Publication: Macomb Daily | Date: Feb. 11, 2008 | Page Number: 6C
A New Connection
Former car dealer switches career, heads to funeral service to make a living.
By Mitch Hotts Macomb Daily Staff Writer
Photo by Ray J. Skowronek |
Changing careers at this point in her life isn’t a huge deal. She formerly worked as a court reporter in Hawaii and a medical librarian for University of Illinois in Chicago, before she became general manager of Bill Lee’s Oldsmobile, owned by her father, Bill Lee. “I’ve re-invented myself several times,” she said.
Lee-Ellena began thinking about the funeral service industry when her husband was working as a greeter for Resurrection Funeral Home, and she knew the auto industry’s lifespan was narrowing. After the death of her mother, Pat Lee, in 1999, she found herself becoming more interested in the grieving process. Soon she found herself comforting friends who lost loved ones and found she felt a spiritual connection to the industry. “There are some parallels between the two,” Lee-Ellena said of the car and funeral businesses. “The front end is a showroom for cars and at funeral homes viewing is up front. The servicing is done in the back in both cases. And you have to be a good listener in each field.”
Lee-Ellena earned a degree in mortuary science from Wayne State University’s renowned program where she learned the nuts and bolts of counseling, embalming and restorative work. She put those principles into practice as an apprentice at Resurrection Funeral Home. Experts say it’s not unusual to see people such as Lee-Ellena entering the mortuary science field as a second career. “You see ministers and others leaving their primary careers after 20 years or so and still have a passion to be of service,” said Chris Anderson, presidentelect of the Michigan Funeral Directors Association. “They end up in this profession because they care for others.”
Lee-Ellena and her husband invested $4 million into the 16,640-squarefoot funeral home designed in a prairie style. It has three chapels including one with a two-story high cathedral ceiling, a grief library, children’s play room equipped with an XBox, a cry room, and a casket selection room. The hospitality suites can be converted to accommodate sit-down funeral luncheons.
The facility was designed by architect Robert Lipka and project manager Chad Asman of the RLA Studio in Romeo. It sits on 10 acres of land surrounded by woods and a small creek at the rear of the property.
Her father, Bill Lee, has been supportive of her new enterprise.
“I’m glad she’s not staying in the car business because things have gotten so tough. I know she’s a compassionate woman. I think she’ll do well here,” he said.
Lee-Ellena acknowledged she is entering a competitive field that could take years to establish a steady clientele. But she’s ready for the challenge. “When I left the car business I had to decide: Do I want to spend the rest of my life around death,” she said. “I found I enjoy going to people’s homes in the middle of the night to comfort them through the worst times of their lives. I want to help them be creative as they say their final goodbyes to their loved ones.”
Publication: Macomb County Chamber Newsletter | Date: Dec. 12, 2007
Ribbon Cuttings
Written by Macomb County Chamber
A new family-run funeral home, the Lee-Ellena Funeral Home opened in Macomb Township. The funeral home is the brainchild of
Sarah Lee-Ellena (daughter of Bill Lee, the former owner of Bill Lee Oldsmobile) and her husband, Mark Ellena. The husband
and wife team set out to build a new type of funeral home that offers the public truly unique funeral-home services to provide
grieving families with a more comfortable funeral experience, including individual family hospitality suites; a coffee-house
café; a children's play room; and wireless Internet access . The $4 million, 16,640 square-foot Lee-Ellena Funeral Home,
designed in a Prarie style inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, also features three chapels, hospitality suites that can be set
up as a coffee-house with free coffee and lattes, or converted to serve sit-down funeral luncheons, a grief library, children's
play room, a cry room in the main chapel and a user-friendly selection room to provide families with a higher level of comfort
and flexibility during the many hours they spend at the funeral home. Lee-Ellena said that all good funerals have two things in
common, including providing a sanctuary for mourning and hospitality for mourners.
Publication: SmartMoney | Date: Jun. 7, 2008
Retailers Target Consumers Through Lattes, Cereal
Written by Anne Kadet
MACOMB, MICH., may be the last town on earth without a Starbucks, but it does have an upscale coffee bar. The cafe, which opened this spring, is typical of the genre. There's the comfy sofa, the bistro tables and the Frank Lloyd Wright decor. There's free Wi-Fi so you can check your e-mail, and there's the usual selection of milky lattes and potent espressos. There's also an excellent chance of finding a dead body in the next room. That's because this cafe is located inside the Lee-Ellena Funeral Home, where you can grieve Aunt Sally and enjoy a frothy cappuccino at the same time. Without it co-owner Sarah Lee-Ellena frets that "people will go to the Marriott and have their services there."
We should have seen this coming. Like cranky newborn babies, Americans can't survive long between feedings, and businesses of all stripes have launched snack bars and coffee kiosks in an effort to snare what's known in consulting parlance as "share of stomach." Should the urge strike you can order a custom omelet at Bed Bath & Beyond or grab a wild-boar sandwich while making an ammo run at Cabela's. If you wake up thinking, "Hey, I should head down to the record store for a bowl of cereal," you can stop by the Virgin Megastore for Lucky Charms. And then there's the never-ending parade of coffee. Just when you're ready to explode from one too many espressos, you're confronted with a coffee counter at the dentist's office and the drugstore and the car wash.
It doesn't take an anthropologist to explain what's up: Americans are busy and would eat breakfast at the DMV if it were convenient. That's why big-box stores with cafes see the average shopper make an additional 2.5 visits a year and why retail-based eateries are posting nearly double the traffic gains of the overall restaurant industry. Deutsche Bank retail analyst David Weiner says they also boost profits: Borders (BGP: 7.15, +0.35, +5.14%) and Barnes & Noble (BKS: 29.05, +1.84, +6.76%) earn an estimated 40 percent gross margins on cafe sales, compared with just 20 percent on books. But beyond java profits, businesses are after your undying devotion. The way to a consumer's heart is through the stomach, or so the theory goes, and retailers increasingly believe that to create an emotional bond, customers must literally eat the brand.
This explains the Sticky Date Pudding served at Ralph Lauren's Rugby Café. A few spoonfuls of lumpy nostalgia and, suddenly, you're Mr. WASPypants and he's Uncle Ralph, and why not buy the new polo shirt in all 14 colors? At architecture firm FRCH Design Worldwide, experts design restaurants based on a retail client's "core brand attributes." In the case of pricey-doll purveyor American Girl Place, that meant creating a cafe based on phrases like "meaningful" and "finding your inner star." The result: a pink-lit heaven where little girls chat on cell phones and share $23 prix-fixe salad lunches with their hungry dolls.
These eateries are a welcome relief when you're toting six shopping bags and still need to buy Christmas gifts for all the cousins. The problem, of course, is that most businesses do just one thing well, which means the in-store-cafe experience often falls short. The green shamrock cookies selling a week past St. Patrick's Day at Virgin Megastore inspire little faith in their meat sandwiches, and you can't help feeling like a cretin eating the $9 dessert at a fancy decor shop like ABC Carpet & Home when it's obvious that cake is the only thing you can afford in the store. It's surreal enough that Internet bank ING Direct's cafe is wildly popular with midtown Manhattan office workers; do they have to rub it in by hawking paper shredders alongside the chocolate-chip muffins?
Still, you can forgive just about any shortfall if the coffee's good, which brings us back to the Lee-Ellena Funeral Home. How's the joe? According to the proprietor, it's a work in progress: "I haven't figured out how to work the machine."