What Makes Us Different

Morrissett Funeral & Cremation Service competes for the “Pursuit of Excellence” recognition each year, not for the award, but because the standards that we must meet provides us with a continuous review of how we are performing and being innovative in our services. We never want to take our responsibility of excellent service to each family for granted. We want to always be looking for ways to improve and grow.

The Morrissett team is proud to be the only Virginia Funeral Home to be awarded the National Funeral Directors Association’s prestigious “Pursuit of Excellence” award for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. As one of 150 funeral homes, out of 22,000 eligible, this is a great honor.

Whereas the “Pursuit of Excellence” award is very prestigious, our team is over the moon proud of the fact that in 2015 Morrissett Funeral & Cremation Service was chosen as “Best of the Best” in funeral service for our “Simple Wish Program” by the National Funeral Directors Association. This is the first time ever that a Virginia funeral home received this honor. This award is presented to the top four funeral homes in the United States of America out of the over 22,000 that are eligible.

Even with these great accolades the recognition that we covet the most s being chosen by a family to care for their loved one. We know that you, the families we serve, are what make us strive every day to pursue excellence. Thank you for your confidence.

We are locally owned and our entire staff lives and has raised or is raising their families here in the area. Unlike other “corporate” owned funeral homes, we do not have to answer to stock holders or out of state superiors, we only have to listen to the families we serve and make sure we carry out our responsibilities to them beyond their expectations.

Our staff is completely comprised of first generation funeral directors, thus we are not held down by the old philosophy of “That is the way Dad and Granddad did it so that is the way we must do it.” We are open to change and in many cases we are the leader of innovation and adapting new ideas into Central Virginia funeral services.

Service is what separates us from the rest. Simply, we invest more man hours into each service in addition to providing more innovative and unique types of services.

Typical funeral home’s visitations are staffed by one or two attendants, at Morrissett our visitation team is composed of three to five staff members present to assist the family. During Memorial Services we maintain the same level of staffing. If we are conducting a “traditional” service followed by a procession to a cemetery, we increase staffing to six or seven personnel. In addition to the man hours that are visible to the public, we spend 20 to 40 hours of behind the scene preparation, to include putting together the A/V, printed materials, paperwork, and care for the decedent.

We do all of this because we know that our firm has been entrusted with a valuable and beloved family member. We only get one chance to provide a meaningful service for that person and we always strive for excellence.

In summary if you take the hours and the services that we provide, and then divide by the cost, you can see that Morrissett provides significantly more for the money than any other full service funeral home in Central Virginia.

We were the first, in Central Virginia, to offer video tributes for our families and we continue to lead in this service by having installed a state of the art projection system in our chapel and have portable projectors to take to offsite funeral or memorial services.

We are the only funeral home in the area to provide our video tributes at no charge to every family we serve.

In line with that audio visual technology, we were the first to video record all of our chapel services and provide the family with a copy. We now have the capability to securely webcast the service from our chapel for those family and friends that are not able to attend in person. All done at no charge.

While not the first to offer online obituaries, we are the first to place the video tributes and service webcast online with the obituary.

Funeral celebrants are not new, but we are the first funeral home in Virginia to have a team of Certified Funeral Celebrants and to have all of our funeral directors fully trained as celebrants. If you have recently attended a service you have seen our directors act as “Master of Ceremony” by opening the service with words of remembrance and then do an introduction of the Officiant or Celebrant.

We were the first funeral home in Virginia to have all of our funeral directors trained as Certified Crematory Operators. Even though they do not actually operate the crematory, we feel that they should fully understand operation of the crematory equipment, so they are better prepared to explain the process if a family has questions.

We are the only funeral home or cremation provider in Central Virginia to offer “Cremation with Confidence”. This is a ten point procedure, assuring each family, who chooses Morrissett for cremation services, that by following this policy we guarantee their loved one will be cremated responsibly with respect and dignity.

The first and as far as we know, the only funeral home in Virginia to have all our funeral directors trained as Certified Pre-Planning Consultants. This designation is not required in the Commonwealth of Virginia, however, we want our staff to be the best qualified in all aspects of every service that we provide.

In support of our Military and Public Safety workers, we have instituted our “Fallen Heroes Program.” If, God forbid, one of our communities heroes are killed in the line of duty, Morrissett will provide our services at no charge and merchandise at our cost.

In the nineties, we started giving families a choice when it came to remembrance stationery and we continue that by being a leader in providing custom printed options in our products. No longer are families limited to the twenty or so themes that we did offer; now they can select from hundreds of themes to find one that matches the personality of the life we are remembering.

Morrissett is the first funeral home in Central Virginia to have trained therapy dogs available on staff. They are only used with permission from each family. These beautiful chocolate labs, named Hope and Peace, provide unconditional love and support, especially during the stress of making funeral arrangements and, if desired, during visitation. We have had a few families that wanted one of them to be available during the service. Along this same area, we are a pet friendly facility. If a family request we will make arrangements to accommodate them by allowing a beloved pet to come and be with their owner one last time.

Where most funeral homes do not like when families choose to donate, here at Morrissett we applaud those individuals that selflessly consider donating their bodies to better the practice of medicine for all mankind. We have a policy of transferring and holding of decedents until the paperwork can be completed. We are more than happy to assist the family in planning a meaningful remembrance service.

Morrissett is the first funeral home to have a written hospice policy that covers, a preplanning guarantee, hospice empowered discount, hospice no cost transfer, and “A Simple Wish” program.

We are the only funeral home to have established a non-profit foundation with the single purpose of granting final wishes to local adult hospice patients. You can read more about this by clicking the “Simple Wish” tab on our home page at www.morrissett.com.

Recently we added a dedicated Reception Room. This is available to families for after service gatherings or even for the family to offer food and drink during visitation hours. Along with the use of the reception room, we provide a dedicated attendant to setup and present the food and drinks. We offer the option for the family to provide the food and drink or we can arrange for catering through our preferred provider, Ukrops Catering. Ukrops will cater everything or provide supplemental food even if the family decides to have a reception at home or another location.

In addition to all these items , we have assisted families with a variety of added enhancements to the services at their request, from Dove, Balloon and Butterfly Releases to arranging for a favorite NFL football player attending his greatest fans funeral. The sky is the limit. If you can think of it and timing isn’t an issue, we will do anything in our power to make sure that the service you are planning is as meaningful and remarkable as the person we are remembering.