After selling a funeral home business, duo breathes life into customer service

John McQueen was in the funeral business in St. Petersburg so long, he likes to say, he goes back to when the town was known for weddings and funerals — the newlywed and the newly dead.

That’s some 40 years. He started at 15 years old, when he dug graves for the funeral home his dad, William McQueen, co-owned with a business partner, John Anderson. The even let him drive the hearse to funerals. “They stuck me between the lead car and the limo,” says McQueen, “so I couldn’t get lost.”