Georgia Grant, Brentwood funeral home director and community stalwart, dies at 94

Just about every day for a year, Georgia Grant welcomed a former client into her Brentwood funeral home, a man who would drop by because he had no family after his wife died.

It was typical Grant, who fed people’s souls with the milk of human kindness, those who knew her said. She made herself the grandmother to the children of her daughter’s friend after their grandmother died. When Grant's own grandchildren had different favorites for lunch takeout, she drove to several eateries to accommodate each child. Along with her husband, Grant paid for a place to live for their former client, the widower, and when he was hospitalized, she visited him until he died.

"We were taught that we were no better than anyone and to always be kind and respectful," said Grant's daughter Colleen Grant Kelly, of South Windsor, Connecticut. "My mom would console many people. She would sit and hold their hand and hug them. She knew how to make you feel better, knew just what to say to lift you up. She showed everyone the same love she showed us."

A trailblazer

Grant, one of the state’s first female funeral home directors, died Dec. 14. The Brentwood resident was 94.

She got her license in 1968 to help manage the Michael J. Grant Funeral Home in Brentwood, especially useful when her spouse, Michael Grant Sr., got busy as a Suffolk County legislator. She had a reputation for being able to attend calls by herself, such as going to hospitals, her children said.

Together, the couple, who married in 1955 after meeting at a California dance, helped build up Brentwood when it was a small hamlet and lived in an apartment above their new funeral home. Without fanfare, they helped countless people in the community as well as clients who couldn’t pay, those who knew them said.

If someone was the opposite of kind and good, said son Michael Grant of Smithtown, his mother had no trouble talking plainly: "One politician one time said to me ‘We respected your dad, but we were afraid of your mother. We made sure we towed the line with Mrs. Grant.' "

With her husband, Grant was a founding member and volunteer at several organizations: the Brentwood Chamber of Commerce, St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Church in Brentwood and Brentwood Legion Ambulance, her children said.

Grant's energy and commitment, even in her last year, were almost family legend. In an oft-told story, the day after she returned home from giving birth, she was dispatching calls for the ambulance legion, one of her volunteer posts.

"That’s how she was all her life," her son said. "She didn’t complain."

It was typical of Georgia Grant to spend days working, go home to pour herself into her family, then return to the funeral home for evening services, according to her children.

'A pleaser'

One time, daughter Allison Casey recalled, she didn’t tell her mother until late in the evening that she needed sewing help on a homework project to be turned in the next day. While Casey slept, she discovered the next morning, her mother had sewn the requested puppet for her homework.

"She was a pleaser," said Casey, of Nesconset. "She was such a strong woman."

When the mother of her daughter’s friend died, Grant regularly came by with gifts.

"She always stepped in like a surrogate grandmother to my children, the kindest woman ever," Pascale Green Sog said. "When my mom passed away, she always thought of them for Easter, for Halloween, for Christmas, their birthdays. She never forgot my kids. They referred to her as Grandma G."

"She’s made such a positive influence on my life and my children that I am forever grateful for that," Green Sog said. "I indirectly try to follow her kindness and compassion."

Grant's children said she peppered life with sayings, like "let it be" or "turn the other cheek" — mom’s "isms," her children called them — but one rose above the others.

She’d say it to friends, put it on cards and voice it before hanging up the phone, those who knew her said, among them son Michael: "She would always end each conversation with ‘Love you dearly.’ "

It was on her funeral service prayer card.

Besides her two daughters and son, Grant is also survived by another daughter, Eileen Lyons, of Palm Harbor, Florida, and sister, Bernice Ban, of San Francisco.

A funeral Mass was held Dec. 22 at Sacred Heart at the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, followed by burial at Long Island National Cemetery in Pinelawn.