By Wendella Davidson

THE Newburg Funeral Home, popularly known as the Lyken Funeral Home, is in its 98th year of existence and is on record as one of the oldest, established funeral homes, in the history of funeral services in Guyana.

The Funeral Home is functioning as a well-established business and managed by Gordon Lyken and his wife, Dr Dawn Stewart-  the latter is a trained nurse whose studies involved death and dying, psychology and counselling. Their 19-year-old daughter Really is also currently undertaking studies to walk in the footsteps of her parents.
With her wanting to become a mortician, one can say that prospects of the family business in the future, looks positive.

A simple start

The idea of a funeral parlour was birthed in the year 1921, when Robert Lyken (Snr), then a carpenter who had gained popularity in the making of furniture, defied his parents and started making boxes in which people would place their dead loved ones for burial.
At the time there were no funeral parlours and it was a norm for people to keep the bodies of their dead relatives on ice at home.

Robert used to ply his furniture trade from under a friend’s bottom house that was next to a stable with horses. He soon devised a plan whereby the box with the dead would be placed on a horse-drawn transport and taken to the cemetery for burial.

As the demand for boxes grew, so did the demand for space, and Robert subsequently moved to a section of his parent’s bottom-house at Norton and John Streets.

Robert’s father believed that the demand was for furniture, so when he learnt the true nature of the business, Robert was forced to seek refuge with his business at a friend’s house.

When his father passed away, Robert was able to gain the support of his mother and she allowed him to move the business back at the family premises. Robert later upped his game from building the regular box to that of coffins. He got the help of his sisters: Doris, Olive and Dorothy, in sewing the trimmings to decorate the coffins.

Robert also got help from his brothers Joseph and Arthur and  Arthur’s two sons, Joe and Gordon. The two boys left Guyana to study mortuary science to become professional morticians in the United States. But Gordon, even though he qualified as a mortician, focused more on mechanical engineering, And, while Joe returned

home, Gordon remained in the US where he pursued a lucrative career. He was still of great help to the family, as it was he who handled the purchasing of materials, especially for embalming.

Joe was credited with building the first coffin which was then called the “break-neck coffin”.
But with his younger brother’s death, shortly before the September 11 tragedy in the US, Gordon came home to take up the mantle and continue his grandfather’s legacy.

History

The Newburg Funeral Parlour offers professional embalming and the facility was where the bodies of US Congressman Leo Ryan and other senior officials, who were victims of the Jim Jones massacre at Port Kaituma, North West District, were taken to be embalmed and then exported.

The process of embalming is very expensive and meticulous, and unlike in the United States where all bodies are embalmed before it is viewed, here in Guyana, embalming is only done if a body is to be exported.

For years. the parlour through a contract it has with the government handles the bodies of people whose deaths involve with police investigations.

But according to Dr Stewart, the business has over the years had its fair share of trials, with the infamous `touting for dead’ phenomenon, but the couple remains resolute that they will continue to serve the people to the best of their ability.

Fate

Commenting on their union, Dr Stewart with a glowing smile said it appears to have been predestined even before they were born and can be likened as a script for a love movie.
Ironically, the veterinarian at the stables and who was responsible for the horses was her grandfather; both she and Gordon’s fathers were veterans in the army; Gordon’s father started the Legionnaires of America in the US, and Dawn’s father later became the president, and both she and Gordon’s moms were nurses.

As teenagers, she and Gordon attended college in the United States and dated, however, they went their separate ways and got married to different people and had families.
But as fate would have it, Gordon and Dawn got together when they both were single again, began dating and got married a few years later.  The union brought forth “Really”, a daughter who is really treading in her parent’s footsteps.