MOTHER-AND-DAUGHTER TEAM — Firstand second-generation funeral directors Angela Dallas-Johnson and Dawn Johnson-Myles work at Unity Funeral Home, located at 105 W. New Hampshire Ave. in DeLand.
2024 marks 25 years of service for first-generation funeral director Angela Dallas-Johnson. Dallas-Johnson is the first Black, female funeral home owner in DeLand, and Beacon staff had an opportunity to speak with Dallas-Johnson and her daughter, Dawn Johnson-Myles — who works alongside her mom at Unity Funeral Home at 105 W. New Hampshire Ave. in DeLand — as they commemorate this milestone of community advocacy and funeral service.
Both Dallas-Johnson and Johnson-Myles describe the work they do as a calling — a vocation and service that requires empathy and compassion, in addition to an expertise in mortuary science.
“I am a first-generation funeral director,” Dallas-Johnson said. “For me, it was like a childhood dream. I was fascinated, for whatever reason, by it. It’s been very rewarding, very challenging … absolutely nothing like what I dreamed as a child, but I do realize this is what I am called to do. This is my purpose in life.”
Johnson-Myles did not always plan to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a funeral director, but as the youngest of five sisters, Johnson-Myles found that her professional pursuits began to follow a pattern quite similar to that of her mom.
“I would definitely say it was something that I did not expect. I never thought of working in the funeral home … of course, I’ve been around ever since it opened, but I would just attend funerals,” Johnson-Myles said.
“I was actually [working as] a correctional officer … Crazy thing about it is: Everything that my mom did, I’m doing the exact same thing … I was a correctional officer at the same prison she was a correctional officer at, and I worked with some of her old co-workers. Once I stepped down as a correctional officer, I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do now?’” Johnson-Myles reflected.
The next steps for Johnson-Myles became attending mortuary school in 2015 and joining her mom.
“Once I got started, it was like, ‘I think this is what I’m meant to do,’ because once I actually started doing it, a lot of things came naturally, [and] once I did it for a while, I realized there’s nothing else I wanted to do,” Johnson-Myles said.
CARING FOR THE COMMUNITY — Above, Pastor Angela Dallas-Johnson receives an official proclamation from the City of DeLand, presented by City Commissioner Jessica Davis June 9. 2024, marking 25 years of Dallas-Johnson’s service to the DeLand community.
“There’s never any infighting, there’s never any power struggles … It’s like God said, ‘OK, now I’m going to bring her along,’” Dallas-Johnson said of forming the mother-daughter team.
“I think to properly do it, you actually need to be called into it because it definitely goes past the education part of it. You have to have a love for people, you have to have compassion for people,” Dallas-Johnson said.
Johnson-Myles echoed her mom’s sentiment of the work requiring deep empathy and compassion. “When you really have a love for people, just being able to assist them feel better — even if it’s just for that moment — [if you can] you help them get through it, and help them navigate back to the path where it’s going to help them come back to their normal, as possible, self — that’s rewarding,” Johnson-Myles said.
Both Dallas-Johnson and Johnson-Myles are trained in embalming and funeral directing services, and their compassion and commitment to serve the community are apparent in the multitude of responsibilities of operating a funeral home.
Dallas-Johnson described how she has witnessed an evolution of traditional funeral services in her decades of work and how she and Johnson-Myles strive to adapt and serve the nuanced ways that families grieve.
While Dallas-Johnson and her husband of 38 years, Donald Johnson, both serve as pastors of Unity Church — at 1375 S. Adelle Ave. in DeLand — Dallas-Johnson recognizes that community members arrive at Unity Funeral Home with particular spiritual or cultural practices in mind.
“Anymore, there are no ‘traditional’ funerals. As times change, so does everything else change with it. During the time I first got into funeral service, it was more of a religious-based [service], but not so much anymore,” Dallas-Johnson said. “Funerals are [now] on the basis of whatever [the deceased and/or family’s] beliefs or lifestyle are. So you see a lot of balloon releases, block parties … you’ll see a ‘celebration of life’ … you’re going to encounter people with all types of beliefs, and that’s not our place to say ‘that’s not the way to do it,’ if that’s the way you do it.”
What’s next for Dallas-Johnson? “I think our roles will change,” Dallas-Johnson said of working side by side with her daughter. “But I don’t see myself ever retiring … I still have a love for funeral service, I just have a love for people. I like the idea of helping people,” Dallas-Johnson said.
