Owner of Slaughter & Sons Funeral Home dies at 87
Funeral set for next week
By Chinta Strausberg
Visitation services for Bernard Slaughter, Sr., owner of the Slaughter & Sons Funeral Home, 2024 E. 75th Street who passed away last Thursday at the age of 87 while hospitalized, will be held on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, in the funeral home’s chapel from 12 noon to 6 p.m.
Funeral services for Mr. Slaughter will be held 10 a.m. on Thursday, November 14, 2013, at the Canaan Baptist Church, 6659 South Harvard St. Interment will be at the Oak Wood Cemetery, 1035 East 67th St.
Mr. Slaughter passed on Thursday, October 31, 2013, while hospitalized at the Rush University Medical Center. He has been there for a week, according to his daughter, Benita F. Slaughter, who now runs the funeral home he purchased in 1972 from Lain & Sons Funeral Home. It is located in the South Shore community.
Born in Belzoni, Mississippi to the parents of Augusta Powell and Willie Davis, Mr. Slaughter was an only child, but he had a dream—to own a funeral home.
Initially Mr. Slaughter was inspired to become a mortician by T.V. Johnson, owner of the Johnson Funeral Home in Belzoni, Mississippi. While in Detroit, Mr. Slaughter met M.K. Fritz, a mortician who recommended he pursue a mortuary science career in Chicago. He recommended that Mr. Slaughter work for the Metropolitan Funeral Parlors in Chicago.
After graduating from Worsham College where he earned a Mortuary Science degree, he worked for 25-years at the A.R. Leak & Sons Funeral Home owned by Spencer Leak, Sr. He fulfilled his lifelong dream of owning his own funeral home 1972 and was the first African American mortician in the South Shore community.
Mr. Slaughter became friends with some of the most powerful men in America including former President Bill Clinton, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, the late Mayor Harold Washington, former U.S. Senator Roland W. Burris and many others.
A father of two, Mr. Slaughter’s wife, Georgia Slaughter, passed in 2002. In 2006, Mr. Slaughter retired turning the reigns of the funeral home over to the second generation, his daughter. Heartbroken over his death, Ms. Slaughter cited her father’s favorite quote, “to God be the glory.â€
Mr. Slaughter leaves to mourn a daughter, Benita F. Slaughter and son, Bernard Slaughter, Jr., a daughter-in-law, Charlotte Slaughter and two grandsons, Ashley and Desmond.
For further information, call Ms. Benita F. Slaughter at: 773.643.5355-56.
