Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Mike Kuhn with me. Welcome.
Michael Kuhn: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Toni: Thank you for being here. So, Mike, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Michael: My name is Mike Kuhn. Thanks for the warm introduction, Toni. We have a family business in West Reading, Kuhn Funeral Home. I’m a third-generation owner there with my father, and then we also have a funeral home in Temple. We now do our own cremations in Temple. We’ve been serving the community for over 80 years. It’s been a real honor to be able to keep the family tradition going for the last 25 years. Just always working on different projects and thinking of ways to grow our business and improve and get better. We did get our own crematories in 2016. At the same time, we started Pet Cremations by Kuhn, where we do obviously pet cremations, and we’ve even had a viewing for a dog, which is a new experience.
Toni: Wow. I would imagine.
Michael: That’s our family business, and then I can dive into my family, which I’m super proud of and all that kind of stuff, but I think out of the gates you wanted me to give a little intro.
Toni: Just who you are and what you do.
Michael: Yeah, so Mike Kuhn, Kuhn Funeral Home, third generation funeral director of 25 years. I really like what I do.
Toni: That’s fantastic. Well then, let’s jump into the Project, okay?
Michael: Okay. Let’s do it.
Toni: What does inspiration mean to you?
Michael: Well, I purposely scheduled this interview 10 days away, thinking that I could plan for what I was thinking inspiration meant to me, and then when I got in my car at 2:40 I wrote down inspiration. I’m like, “I better start to think about what inspiration means to me.” I was writing things as I was coming over the Penn Street Bridge. The only thing that jumps out at me in regards to just being inspired in general is I think a foundation of it is actually faith.
I remember when I got married at St. Ignatius, and Monsignor Treston mentioned how my wife Rachel and I were both dying that day, and how the union was now who we were. I thought, “Man, that’s pretty intimidating,” but ultimately, his message was your order in life should be this: God, spouse, self, and then if you’re blessed with children, God, spouse, children, self. Then he said, “Anytime you have problems in your life, you’re going to look at the sequence of these four items and you’re going to say, “Something’s out of balance. Something’s jumped in front of something else.”’ Man, that just resonated with me.
Hopefully, back on June 12, 1999, that’s when I started to get my act together. Kind of kidding. Kind of not. I just think about faith, and I think that is such a backbone for inspiration, because then you have this core belief that there’s something greater.
Toni: Do you know when you’re inspired? Is it a feeling? Does it move you?
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Toni: When was the last time you were inspired?
Michael: This week. I get inspired on funerals. We had two funerals this week that I ran; one on Monday, one on Tuesday. I talked about eulogies to both families, and no one wanted to do eulogies. In the end, the daughter for each spoke, and they both did an amazing job and made people cry. I’m in the back, and I’m trying not to cry. That type of stuff where you see firsthand the depth of relationships, and you can place yourself in that position and think, “Man, I’m kind of inspired to try and want to have a life where when I’m dead, I might have children that are going to speak about me in a favorable light.”
Toni: So, you were inspired by their words, which you inspired them to speak?
Michael: Yeah. That was good, because I feel like part of what our job is at our place of work is to make sure we’re doing meaningful work. When meaningful work gets done, I feel good about that.
Toni: Well, let’s take that a little further, because that’s the second question of the Project. How do you take when you are inspired, whether it is faith that is inspiring you, or you’re inspiring someone else to do something that inspires you, which is a very cool example, how do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Michael: I think you can live an inspired life. I think the whole idea is that everything you do, you try and do it to the best of your abilities. You try and do it with inspiration, and you try and inspire people that are around you. I’m starting to talk about myself, which is not what I really want to do, but the idea of inspiration and what inspiration can do for others. You can share inspiration, I think. I think you can absorb it, and you can give it.
I like to live an inspired life if I can. I like to surround myself with people that are on the cusp of being inspired. It’s a good way to live. That’s basically how I try and live my life every day.
Toni: It’s really gathering the inspiration so that it is sharable.
