This year, McDonald Funeral Home celebrated its 100th year of providing the Picayune area with funeral services. During the past 100 years, the funeral home has remained a family-owned business. Founded by Claiborne McDonald in 1917, it is now owned by one of his clan, Stephen L.McDonald Sr., the third generation McDonald to own and operate the business.

These days, a local businesses lasting for 100 years is rare. We’ve all heard of public companies such as  Coca-Cola, General Electric and Chevron lasting that long, if not longer, but not so much with many locally owned businesses.

Also, you don’t see many businesses stay within the same family for long periods of time. Most of the time a business that has been in operation for several generations is sold off to the highest bidder because things didn’t go as planned, prompting the current owner to either sell or close the business. Owning a successful business is something that takes effort, commitment and community involvement. For the McDonald family, it’s apparent they have employed all three of those aspects since the very beginning. For a business to be successful, the right person is needed for the job. It’s not very often the right person can be found in the family, during several subsequent generations. And we can expect that tradition to continue because Stephen said his children, Stephen Jr. and Kenneth, will be the fourth generation to own the funeral home. Both of his children have the experience to succeed too, because they have been learning about the business since they were much younger.

And, in the future, they too hope to pass down the family business down to their offspring, and keep it in the family as long as possible. For any business to remain active and operational for 100 years, they become important parts of Picayune and Pearl River County.