Love Funeral Home keeps focus on family legacy, community after 90 years

Published 8:15 am Saturday, April 12, 2025

While looking back at the impact Love Funeral Home has made on Dalton after almost a century in business, funeral director Lindsay Jenkins said two important factors are vital contributors.

“It’s definitely a mixture between our family-owned mindset and the community itself,” she said. “We’re grateful that we’ve been able to be a familiar face in Dalton for all of these years.”

Dalton’s oldest family-owned and operated funeral home, Love Funeral Home celebrated its 90th anniversary on April 1.

Jenkins, a fifth generation family member at the funeral home, said keeping a familial bond is an important part of Love’s lasting legacy.

“We first opened on April 1, 1935, on Glenwood Avenue, and that was by my great-grandfather (J. Maddox Love) and his sons (Harold and Jack),” she said. “For 90 years it’s been in our same family, which is a big deal, especially for us.”

Originally a residential home adjacent to the Love family’s own residence on Glenwood, Love would purchase the house and operate a funeral parlor from inside. In 1965, the funeral home’s current, larger location at 1402 N. Thornton Ave. was built to “help serve the public better in a more modern setting,” Jenkins said.

Among the funeral home’s nine employees are five members of the Love-Joyce family, including Jenkins, her sister Hannah Joyce, her father Mark Joyce, her mother Jill Joyce and her grandfather Charles Joyce, the son-in-law of cofounder Jack Joyce.

“It’s important for us to keep that legacy going,” Jenkins said. “It’s a great feat to make it to an anniversary like this as a business, but for our family to be able to continue that legacy and still be family-owned, that’s also wonderful. And to be able to continue serving the same families that we always have, as well as the new families of Dalton, I would say that is extremely gratifying.”

Jenkins said the funeral home continually strives to “be there for families and their loved ones during the most difficult times.”

“A lot of times we’ll work with families that will tell us they’ve always used Love Funeral Home and we are so honored and grateful for that trust that they place on us,” she said. “That’s a big deal to us and we always want to serve the community. The funeral business as a whole is not something that a ton of people are drawn to, so to keep it in our family and to be able to keep it going for so long is just amazing.”

Mark Joyce, who serves as a funeral director and embalmer, said Love Funeral Home “wouldn’t be here without the community.”

“That’s why we’ve chosen to keep the funeral home family-owned and operated,” he said. “It’s because we want to give back to the community after all of the trust that people have given us over the years.”

Offering standard funeral services alongside cremation and pre-planning needs, Love Funeral Home has made a “meaningful” impact on the lives of individuals inside and outside the parlor, Jenkins said.

“When you have someone pass away, it’s a lot easier when you know that the business is established and it’s the same family that you’ve trusted in the past,” she said. “I think that has helped us a lot over the past 90 years. It’s very good to have that trust and to feel that connection.”

Jenkins said a crucial piece in establishing that connection was her grandmother, Judy Joyce, who ran the funeral home for more than 30 years before her passing in 2021.

“A lot of the people in the community remember her and she poured a lot of her heart into the funeral home and touched a lot of individuals in the community,” Jenkins said. “For example, my grandmother had the funeral home’s phone line hooked up to her own home and we’ve kept that tradition going. Now, it goes to my father’s cellphone at night. That personal connection to our community is important and a lot of funeral homes use an answering service nowadays, but we’ve continued to not use one.”

Jenkins said her family is thankful for the individuals in the community and their role in helping the funeral home reach its milestone.

“They are the ones that initially give us the trust to care for their loved ones and let us provide for them,” she said. “Without that, we could not do what we do and we’re very thankful for that.”