Ellsworth D Purdy

ELLSWORTH D. PURDY of Vancouver, WA died February 27, 2016 at the age of 91. He was well known in the funeral and cemetery industry as a progressive leader and advocate for change. Understanding that consumer needs were evolving, and that the industry needed to listen and seek creative answers to better serve, he devoted the better part of his career in search of those answers.
He served as a board member and president of the Cremation Association of North America in 1987-1988.
A third-generation funeral director who was not content to simply follow in the footsteps of his family, he consolidated numerous family holdings into a regional company Uniservice Corporation in 1968. Over the years it became the leading funeral and cemetery operator in the Northwest with over 30 firms. He retired in 1995 as the chairman and CEO, when Uniservice merged with SCI.