Consumer Guide 2021
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Local funeral home adapts during pandemic
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aldwell & Cowan Funeral Home opened its doors in 1933 in Porterdale, Georgia, moved to Floyd Street in Covington in 1937, and in 2017 opened in our new facility at 1215 Access Road, Covington. We now serve our community primarily from our Access Road facility, although our Floyd Street location remains available for use. Caldwell & Cowan Funeral Home offers traditional funeral services with burial following, traditional services with cremation following, and memorial services either at our location or at the venue of your choice. Our Access Road facility adjoins our cemetery, Lawnwood Memorial Park, which is a perpetual care cemetery with ground spaces for interment, a mausoleum with inside and outside crypts, and a columbarium for ennichement of urns. Dogwood Hill Crematory is our private crematory, with private meaning that we only cremate for families we serve, not for other funeral homes or outside third-party providers. We are a true full-service combination, with your loved one remaining in our care at all times. Additionally, Caldwell & Cowan offers virtual service arrangements through Zoom guided by one of our
8 | Consumer Guide
professional funeral directors, or service arrangements by telephone. We also have the ability to stream services online virtually from our funeral home chapel. With the onset of COVID-19 in our world, the picture of funeral service has seen quite a change in the past year. For many generations, funeral services have traditionally been events held in a church or funeral home chapel with a large number of family and friends in attendance. In 2020, with restrictions imposed by governmental authorities regulating the size of gatherings permitted in a single space at one time, many families chose to forego the larger service. With information about COVID-19 being so scattered and uncertain among scientific and political leaders, our funeral directors and staff at Caldwell & Cowan felt it was our duty to follow the best and safest course of action possible, in order to give our grieving families the best opportunity to say their final goodbye to their loved one. At the same time, we had a responsibility to keep those family members, their friends and visitors, and our own staff, safe and well. To that end, we began using a Hydroxyl Generator in the building to aid in killing germs and viruses, and
utilizing a spray disinfectant system to sanitize our entire building after every visitation and service. Trying to think outside the box, we have conducted services as outside gatherings at graveside, poolside at a private residence, open air at Chimney Park, and in a covered pavilion on a family farm. We have also held services in the parking area under our porte cochere at our Access Road facility. While not an entirely new thing (we understand that California was the first), the “drive-by funeral” became something newly seen in our area. We saw several examples of this as family members, standing outside, acknowledged friends’ condolences as they drove by and waved or called messages from their car windows. Unconventional maybe, but our goal was, and always has been, to provide whatever is feasible to allow mourners to have the service they so need for their loved one at that time. Everyone is hoping and praying that the creation of the COVID-19 vaccines will mark the end of the virus that has turned us all upside down for so long. We’re all ready for that — actually way beyond ready for that. May it be so, and soon. Special to The Covington News
The Covington News | February 2021
