John D. McCarty honored by the Texas FDA

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  • JOHN D. MCCARTY receives Award for 60 Year’s of Service, and a lapel pin from the Texas Funeral Directors Association. On the right he displays the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Littlefield Chamber of Commerce. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
    JOHN D. MCCARTY receives Award for 60 Year’s of Service, and a lapel pin from the Texas Funeral Directors Association. On the right he displays the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Littlefield Chamber of Commerce. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
  • McCarty Funeral Home is located at 1303 Griffin Street in Littlefield. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
    McCarty Funeral Home is located at 1303 Griffin Street in Littlefield. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
  • MCCARTY BARBER SHOP is located behind behind the McCarty Funeral Home. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
    MCCARTY BARBER SHOP is located behind behind the McCarty Funeral Home. (Photo by Ann Reagan)
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To be recognized by a statewide professional organization when one is not a “dues paying” member of said organization speaks volumes of the exceptional service and longevity of the recipient. John D. McCarty has been honored by the Texas Funeral Directors Association in recognition of “60 years of service in the Funeral Service Industry.”

McCarty was nominated for the award by Shawna Wagley Hastings of Hillcrest Funeral Home in Littlefield, who views him as a mentor and an example of what the funeral service professional should aspire to be. She and her partner Sam Billingsley felt very strongly that McCarty should be acknowledged by the TFDA. As Shawna conveyed to the organization, “Let’s face it, at 88 years, how many funeral directors do you know that get up and go to work still every day, as sole owner, and only funeral director of their own firm, still dressing bodies, still working funerals and still doing visitation and paperwork? He is an exceptional man, and what I feel is one of the great ones in our profession. He inspires me every day to want to be not only a better person, but a better funeral service professional,” she wrote.

John D. McCarty was born with the aid of a midwife at his home “somewhere around Paris, Texas” on January 14, 1933. He had three brothers and one sister. He was the fourth of the five children. The family lived in a small community he couldn’t quite remember, but it was near Spring Hill. As a very young child, he recalled everybody had to haul their water from a nearby spring.

In 1939, his family moved to the Littlefield area. He recalled that while travelling by car, service station attendants would not pump gas for them, and usually there was no restroom available to them.

When they wanted to get something to eat, they were told to “go ‘round back. Sometimes there might be an old table and a couple of old chairs or crates,” he said.

The family lived near Hart at one time, he remembered. “We all worked,” he said. “The only time we could go to school was when the weather was too bad to work outdoors. On those days we walked through a pasture past a bunch of cows to get to school. I think we might have gone to school on average two days a week.” He remembered his father could not read well at all, but he knew his numbers. His father worked at many things to provide for his family, including farm work, carpenter work, cooking, and finally working with the Jamison Funeral Home in Lubbock.

McCarty attended the Dunbar school in Littlefield and graduated in 1955. Just one year earlier, the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of education that found that state-mandated racial segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional.” Ten years later President Lyndon B. Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act into law. There is no trace of the Dunbar School in the neighborhood today, and because it was difficult for the people involved in the school to obtain photographs, it will likely be only a distant memory for the few remaining who attended that school.

His brothers elected to join the military, but he chose to further his education. His first interest was agriculture, so he packed up and went to Prairie View A&M University in Houston. That experience was eyeopening. He quickly realized how inadequate his earlier education had been. He said, “I knew nothing about biology, and chemistry, or microscopes. There was only one microscope for the whole school at Dunbar.”

He gave up on his initial plan to pursue a career in agriculture because he “didn’t think it was going to work out” for him. In the meantime, he needed to make money, so he decided to go to barber school and got his license. McCarty only recently transferred operation of his barber shop to his nephew, Daniel McCarty, “about a year and a half ago,” but he said he still cuts hair sometimes.

His father had gone to work for the Jamison Funeral Home in Lubbock about this time, and suggested that McCarty consider the profession. “I didn’t think I wanted to do that, at all,” he said, “but I thought I ought to try it and just see if it worked out for me.” Apparently it did, because in1957, McCarty graduated from Houston Commonwealth Institute of Funeral Services. The classroom instruction was followed by required apprenticeship he completed at Baker’s Funeral Home in Fort Worth. In 1958, he earned his license through the State of Texas as a funeral director, and in 1960 he obtained his license as an embalmer. The Jamison Funeral Home saw a business opportunity in expanding its Lubbock service to Littlefield, and McCarty was employed to run the business. Eventually the business became McCarty Funeral Home, and the rest is 64 years of history.

He married his sweetheart, Opal Mildred Clayton, on February 16,1960. He and Opal started the Peace Deliverance Church in Littlefield where she served as the founding pastor. Together they raised their son, Hubert and their daughter, Mary. They were devoted to each other for 54 years. When his Opal fell seriously ill, he took care of her until her passing in 2014.

“I believe in the Lord’s Command to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And He meant everybody,” McCarty quietly answered when asked what motivates him to do so much for others. McCarty is in perpetual motion. If not directly working at his profession, he finds folks to help, or they find him, and he also tries to help with civic matters occasionally. He said he “mows lawns for the widows and the elderly,” but laughingly admitted, “Well, I do use a riding lawnmower now.”

McCarty has received well deserved recognition in the Littlefield community prior to receiving his award from the Texas Funeral Directors Association. In 1999, he was Juneteenth Man of the Year. In 2004, he was Littlefield Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year, and in 2021, he received the first lifetime Achievement Award from his friend and colleague Shawna Wagley Hastings awarded by the Littlefield Chamber of Commerce.

John D. McCarty wears his faith, his love for others, his perseverance, and his service to others like an old favorite shirt. It just fits.

To spend time with him is to receive a lesson in living a Christian life well.