For Brad Gallant, funeral service was never a job he sought out. It was part of his life from the very start. This year marks Brad’s 55th year as a licensed funeral director, a milestone recently recognized by the Tennessee Funeral Directors Association. His official career began in 1971, but his training started long before that, in the rooms where he grew up.
In 1952, his parents, Charles and Lee Gallant, opened Gallant Funeral Home in Fayetteville. Brad, their eldest child, did not just watch the family business from a distance. He lived in it. The Gallant family made their home inside the funeral home, first on Market Street and later on College Street.
By the time he was 5, Brad was already pitching in. He carried cemetery and tent equipment to gravesites, even though he was still too small to help put up the tents. He also loved riding along with his parents on ambulance calls. Each year brought a little more responsibility, and what started as a boy helping his family slowly grew into a life’s work.
Along the way, he learned something that still guides him today. Every family is different, and no two families face loss the same way. His parents showed him how to listen closely, understand what each family wanted, and offer steady guidance when emotions ran high.
After graduating from Central High School in 1968, Brad studied at Martin Methodist College and then at John A. Gupton College of Mortuary Science in Nashville. School gave him the formal training, but the heart of the work was something he had already absorbed at home. Brad describes being a funeral director and embalmer as truly a calling. It is one he first saw in his parents, and one he has answered every day for more than half a century.
Contact Gallant-Riverview Funeral Home
(931) 433-4511
www.gallantfuneralhome.comThis story is sponsored content.
