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The Washburns
Washburn General Store began business about 1831. As was the practice of the day, the General Store sold coffins, coffin hardware and related funeral merchandise to the community.
We think that the actual funeral home portion began around 1926. E.N. Washburn was the first generation Funeral Director for the business. In 1945, his son Edward began assisting him with the business. Edward became a licensed Funeral Director in 1957. By the late 60's, E.N.'s health had declined to point where he could no longer be fully active in the business. Edward and Catherine assumed full ownership of the firm. E.N. died in 1971. Services and visitations were held in the historic Washburn home. The buiding next to the general store housed the arrangement room, an office and embalming room.
Old staff photo... features current NC State student
Bryan Winslow and medical student Matt Wilson, former staffers...
Kent Dorsey
I have worked in the funeral business since my senior year at East Rutherford High School in 1981. My first career was in radio, working at WBBO in Forest City, WXIK-WOHS in Shelby, and WCAB in Rutherfordton. My first employment in funeral service was with Horton Landreth at McKinney-Landreth Funeral Home, and I worked and lived at both Rogers & Breece and Jernigan-Warren Funeral Homes in Fayetteville while attending the funeral service education program at Fayetteville Technical Community College. I was able to graduate (despite the hinderances of several chemisty instructors) with an AAS in Funeral Service in 1984 and was licensed to practice Funeral Directing and Embalming in 1985. I slipped up to Asheville for four years of employment with Groce Funeral Home, and managed get back down the mountain in 1988 to Rutherfordton firm McMahan's. I bought the Washburn Funeral Home in August of 1998 and was able to build the new funeral home and move in March of 2002. On a daily basis, I am one man operation but I am fortunate to have some great part time personnel who come in when we get busy...
Locally, I am fortunate to be surrounded by some fine funeral firms - who I keep a good "mutual aid" agreement with so we can assist each other when we need to with personnel and vehicles... They are fantastic...
Fun quote of the day: "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire" - Winston Churchill
C.C. Brackett
 Senior Part Time Assistant C.C. Brackett has been with us since 2000. A retired teacher from Sunshine School, we usually take a count on each service as to how many pallbearers he paddled when they were students. We require him to be the "thinker" in the group so the rest of us can let our minds coast a little more. He and his wife Faye live in the suburbs of Sunshine not far away from the downtown area. He used to be a big practical joker, but we think in his maturity he has cleaned his act up a little bit.
Fun quote of the day: "A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -Winston Churchill
Bob Billingsley
 Bob started working here in '01 (That's 2001...). As a part time assistant, one of Bob's jobs is to be on call at night for home calls. But Bob is a morning person, and I am a night person, and sometimes at 4:32am that can cause the dialogue in the hearse to be pretty short, "That road...", I'll say and Bob comes out with a huge long paragraph that I am not capable of saying or comprehending (as any other night person) between the hours of 3am and 10:30am. That's probably a nice balance so we can get to where we are going. We like to say that Bob is our engineering department here too, if something breaks or falls apart, we get Bob to analyze it and tell us it's broke or falling apart. It's also always nice to have a "Bob" on your staff. I think in South Carolina it's a law or something.
Fun quote of the day: "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -Abraham Lincoln
Randy Bostic
 Funeral Homes have a tendency to draw personnel from the fire and police occupations, a lot of these folks have been privvy to strange hours like our staff and they don't scream at you when you call them out. Randy Bostic started with the firm (I just wanted to use that word somewhere here on the site...makes us sound like a big deal...) in January of 2009. After working the late 70's with the Sheriff's Department, he gained employment at the Spindale Police Department for 28 years, retiring in August 2008. His wifely woman had a "honey do" list that kept him busy for awhile, and then we rescued him and brought him here to hang out with us and give Bob Billingsley some Carolina fandom help against State fan Bryan Winslow. Always dressed well, Randy can be seen keeping his suit coat on longer than any other staffer here, the rest of us shed those suit jackets as quick as we think no one is looking. Having had guns pointed at him at some point in his previous career, we hereby vote Randy the Most Famous Staff Member, and will make him available for autograph sessions at the public's request. Up until now, we had a few ask for Brackett's autograph but we always assumed someone was trying to doctor up a report card from 1977. Randy said that when Winslow goes off to school in August, he will kinda miss him.
