State's first female mortician brought energy, humor to job

By AMY RABIDEAU SILVERS
asilvers@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Jan. 23, 2007

For someone once mistaken for a dead woman, Ernestine O'Bee was as lively as they came.                             

After her marriage to Emile O'Bee, owner of the O'Bee Funeral Home, she became the first woman licensed as a mortician in Wisconsin. That was in 1952.

She also became a presence in the community. Her name was synonymous with the funeral home, even after the death of her first husband in 1972, and later with a new firm, the Northwest Funeral Chapel. She later married Clifford Wilson, taking the name O'Bee-Wilson, but continued to be known as Mrs. O'Bee in her professional life.

O'Bee accumulated more than a few stories in nearly a century of life. A favorite involved the time she saw two boys studying her portrait at the funeral home.

"See, I told you," one boy said. "She looks just like that dead lady on the wall."

"I am that dead lady on the wall," O'Bee said, explaining that a person did not need to be dead to have a photograph hanging in a funeral home.

"People think that funeral directors don't have a sense of humor," she said, laughter in her voice. "But we do."

O'Bee died of natural causes Monday. She was 99.

Friends and colleagues praised her as a dynamic woman of character.

"There was a consistency of love and wisdom and caring," said Amanda Gray, a bereavement minister and hospice nurse. "She was one of the community. You never had any doubt about that.

"My mom died when I was 18, and she helped me through that," said Gray, now 56. "A lot of what I know, I learned from her."

O'Bee kept working part time at the funeral home until recent weeks.

"I come because one of the most important jobs I do is greet people at the front door," she said. "I like to be in the front when people come in. I want them to feel like they're home."

For O'Bee, attitude was everything. Although she lost much of her sight, people did not always realize that she was legally blind.

O'Bee began life as Ernestine Singleton, the only child of an African-American dentist in Omaha, Neb. Race attitudes in America were a fact of her life, but not one on which she wished to dwell.

In 1931, she graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

"In college, I worked as a domestic for 50 cents an hour because that's the only job I could get because of my color," she said in her quiet way.

"I wanted to be a journalist," O'Bee said. "The dean of women told me, 'If you graduate at the head of your class, I could not get you a job in America.' "

Instead, she earned a degree in social work, first working with the Children's Aid Society in Detroit. She also worked on the radio, as a junior rifle instructor and as a lifeguard.

Her involvement with the YWCA brought her to a conference in Milwaukee. She called the only person she knew in Milwaukee, Emile O'Bee, also from Omaha. When they met, he immediately stood out of respect.

She was taken with the man with good manners. The feeling was apparently mutual because she was soon Mrs. O'Bee. They married in 1948.

Her husband wanted her to become a licensed funeral director, too, so she applied to mortuary school. The school denied her application, saying that she needed to show a high school diploma, not a college one.

"They wouldn't accept my sheepskin from the University of Michigan, and I was so proud of it," she said. "But that wasn't it. They didn't want a woman, and they certainly didn't want a black one.

"Mr. O'Bee went in anger to the school and, when he came back, I was enrolled," she said proudly.

She survived both her husbands, continuing as an owner of the funeral home and its board president. She also served as the first woman appointed to the State Board of Examiners for Funeral Directors and Embalmers. O'Bee also worked with children at Parkway Elementary School every Wednesday.

Survivors include cousins Betty Sullivan and Mary Byrd; and daughter-in-law Lillie O'Bee.

Visitation will be from noon to 7 p.m. Friday at Northwest Funeral Chapel, 6630 W. Hampton Ave. A funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at All Saints Cathedral, 818 E. Juneau Ave.