John J Smith Senior Wins Family Business Lifetime Achievement Award

Family Business United is delighted to announce that John J Smith Senior has been awarded a Family Business Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a life spent quietly, devotedly, in service of others, at some of the hardest moments a family can face.

John left school early to join the family business and learn the trade of a monumental mason, working with stone long before he ever expected to spend his life caring for people. Thirty years ago he took the decision to start offering funeral services alongside that trade, and from that day he has, by his own family's account, worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Not because he had to, but because he saw every family who came to him as his own.

In and around Colchester, John is simply known and trusted. Families call on him because they know that whatever their loved one needs, and whatever hour of the day or night they need it, he will be there in person. He will go to a family's home himself, any time, so that they can see him and know he is looking after the person they have lost as though they were his own. He stays with families from the moment of loss through the funeral itself and well beyond it, and he will go to whatever length is needed to see a family's final wishes carried out properly.

That same generosity reaches out into the wider community. John has supported the local hospice and local bowling clubs, and has built genuine friendships with countless families and businesses across the area over the years. True to the spirit of the family business world, he has always been quick to recommend and support other local family firms, the florists, the printers, the coffin makers, the people who, like him, quietly keep a community running.

What makes John's story so striking is the scale of what it has asked of him. He has taken no holidays and no real days off, because his community has always come first. His own family will tell you, honestly, that they have missed out on time with him because of his devotion to the families he serves. Few people give that much of themselves, for that long, and ask for so little in return.

In his own words: "I have loved every moment and would not have changed my life for the world."

Congratulations to John J Smith Senior on a well deserved Lifetime Achievement Award.