of industry trends. They’ve added video memorials and a Web site. Soon they hope to be Web streaming funerals.

No one is sure if another generation of Wilkersons will join the business, but they feel that somehow the legacy will endure.

Recently, the National Funeral Directors Association honored Wilkerson Funeral Home with its “Pursuit of Excellence” award.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary, the Wilkerson family and staff will hold a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 8. The community is invited.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-1781 Ext. 116 or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com