Family business restored: Horan & McConaty bridges prosperity, obstacles of five generations.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Horan & McConaty Funeral Service/Cremation

John Horan runs a family business with roots dating back to 1890 when Denver's population exceeded that of Los Angeles, and the Silver Crash was still three years away. And yet, the business that Horan's great, great grandfather founded--Olinger Mortuaries--has no connection to Horan today, other than the fact that it is the chief competitor of his own company, Horan & McConaty Funeral Service/Cremation.

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Horan grew up working for the mortuary that would become his competitor, picking up deceased bodies around Denver and from as far off as Burlington on the Eastern Plains; cosmetically preparing the dead for their funeral; and working the receptionist switchboard while still a student at Denver's Mullen High School.

The work was always part-time and always for minimum wage, Horan remembers. "Grandpa always made it clear that family was not especially welcome in his business," says Horan, who had planned to apply his business degree from the University of Colorado to a career in commercial and industrial real estate.

But his grandfather, Francis Van Derbur, surprised the recent college graduate one evening, calling Horan in for a meeting and telling the young man he had a bright future in the family's line of work. Van Derbur said he wanted his grandson to carry on the business.

Horan sped through San Francisco College of Mortuary Science in one year. He came to realize he loved every aspect of the funeral business, especially the feeling of helping families get through some of the toughest moments of their lives. He became president of Olinger in December 1983 at the age of 27. But his promotion would not last even a year.

Inexplicably, when Francis Van Derbur died in November 1984, he'd made no provision for transferring ownership of the family business, although Horan says today he believes his grandfather intended to.

To pay estate taxes, Olinger Mortuaries was put on the block and offered to the highest bidder.

Morlan International Inc. bought Olinger Mortuaries in 1985 and two years later sold it to Service Corp. International, the largest conglomerate of cemeteries and mortuaries in the world.

"I received a generous offer to stay and work for (Morlan)," Horan says. "I didn't think it was a good fit for me."

Instead, while his wife, Andrea, supported the couple as a mechanical engineer, Horan began making plans.

Part of that planning involved meeting regularly for lunch in a back booth at Pappy's Restaurant at 36th Avenue and Navaho with Joe McConaty, whose own family mortuary business dated back to 1919 in Denver.

"We talked about a lot of things. We met month after month after month," Horan recalls. "Finally one day he said, 'John, I've decided to sell my business to you.' I said, 'Well, Joe, we haven't agreed on a price.' He said, 'We've agreed on the things that are most important. We'll agree on everything else.'"

Horan and Andrea had saved some money, and his parents showed their faith in Horan by taking out a loan on their house and lending the money to their son so that he could purchase McConaty Boulevard Mortuaries in 1986 for roughly $1 million. "If for some reason this didn't work, my parents would have potentially lost their home," Horan says. "You want to talk about something that gets a guy up in the morning and keeps him there at night, it's knowing how much skin you got in the game."

Things did work out. Today Horan & McConaty has 110 employees at five locations around Denver, with plans for a sixth location slated to open late this year. Horan, the firm's president and CEO, has given ownership stock to five longtime employees, one of whom he expects to someday take over the company.

The firm serves about 16 percent of the Denver area's 14,000 deceased every year.

Horan and his company were profiled in the November 1998 issue of this magazine as an "Ethics in Business" award winner, partly for providing no- or low-cost funerals for families who can't afford to bury loved ones and for police and firefighters killed in the line of duty. Horan & McConaty still does that.

"That's a core value for us," Horan says. "No one has been or ever will be turned away with a financial hardship."

At 48, Horan presides over a fifth-generation family enterprise from a lineage standpoint if not an official, continuously held business standpoint. The current company includes his mother, Valerie, who still works part-time, and his brother-in-law, John Barbieri, who manages...