business of the year

At the regular scheduled monthly meeting, the Churubusco Chamber of Commerce presented Sheets and Childs Funeral Home with the Business of the Year award. After lunch, chamber President Kathy Ford introduced Childs telling the large group gathered about Chids community involvement and all of his town participation.

 

Childs humbly accepted the award asking "What have I done to deserve this?" Ford responded, "What haven't you done?" The Childs are very active in the community and the following is a brief history.

 

The Sheets & Childs Funeral Home is Churubusco's oldest continuing business, and traces its roots back over 130 years to when Samuel Barr became Churubusco's first "undertaker" in 1872. He operated the business until 1880 when he sold it to J.W. and W.C. Smith. The Smith brothers were in business for 18 years and in 1898 they sold the funeral home to Ed Briggs, who in 1902, sold half interest in the firm to Lucas Welsheimer. In 1905, Mr. Briggs began a partnership with Harley Warren in Columbia City, and Mr. Welsheimer purchased his remaining interest in the funeral home.

 

The long-remembered and widely-known Francis M. Sonday purchased the firm on April 15, 1906 and operated it along with his wife Daisy Sonday, also a licensed funeral director.

 

Lester K. Sheets became associated with Sonday Funeral Home in 1951, shortly before the death of Mr. Sonday. Following his death in 1960, Lester and his wife Doris purchased the firm and operated it until their retirement on January 1, 1990. At that time, C. Gregory Childs, a long-time employee of the Sheets', and his wife, Jeanine purchased the Sheets Funeral Home. They continue its operation today.

 

Greg is a native of Delaware County near Muncie, and earned a bachelor's degree in music from Taylor University. It was during his college years that he began working at a local funeral home. Upon graduation from Taylor he entered the Indiana College of Mortuary Science in Indianapolis, and worked as a funeral director and embalmer in the Muncie and Anderson areas for 11 years until he and Jeanine moved to Churubusco in 1986. They have three sons: Drew, age 25, is the choral director at Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis, and twins Perry and Joel, age 21, are both juniors at Anderson University majoring in business and information systems.

 

Greg is past president of the Churubusco Chamber of Commerce and the Churubusco Lions Club, serves as a trustee of the Churubusco Public Library, and serves as the organist and lay leader of the Churubusco United Methodist Church. He has a great love for music and is a member of the Fort Wayne Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and sings with the Fort Wayne Bach Collegium - an auditioned group of professional singers that perform Baroque music. He is also past president of the Epworth Forest Choir School in North Webster.

 

A member of the Indiana Historic Business Register, Sheets & Childs Funeral Home was honored in 1997 by the State of Indiana for over a century of continuous operation. In 2002, the name of the firm was changed to Sheets & Childs Funeral Home, reflecting its current and continuing status as a family owned and operated business.

 

On February 14, 2005 the firm purchased Orr Funeral Home (formerly the Krider Funeral Home) in Churubusco. Today, both businesses are operated out of the historic Sheets & Childs location.