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An Interesting Neighbor

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Time was in Oklahoma when the funeral homes ran the ambulance services.

And so it was in Purcell until Sparlin and Yoakum Funeral Home wanted out of the ambulance side of the business.

It was the early-1970s when James and Peggy Wadley and their seven children moved from McAlester to Purcell to take over the ambulance service.

They already had five ambulance services in the state.

Adam Wadley was 2 at the time.

He grew up in Purcell – indeed, he considers himself a native Dragon.

While siblings Jackie and Janie took over the family-run ambulance service, Adam was headed along another career path.

He did complete the training to be an emergency medical technician during his senior year of high school.

But his eventual career already started when he was 16 and worked for McMahan Funeral Home.

His duties included cleaning cars, lawn work, vacuuming and helping with visitations.

After high school, he attended the University of Central Oklahoma and earned a bachelor’s degree in mortuary science. Later, he received a master’s degree in health care administration.

“I grew up in the ambulance service,” he said. “I grew up around hurt and sick people.”

Today he is the funeral director and co-owner of Wadley Funeral Home, a Purcell fixture at the corner of Washington Street and 3rd Avenue since 1986.

His silent partners are Jackie and Janie.

Among his siblings, he is the only one licensed as a funeral director. He is also a licensed nursing home administrator.

He still remembers his first ambulance run, though – a mother and child who were hurt in a car accident.

To this day, the death of children affects him deeply.

One of the hardest funerals he directed was also the highest profile – the service for young murder victim Jamie Rose Bolin.

“That was difficult,” he said

Adam does 90 percent of the mortician work himself and the funeral home averages 120 funerals a year.

With COVID-19, that average bumped up.

Although Adam said a certain generation will pre-plan their funeral, most of those he meets with to finalize services have “never been around death.”

“It’s definitely a learning process,” he said. “The family is grieving and you focus on what you need answered. There are so many questions you have to ask to fill out a death certificate.”

A few years ago, nursing students regularly came through the funeral home as part of their training.

Adam believes it’s a better nurse who knows all aspects of health care.

“We are an aspect of health care,” he said. “I enjoy educating people on the industry.”

The demands on a funeral director’s time add up.

First, there’s the matter of transport. For whatever reason, Wadley Funeral Home handles more bodies from outside the area than from inside.

Embalming takes 1 to 2 hours. Consulting with the family can range from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

Arranging the service is about 2 hours.

Adam deals with lots of funeral homes in Oklahoma and across the country.

It all spells stress. For Adam, that stress is aggravated by the long hours and the simple fact that he hates wearing a tie.

But those discomforts don’t hold a candle to “knowing I did something for someone that very few others could do.”

It comes down to taking a difficult time in someone’s life and substantially decreasing their stress.

It isn’t easy.

“You can only deal with someone’s grief so long,” he said. “They are angry and lost and they strike out.”

Coping is a matter of “knowing it’s not aimed at me.”

Adam copes from vacation to vacation.

He tries to visit Eureka Springs several times a year with an occasional trip to Galveston. He used to play golf, but now spends a lot of his quiet time reading.

Adam’s mother died in 2004 while he was working at the nursing home. He lost his father in 2010.

It was that passing, he said, that gave him a “better understanding (of) what that side of the table goes through.”

“I’ve been in their shoes taking care of a loved one,” is how he described his empathy.

COVID-19 was the most difficult time to be a funeral director, he said.

“Everybody had different rules. There was no consistency,” he said. “How do you tell someone ‘Sorry, you can have only 10 at the funeral when there are more than that in the family?’”

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