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'I saw the need': New funeral home honoring its building's history

By: Isabel Flores

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NORTH TULSA, Okla — The "El Camino Real" Funeral Home is hoping to be more than that for their guests.

Meaning "the true path" in Spanish, the home's bilingual team is hoping to help as many people as possible from all walks of life.

"Our doors are open to any and all traditions," said co-owner Anayeli Gomez.

She said it's nerve-wracking as their grand opening on September 26th nears, but she's excited to help as many people as she can, with whatever they need to feel better.

Brook Reutter is a co-owner of the funeral home. He said while doing renovations, he found out more about the building's history.

“A local nonprofit came and said they have applied and got us approved preliminarily to the National Register of Historic Places," he said. "For a church that, in the early 50s, was formed as a Lutheran ecumenical church where the pastor came and wanted to be part of this community to have both black and white parish together in the community.”

He said that this, being set during the Jim Crow segregation laws, was a pretty big deal.

Co-owner Ana de la Torre said she came up with the idea of "El Camino Real" after she ran into some issues making funeral arrangements for her loved ones.

“I saw the need of a Spanish-speaking personnel in a funeral home," she said. "It made me think about everything that the families go through and don't have that support of the people that are taking care of them at the moment because they don't know the culture, they don't know your backgrounds, they don't even know the language, so if you can provide that, it would be really helpful to everybody.”

De la Torre said she’s honored to have a team by her side with decades of experience to help her navigate the new territory.

Funeral Director Robert Simons tells me he and his wife, Rhonda, live to serve families on their worst days, but also want to help them be prepared ahead of time, too.

“We try to focus on every person that walks through the door," said Robert. "Doesn't matter the color, what we speak. To wait on a family, you know, everybody has a loss when they walk in. So our our goal is to meet that loss and to help them and walk through the loss.”

Rhonda said her true passion lies in pre-need.

She said she prefers to speak with families about funeral arrangements ahead of time, so they don't have to stress the day-of.

“When a person pre-arranges, it saves them a lot of money," she said. "We want to teach them. We want to educate our families how to make good choices, not emotional decisions, and how to save the most money. I love that.”