Howard Burress has been of service to the Rotary Club for 70 years.

“The best thing I can say about the last 70 years,” Burress says addressing his fellow Rotarians at the Rio Rancho “Noon Hour” Rotary Club recently, “is that it’s been fun.”

Burress was born March 23, 1916. It was 1938 when he established his first funeral home, and Burress became involved in Rotary.

“They saw this new, unmarried fellow,” Burress said. “They put their arms around me and I was a Rotarian.”

Burress became president of a Rotary Club in Walsenburg, Colo. in 1954 and was district governor of Rotary Club No. 5470 by 1958.

He joined the Albuquerque Rotary in 1960 and chartered the Rio Rancho Rotary Club in 1974.

Later, during an interview, he talks about Rotary. How it was formed in 1905 and he remembers more than a few Rotarians serving with the United Nations.

“It made us an international nation,” Burress says of Rotary.

He remembers his early life in the early days after World War I. How his daddy and his older brother increased their day to day finances by farming and ranching in Colorado. Life was good, especially after the war. Burress talked about how money was flowing free in the 1920s.

“We had an Edison Victrola,” Burress remembers back. “I didn’t realize how successful my father and brother were until the Depression.”

After the crash, Burress says his father lost everything. He managed a farm for a millionaire and sold wheat for a dollar a bushel. Coolidge was president.

In 1932, Herbert Hoover and Al Smith were both running for president.

“The economy was dumped into Hoover’s lap,” Burress said.

Though they were in the middle of the Depression in the 1920s through the 1930s, Burress said his mother was able to buy him a trombone. It cost her $40. She made the money selling eggs at a penny apiece.

There are other memories, hard memories, memories that formed Burress’ life as a young man. He was only 16 years old when his father was gored to death by a bull.

“It was at his funeral, that I observed how good he looked after embalming,” Burress said.

He immediately decided that would be his life’s work.

Burress began working in Boulder, Colo. at a mortuary in a two-year apprenticeship while a freshman at college. Luck would have it that he was mentored by the owner because his own children were not that interested in learning the trade.

Burress not only learned the science of embalming from his mentor and how to take care of people after they died, he also learned the business end.

He studied mortuary science in Kansas City taking his exam in Colorado and New Mexico. Burress received his license in 1932.

With a partner, a business was established. He borrowed $2,500 from a friend of the family for his one-half interest in the business. As they say, the rest was history.

“It was immediately successful as a business,” says Burress of his first venture in business.

It wasn’t long before he bought out his partner and opened his second mortuary business. It was thriving though the economy was still bad, according to Burress.

Franklin Roosevelt came to be president prior to World War II. Burress started his third mortuary business.

“I hired qualified men to assist,” Burress said. “All the time, I was involved in Rotary.”

The economy began to pick up after World War II.

In 1958, Burress moved to Albuquerque and sold his businesses in Colorado.

He says he knew Mr. French, Mr. Strong and Mr. Thorne, who were all in the “business” by then. In fact, Mr. French will take care of him and his wife when it is time. They will be buried in a family burial ground in Colorado. Burress bought 12 plots there when he was 24 years old. He remembers planting trees there in 1938.

“The Boy Scouts and I planted trees,” Burress says his vision growing misty as he thinks back. “I expect to be buried under one of those trees.”