Michael: Mm-hmm. I think so.
Toni: That’s what I’m hearing, right?
Michael: I think so.
Toni: Then, putting it into practice that way. I would imagine that as you gave an eloquent example of how you do that with your business, does that overflow into personal life as well when you’re inspired?
Michael: Oh, yeah. I think just looking at my nuclear family, my relationship with my wife, I’m blessed to be married for 19 years. My wife is amazing. She’s super organized. She’s pulled together and very, very smart. I think our mix together, I’m just super blessed to have a great relationship with my wife. I think there’s some inspiration there every day.
I think we try and pass that on to our kids to just live a life that’s not compromised and to have super high standards, and to not care what other people think of you. In order to do that you have to have a degree of inspiration, or you’ll just be flat and you’ll be lonely and you’ll feel like you can't do it. If you’ve got the faith, and if you’re truly…the word here is “inspired”…I feel like you can do all those things.
Toni: Absolutely, and share it along the way.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Michael: Well, I would say starting growing up, you look at I think how you grow up and who you surround yourself with makes such a difference. For me, I was one of five kids. My parents, I thought, did a really good job raising us. We were brought up in a home that was full of love and support. It just gave you that baseline of confidence.
I felt like my parents, first and foremost, are people that I look to as my inspiration, because without them…I needed them as a springboard to move forward. I don’t know where I would have landed had it not been for my parents. If I were coming from a different scenario with a broken home and challenges, I don’t know. I was a naughty kid. I liked to have fun. I like chaos. I don’t know where I would have landed. I think first and foremost I look at my parents and will forever be grateful for what they did for me and for my siblings, and that we’re all somewhat well balanced. Maybe not that well balanced, but paying taxes and working hard and doing the best we can.
Toni: And keeping the legacy alive.
Michael: And keeping the legacy alive. Yeah.
Toni: Your parents have inspired you. Anybody else that inspires you here in Berks County?
Michael: I’m just so family oriented. I look at my in-laws and everybody in my family, and that is my source of inspiration when push comes to shove. My in-laws are amazing people. My wife’s amazing. My parents are great. When I’m surrounded by people that inspire me, that gives me so much strength and so much courage to move forward every day.
Then, I care a lot about the community. The community is so important to me. I root for Reading every day, and I root for Berks County every day. People that go out and make a difference, they’re just really impressive. You can point to all kinds of people that do that. I think anybody that’s selfless and gives of their time and gives of their time because they want to give, not because they want to be recognized, is impressive stuff, and there’s a lot of examples out there. I didn’t prepare for this, so I didn’t write any names down.
Toni: You don’t need to. I think you’ve been pretty explicit.
Michael: Okay, great.
Toni: You have. Alright. Last question. What do you want your legacy to be?
Michael: I talk about intangibles in life, and the idea of being unselfish and giving and caring and those things are really important to me. Circling back to my family, I think the idea that one of my lasting legacies, I hope, would be that my three children be healthy, productive citizens, and really good kids. I hope that hopefully when it’s all said and done, I’ve made a little bit of an impact on people’s lives.
I hope in my job that I was hopefully a person that touched the lives of people when they experience death, and that they felt like they were dealing with someone that they knew and trusted and appreciated and valued, and that people would look on me maybe somewhat favorably and say, “I like that guy. It’s too bad he’s no longer here.” The legacy of Mike Kuhn, third generation, and family guy. Good guy.
Toni: Well, as I’ve said hundreds of times in all these interviews, people have to understand that your legacy isn't just when you die, but it’s how you live.
Michael: That’s a good point.
Toni: That’s what you’re doing now, and that’s how you’ve spoken throughout this interview. There’s a word that you have inspired me with this interview, and the word that I’m hearing all through this that you haven't—I think you might have said it once—was grateful. I think that gratitude is what I have been inspired by with this interview. Gratitude for your faith, your family, your legacy, and that’s amazing. Thank you for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Michael: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Toni.
Toni: You’re welcome.
