MANSFIELD, Ohio — Gideon Snyder is following his relatives’ footsteps by becoming a fourth generation funeral director at his family’s business, Snyder Funeral Homes.
The 24-year-old is on track to get his funeral director license in February.
After graduating from Lexington High School in 2009, Snyder attended Malone University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He considered going into sports ministry or sports marketing, but the business heritage at home was strong.
“Every time I kept thinking about it and praying about it, it just wasn’t quite right,” he said.
Ever since he was “knee-high” he helped out with the family business, earning more and more responsibility as he grew older.
“I saw what it was like to be in the business, what it was going to take,” he said.
Ultimately he decided it was the right fit for him. After graduating college, he attended Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. He’s currently in the process of finishing up his year-long apprenticeship.
Snyder said he’s looking forward to completing all of the paperwork that comes with the certification process.
“It’s a good thing to go through, though,” he said. “It teaches you a lot of responsibility.”
His sister Hannah, 26, earned her funeral director license in 2013. She likened the apprenticeship to a learner’s permit.
“You have to be with a licensed driver, or in his case, a licensed funeral director, and soon he’ll be able to hit the open road all by himself,” she said.
Todd Snyder, Hannah and Gideon’s father and a third generation funeral director, said he’s excited to see how his children blossom in their roles as funeral directors.
“My kids are so much better than me in so many areas,” he said. “I so look forward to giving them control on so many different platforms and seeing what they’ll be able to do to improve our company.”
While he’s excited to have his children working in the family business, it wasn’t never something he pressured them into, he said.
“All I told them was this is an opportunity,” he said. “Frankly, many family businesses disintegrate because the second generation thinks that it’s a cakewalk and all they have to do is finish what their previous generation started or just hold onto the reins. And what we see in so many family businesses is that they dissolve and the next generation does a poor job of it.
“So one of the successes of our family company is that we continually reinvent.”
