Karvonen Funeral Home Marks 100 Years of Service

Karvonen Funeral Home, now in its third generation and marking 100 years of continuous family ownership, blends deeply personalized, hands-on funeral and cremation care with a homelike, pet-friendly atmosphere where their resident dogs quietly comfort families and staff alike. Pictured: Greg, Art, Ensti, Ethel, and Suzi. Left; Art showed off Karvonen Funeral Home’s wide range of caskets and urns, from locally crafted, solid-wood caskets with customizable interiors and decorative corners to themed, discreet, biodegradable, and keepsake urns.

by Trinity Gruenberg

trinity@inhnews.com

Karvonen Funeral Home is marking a rare milestone this year: 100 years of continuous, family-owned service.

Founded in 1926 in New York Mills, the business has grown from a small, multi-purpose store into a modern funeral home operation with three locations—New York Mills, Henning and Wadena—while remaining in the same family for three generations.

“Being 100 years like this is pretty special, because there’s funeral homes in our region, let alone state, but very few that are same family owners,” said Funeral Director and Co-owner Greg Karvonen.

The Karvonen story began when Greg’s grandparents, Yalmer and Ina Karvonen, ran a general mercantile store in New York Mills and added funeral service to their operations.

Greg’s parents Harold and Nancy Karvonen continued that model, operating both a furniture store and a funeral home, and even running ambulance services.

“I don’t know how they could operate a furniture store and a funeral home. I couldn’t do it in this day and age,” Greg said.

The earliest records are handwritten ledger books, one page per deceased. In those years, funerals were commonly held in homes, with caskets placed in bay windows and embalmers traveling with portable equipment.

“They had jars where the blood would go in, wood biers where you put the casket on. Back in the day, we did a lot of that,” Greg said...

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