Crescent Memorial leads in keepsakes to remember loved ones
Crescent Memorial's owner overcame a late diagnosis of dyslexia to find success
TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – It is Monday morning on April 28, and Terry Jackson is making the rounds at Crescent Memorial, meeting the company’s newest employee.
Crescent Memorial has come a long way since it was founded in 1997 as a marketing company. Two years later, it became Crescent Sales.
“After seventeen years of Crescent Sales, we realized the funeral industry is about as big as we could handle, so we changed the name to Crescent Memorial. We now do business with 11 thousand to 13,000 funeral homes annually,” Jackson said.
Crescent Memorial ships to every state in the nation and foreign countries. While the company is known for its urns, Jackson and his team have also helped introduce other products to the market that can serve as a way to honor someone with a unique work of art that includes the created remains, or cremains, of a loved one.
“We take your fingerprint and make jewelry. We do a lot of that, and people have keepsakes. We have spent the last four years learning to grow sapphire and put cremains in it. We figured out what we could and couldn’t do. Growing it became unnecessary. We introduce cremains to sapphire at a really high temperature. It literally breaks human remains into a liquid, and we form that into a sand dollar or other things,” Jackson said.
Jackson also believes he has been blessed in his business to be a blessing to others.
Recently, he was honored as the Red Rasberry Humanitarian of the year for his support of the Regional Rehab Center. For Jackson, the RRC’s work helping those with dyslexia is personal. He was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was on the verge of starting his business.
“We can reach more and more kids who don’t know what is wrong with them, I was 31 years old before I knew I had dyslexia, pretty much failed every grade I was in, because they didn’t know how to fix it. We are hoping our system here we can take statewide and try and help people,” he said.
Jackson says his story is proof that faith, hard work and having the right people on board is a recipe for success, in spite of a learning disability, or any other hurdles life may throw at you.
More than 130 people work for Crescent Memorial at the company’s two Tupelo locations.
