Peter Perry is living proof that the funeral industry is anything but a dead business.

He is, of course, the CEO of Perry’s Funeral Home, the rising organisation that is now in the spotlight for not only offering final care services for some well-known Jamaican icons, but sharing his kindness as well.

It is Perry’s, which in the last few months, has looked after music legend Frederick Hibbert, the man known all over as Toots; and now, the organisation is preparing to send home two other celebrities — U Roy [Ewart Beckford] and Bunny Wailer, officially named Neville Livingston.

Toots, of Toots and the Maytals ska and rock steady fame, is credited as the man who first used the word ‘reggae’ and has scores of popular songs in the genre. He died last September and was buried in November at National Heroes Park.

U Roy will go down in the annals of Jamaica’s music history as having contributed to Jamaica’s deejay style reggae, some even suggesting that he inspired the birth of American rap music; while Wailer was the last remaining prominent member of Bob Marley and the Wailers group which brought Jamaica global recognition and respect.

But to focus on Peter Perry though, there was nothing special, or spectacular about him as a boy growing up at Brown’s Hall, St Catherine West Central where he was born — a place from which former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, and current Cabinet minister and parliamentarian Clifford Everald Warmington also ran up and down.

The only thing that seemed weird about him, among members of the community, was that he was always interested in the dead.

Still a member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, a district constable for 22 years, and head of a funeral home from which he can see his way through life, things were far from rosy for the man who turns 50 on May 2.

At age 17, he left Brown’s Hall, having attended the primary school there, and Tacius Golding Secondary in the parish, for Kingston in search of better.

His first job was to scour pots and pans, wash dishes and generally keep the place tidy at the National Water Commission’s canteen on Marescaux Road, Cross Roads, St Andrew. He also tried other things — among functioning as a ‘handyman’, running a taxi, and working as a security officer at East Ocean Textile in the Kingston Free Zone. But deep down, his passions were unfulfilled, and he needed to work on them.

“I have always had two passions — to be a funeral director and a police officer, but the funeral director part of it was more serious because I had to attend every funeral from I was small to look at the dead and see that they look good,” Perry said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer last week.

“All relatives and friends who died I had to go and look at them. If I ever reach late and didn’t get to look at them, oh my God, it’s like my whole year fall apart,” Perry continued.

The passion of joining the police force came first — in 1999 — and seven years later, he was enroute to scoring the double.

“It was actually in [October] 2006 when I got the first body, the young lady’s name was Tanisha [Henry]… I would never forget her, because she was doing the Dutty Wine dance and broke her neck. I remember a guy from a prominent funeral home went to the mother and said, ‘How you don’t know him and you give him your daughter to bury?’.

“I remember clear as day, her name was Ms Linda, saying to the gentleman, I don’t know this young man from anywhere, but he is going to bury my daughter. At that point I knew I would make it in this business — I am now 15 years in the business,” said the father of four, who started the company as Perry’s Funeral Arrangements & Supplied Ltd in a small space at 180 Brunswick Avenue in the former Jamaica capital of Spanish Town, before expanding to its current location at the corner of Job Lane and the Spanish Town bypass road, across from the motor vehicle examination depot.

“When you are blessed you are blessed. I actually got the call to buy this place and when I told the gentleman I don’t have the money to buy it at this time, he said, ‘Mr Perry, I don’t know you, but I know that you are a good person. Take some money to my lawyer up by Constant Spring Road, give it to her and do your thing. I know you will pay for the place.’ That is somebody I don’t know. God is good,” Perry reflected.

Now, what makes Perry’s so special to, of all the funeral homes around, be getting so many bodies of prominent fallen heroes?

“I am a compassionate person when it comes to my business,” Perry responded within a second. “I don’t sympathise, I empathise. I am also hands-on. A lot of these funeral homes pay more attention to having pretty vehicles, which is important, but people must also pay attention to looking in the casket and seeing their loved ones lying there as if they were merely taking a nap.

