President's Address
90th Annual Meeting of Selected Independent Funeral Homes
October 4, 2008, Washington, D.C.

By Glenn P. Taylor

You have just been part of perhaps the only inauguration to be held in this town over the next few
months that is unlikely to impact your taxes. But you should know that among the goals I would like
to see achieved in the coming year is the provision of programs that will allow you to achieve greater
income on which to be taxed while absolving myself of any responsibility for the degree of that
taxation.

To each of you, be you members, guests, board members, past board members, past officers, or staff, I
extend my grateful appreciation for the opportunity to serve you over the next year as president of
what I consider to be the finest organization of funeral service professionals.

IÕd like to take a moment to introduce to you my family who have and continue to support my
commitments, my adventures, and me. My daughter Christy Chaney, who is a fifth generation
funeral director and interestingly, at least to me, a fourth generation female licensed funeral director,
is here with her husband Travis, their son Ryland, and their due next month daughter, Lucy Jagoe,
and most importantly, my wife Camilla, whose understanding and patience are among my most
valued assets. We have two other children, Glenn Peyton who is at the University of Louisville and
Katherine who is at the University of Kentucky, which makes for interesting family dinners,
particularly during basketball season.

As you have been reminded, the last few years have been ones of change, transition, and new direction
for you association. Past President Todd Lumbard presided over a revolutionary change in the
structure of the governance of Selected. Past President Porter Loring found himself dealing with the
structure of the governance of Selected. Past President Porter Loring found himself dealing with the
unexpected resignation of an executive director and the search for and hiring of a new executive
director. Immediate Past President Brad Bellows guided your organization through the melding of
that new executive director with the culture and personnel of an organization of long-standing
tradition. My congratulations to each of them and to Rob P, who has brought a new perspective that
has and promises to continue to be a dynamic and productive source of leadership.

ItÕs been said that change and stress are synonymous. I submit to you that itÕs not change thatÕs
stressful, but rather transition. I am, as IÕm sure are you, grateful for the leadership provided by
Todd and Porter and Brad, and to every past officer. Every leader has an agenda they would like to
pursue for the advancement of their organization. Yet these gentlemen found themselves with issues
that demanded their time, their commitment, and to some degree the sacrifice of goals they had
wished to pursue.

A funeral director, and I sadly recall not whom, had as a slogan ŌHonoring Tradition . . . Respecting
Change.Ķ I thought it succinctly captured the notion that their firm was open to both traditional and
contemporary approaches to fulfilling the needs of their clientele. If the originator is among us today,
I extend my appreciation.

I frankly can think of no better theme for the future of Selected Independent Funeral Homes than
ŌHonoring Tradition and Respecting Change.Ķ We are of course an association of grand traditions,
traditions that have been rooted in time and experience. Yet we are also an association that is
experiencing and will continue to experience change. The dynamics of our society, our market places,
our opportunities, and our values, for good or bad, do not allow us the luxury of a complacent or
nostalgic isolationsionism.

So therein lays the challenge. How do we maintain and honor the valued traditions of Selected while
adapting to the changes that are seen by thoughtful people to be to the advantage of the association,
or that are felt, by equally thoughtful people, to be required of the association.
One of the greatest, if not the greatest, assets of membership in Selected is the opportunity for free
and open exchange of ideas and best practices and collective problem-solving among our members;
the highly valued freedom of being able to discuss issues within a gathering of our peers and out of
earshot of our competitors.

Yet you may be asking how can we best use to our advantage those assets with the perceived
constraints of communication and the real issue of non-exclusivity? Be assured that your board, your
staff, and I are having the same thoughts. But I am reminded of the difference between an
accountant with shoelaces and one wearing loafers. The accountant with laces will tell you, when
asked the sum of two plus two, that it is four. The one wearing slip-ons will ask you how much you
would it to be. Your board, your executive director, and your legal counsel will be donning our slipons
on your behald.

We are going to carefully consider the methods by which we can capitalize on our potential without in
any way jeopardizing our standing as a viable organization. But in my mind there is a quid pro quo. You cannot and should not expect to enjoy to yourselves the benefits of association with the Selected organization without participating in Selected programs.