Fun quote: "Always go to other peoples funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours." -Yogi Berra
Jamie Shelton
Upon the exit of Bryan Winslow in 2010 for college, Winslow demanded his replacement be another NC State fan. Tarheelers Bostic and Billingsley did protest, but we were able to secure the services of North Carolina probation/community services employee Jamie Shelton, who can serve as a back up NC State supporter for when Winslow works an occasional weekend. Jamie lives the closest to the funeral home of any of our part time employees so I have great plans to yank him from REM sleep whenevah he is needed. Don't mention this to him please and maybe he won't notice. Right now he also serves as our Youthful Staff member - which includes these labor functions: any type of ladder operation, lightbulb changes that require dangling, any work that might require something liquid spraying back on our fine suit of clothes (i.e: Resolve carpet cleaner, the one white wall cleaner bottle that leaks), lightbulb changes that require dangling, sprinkler choreography/geography/movement, anything that OSHA requires a bright lime green vest or yellow helmet for, lightbulb changes that require dangling, etc... Jamie's not even the rookie anymore... see Dean Baughn's bio for the new kid...
Fun Quote - "As you walk down the fairway of live you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round." - Ben Hogan
Rev. Dean Baughn
Our staff was heavily stacked in favor of the Methodist denomination, and a suggestion was made to branch out into the Baptist reaches to equalize the personnel a bit. In February of 2011, Rev. Dean Baughn joined the staff of part time assistants at Washburn & Dorsey. Dean has pastored churches in Roxboro, Banner Elk, and Rutherfordton. Also adept at telling bad jokes like senior staffer Brackett, we still laugh at his humor "attempts" and tell him he is pretty funny. He already had lots of suits and ties so it doesn't take much effort to clothe him on our part, though we did buy him the matching staff ties and a nice itchy sweater. A couple of times when we called him on his mobeel telephone, he was out hiking - so taking into account that for the most part hiking is a pretty much voluntary activity - we think he likes hiking somewhat.
Fun Quote: "Success is not final, failure is not eternal, it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill
Carol Dorsey
 This is Carol, she has worked for umpteen years at the pharmacy in Rutherfordton. Around the funeral home, she is our ladies beautician, reporting to work when needed. For many years she had to answer the phone and work visitations. We have let her slide on that the last few years. The photos on this site were taken by Ben Bulter or Barry Melton, Barry snapped this of her standing around some real trees outside the funeral parlor. There is another shot of her on this site with Steve Bryan on the Preneed page, which functions as our Happy People Having Fun photograph - which is some kind of requirement on a funeral home website. She made me take the old photo that I took of her at the Outer Banks, which had me laying on the ground taking a creative shot - off of this site. Thanks Barry for this neat shot...
 It takes a lot of folks working together... To run a funeral home. Carolina Answering Service of Rutherfordton catches the phone for us sometimes. There are times I have to get out of the office, to take a tent down, chase death certificates, or just run errands. We don't have holidays, weekends, or can stay in the bed at 3am when a family calls. It takes a lot of folks and commitment to help the business run smoothly and keep all hours adequately covered. I occasionally get asked about our "quiet" times here, well there's always something to do. Something needs to painted, a room needs to be vacuumed, a state report is due by the 15th, or a car needs to be waxed and cleaned. I placed this photo of me and Bryan waxing the hearse because we rarely find a moment here when everything is totally caught up. I kidded the guys in their bios above, but they really make this place operate. Thanks for looking at the Our Story page, and like everything else I try to do on this site I try to make it plain spoken and interesting...
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