“It makes a huge difference when you can look in a casket and see a loved one appear to be just sleeping and can wake any minute. When we prepare a body, a lot of times people will be crying, walking towards the casket, and as soon as they reach the casket and look down, immediately they stop crying. That’s the effect that this company has on people. I am sure that everybody out there who we have done funerals for can attest to that.

“I do a little of everything, including driving (hearse) every weekend, I take care of the preparation of bodies, do make-up…things like that,” stated Perry, who, apart from on-the-job practical training, learned his embalming craft at Piedmont Technical College in South Carolina, USA.

“When I did Toots’ body, it was that time people saw what Perry’s really could do, and then U Roy and Bunny Wailer came shortly after,” added Perry, who described himself as a “reasonable” funeral director who, at the end of the day, makes sure that the customer and himself are happy, which he believes is the perfect potion for good business.

“I just do what I know I have to do to let the customer be comfortable at the end of the day. That is important to me,” stated Perry, who confirmed that he will be driving the hearse on separate days, with the caskets containing the bodies of U Roy at Dovecot Memorial Park in St Catherine, and Bunny Wailer, whose venue of burial has not been officially announced by Livingston’s family, although one medium has named the reggae great’s Dreamland farm in St Thomas as the final resting place.

Even the 15-member staff, he said, get excited when such celebrities end up there to be prepared for burial.

Perry’s is now expanding at the company’s latest location. One chapel is now available where services can be held, and within weeks, two others will be completed.

The expansion will also see a larger area for parking, a self-contained two-bedroom suite, just like posh hotel rooms, for visitors who wish to stay there while they look after funeral arrangements; an office for pastors, a private sports bar; a new workshop for building caskets; an area to hold repasts, among other things. There is also a clothes store with items not just for the deceased, but for people who want to attend funerals.

Now, Perry’s, with a body storage capacity of 300, has a fleet of four limousines, eight sport utility vehicles and three chariots. He also still has the same red Honda “all-purpose” motor car, which he would attach a chariot to and run funerals on weekends, while doing taxi service and personal errands during the week.

Although business continues to improve since he moved to the new location in 2014, Perry has no plan to establish branches across Jamaica for fear that the quality of the service could end up getting diluted.

“I have a standard that I have to maintain, and I am not going to allow greed or money to drop that standard,” was Perry’s response to the question of branching out. “I want this one location where I can monitor everything. I am not going to any other location, because I need to monitor all my work leaving from here to maintain my standard.

“When you have branches a lot of things can happen. You become inconsistent, because you can get something good coming from this branch, something bad coming from the other branch and it’s bad for the whole business. If some business people can’t see that, they are in trouble,” said the man whose company has handled up to 12 burials in a day.

There is that other side to Peter Perry that some do not know, but many have witnessed: He is immensely kind, caring, and generous.

Perry, if you listen to how he is described by some people, would give away even what he doesn’t have, as long as he sees someone in great need.

“Anywhere you go people tell you that that is how I am,” he said, beaming with pride. “I like to give. There are times when I go to the supermarket and I am fourth in line and I will just say, ‘Cashier everybody in front of me, that’s my bill’. I do this everywhere I go. I will go to the pharmacy and do the same – I will see old people standing there and say hold onto this and give them money. It gives me great pleasure to see the reaction on their faces. Nothing in the world is better than that. It is good to make a positive change in somebody’s life every day,” stated Perry. “I make a difference in somebody’s life every day I get up.”

People will also know that Perry is a party man, and great lover of music, even owning a powerful sound system called Perry’s International. Some will even remember the big birthday bash that he threw across the road at the Examination Depot to mark 48 years on planet Earth, one that featured US group The Manhattans, members of which he still maintains contact, as evidenced by a call put through to band lead vocal Gerald Alston, as the Sunday Observer wrapped up the interview.

As he pushes his deeds, Perry will continue to balance the management of his funeral home, with police work, committing to the State’s security apparatus as he is rostered “whether day or night”, and maintain the passion for both.