Obviously you are not the principal audience to which this suggestion should be directed but perhaps
you would be willing to serve as an envoy to your colleagues not with us today that their participation
is not only to their benefit but to the benefit of their peers as well.

We all probably know a member whose primary motivation for maintaining membership in Selected
is to keep a competitor out. They donÕt participate, they donÕt contribute, they gain no value and they
is to keep a competitor out. They donÕt participate, they donÕt contribute, they gain no value and they
offer none. And itÕs entirely possible that the competitor they wish to exclude could be a far more
valuable and productive member of this association.

Another asset is the enthusiasm and creativity of our members and particularly of our younger
members. It is they who are far less encumbered by how something has always been done or why
something canÕt be done and who are far more willing and better equipped to ask why itÕs always
been done that way and to seek the accomplishment of that which heretofore couldnÕt be done.
I find it troubling that there has been a divide between our older members, older by either age or
length of membership, and our younger. Like honoring tradition and respecting change, there is
value to the experience and wisdom of the former and the knowledge, enthusiasm, ambition, and
drive of the latter. Failing to combine them is like drinking milk one from one glass and chocolate
syrup from another; one can be too homogenized and inclined to the at rest part of inertia, the other
too rich and inclined to hyperactive attention deficit disorder. I contend that Selected in general and,
frankly, I in particular, should be a blender. And if we make a mess here and there, thatÕs what
towels are for.

We have a very deep pool of experienced, accomplished, successful, creative, and dynamic people
within our membership; people who have achieved by practice rather than theory accomplishments
the knowledge of which would benefit us all. We need to reach within that pool and bring their
expertise before us. We need to provide you with engaging programs and valuable, practical,
profitable, and implementable take-aways.

There is also a remarkably small fishbowl within which swim a number of experts, both real and
imagined, available to provide programming to funeral service. Many organizations content
themselves with dipping their nets into the bowl to draw out presenters. We are going to seine the
entire stream to find those with knowledge and expertise in fields other than our own that are
entire stream to find those with knowledge and expertise in fields other than our own that are
applicable to funeral service and by which we can elevate our businesses and our personal lives. And
it could well be that learning how to balance the two is the most valuable training of all.

As I mentioned in our group breakout session Thursday, in my mind, if you have not left a program
excited, stimulated, angry, scared, or any combination thereof, it hasnÕt been a successful program.
Some of this, most assuredly, will cause some consternation. At the risk of sounding cavalier, so be it.
While honoring the valued and viable traditions of Selected, we are going to respectfully pursue those
changes that will continue to position Selected as the organization of choice within funeral service. As
was said in the most recent board meeting, do you really want to belong to an organization that is
unwilling to try anything new? While there is comfort in the status quo, there is but a thin line
dividing comfort and vulnerability.

Your board is committed to, and I have been charged, with assessing who we are, what we are to be,
and where we are going. We may well find that we simply canÕt be everything to every one. We may
find that weÕre better with a more stringent application of our attendance requirements. With the
help of past leaders, current leaders, and members, we are going to, as my friend Mary Stith says,
boil it down to low gravy. Brad Bellows said that there are sacred cows in need of tweaking. We may
engage in some cow tipping. And while IÕve not inclined to gratuitously kick anthills, IÕve no
hesitation to give one the boot if there are ants streaming out of it and in my direction.

IÕve in the past observed that change can be addressed in one of two ways. The one is what I refer to
as the toe-to-toe battle with change, which can be successful, but not always, and frequently results in
a broken nose. The other is what which I refer to as the Asian martial arts approach, which uses the
weight and momentum of change to oneÕs advantage. Since weÔre unlikely to halt the change around
us, letÕs use its momentum to the betterment of our association. To those of you who respectfully cling
to tradition, I ask that you loosen your grip a bit and open your minds. To those of you whose
excitement for change you find difficult to contain, grant us your patience and your input. For you
see, if each of you is willing to honor our valued traditions and respect well-considered changes, then
you will make all the difference.