About Us
Funeral Director – Richard Walter Parson
Born in Plymouth, in the flat above the funeral home in Salisbury Road, Plymouth, where his father was the Funeral Director, Richard spent his formative years living in a funeral home, but began his career away from the family business twenty years later. Training with The Great Southern Group, a well-respected large corporate funeral business, who based their training programme at their facility in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, Richard thrived from the beginning.
After twelve months, having achieved the National Association of Funeral Directors’ Diploma and both award and recognition within the profession as the student with the highest pass mark that year, Richard returned to Plymouth to join the Parson family business in 1988. For the following twenty years, Richard worked alongside his father and colleagues, learning how best to care for all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, as they leave us and we have to say goodbye to them.
Following a management take-over of the family business in 1999 and his father’s resulting retirement, Richard took a twelve-month sabbatical in 2004/5 and took part in the ‘Global Challenge Yacht Race’ fulfilling a childhood dream to crew in a yacht race around the world.
The challenge changed everything.
Richard returned to the business but soon, keen to share new skills and explore new adventures, made the big decision to break the Parson name’s ties with the family business and so began a ten-year career with Co-op Funeralcare.
It wasn’t long before his colleagues and peers came to regard him as an expert in his field. Reaching the position of Care Excellence Manager, one of four across the U.K. Co-op business, his responsibilities included advising Company and Group on all practical, regulatory and policy matters regarding the care of the deceased, as well as delivering practical training and support for the south of the UK.
Richard is now proud to be the Principal at Westcountry Funeral Service.
Accreditations
Qualified with both the National Association of Funeral Directors and the British Institute of Embalmers. Richard achieved the Scales Award for the student with the highest pass-mark in the N.A.F.D. Diploma exam and achieved Excellent in his embalming exams. He has over thirty years hands-on experience in all fields of the profession in both small independent and large corporate businesses and brings a proud heritage of generations of the Parson family to the team.
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