Jeff Pettigrew prepares the inside padding of a casket at Pettigrew & Sons Casket Co., a family-run business in Sacramento founded by the late Fay Pettigrew, who is Jeff’s grandfather. Building a casket is the last thing you can do for a person, says Barbara Pettigrew Hart, who is Fay’s daughter and Jeff’s aunt. “We think about, ‘What if this was a person I love?’”
Pettigrew & Sons Caskets Co. makes custom caskets — which are rectangular in shape, distinguishing them from coffins, which are six-sided — out of their warehouse. Caskets in their showroom each have a personal story, like the one draped in red and purple fabric, inspired by the jersey of the deceased person’s favorite team. There’s also a casket with gold sequins and another with leopard print.
In general, ornate designs have shifted to simple styles, as people’s tastes have changed. But what hasn’t changed in the business’s 56 years is a commitment to fine work: “We believe in funerals, in celebrating a person’s’ life,” says Barbara Pettigrew Hart, who has been with the company 53 years. “I believe every person deserves a funeral and to be remembered.”
Donald Pettigrew assembles a casket made of redwood at Pettigrew & Sons Casket Co., which has been in the same warehouse on Power Inn Road in Sacramento for more than 50 years in a space that has grown to 25,000 square feet. Founder Fay Pettigrew (who is deceased) started Sutter Casket Co. in 1940 with friends. He eventually launched his own business; the company now includes five family members and three other employees (Donald is the youngest son of Fay and wife, Althea).
Pettigrew & Sons is one of only a handful of full-service casket companies in California, meaning they offer caskets in a variety of sizes, cremation containers, cloth-covered caskets, hardwood and softwood caskets, and metal caskets in various gauges of steel, copper and bronze.In the woodworking department, they create casket shells. “We do it the old-fashioned way and it’s what’s kept us in business so long,” says secretary Dawn Lielke, the granddaughter of the company’s founder.