Have you wondered what happened to Melanie Meredith, daughter of Mike and Sharon Meredith, following her\u00a0graduation\u00a0from Greybull High School in 1996?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Take a trip to St. Petersburg, Florida and ask a taxi driver to\u00a0take you to Memorial Park Funeral Home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
No, nothing has happened\u00a0to Melanie, but you will be quite surprised\u00a0to\u00a0walk in the front door and discover\u00a0that the funeral home manager is none other than your\u00a0old classmate, Melanie Meredith, now known as Melanie Meredith Bowen.\u00a0 She looks about the same, except more mature, more self-confident with a self-assurance that has been gained through her journey to this position.<\/p>\n
The road to the funeral\u00a0home in St. Petersburg and her position today began in the fall after her graduation from GHS. She registered at Northwest College in Powell. Her two years at the junior college were busy; many changes in her life occurred.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0She, of course, had her studies. She did not have a major, with her career\u00a0plans uncertain. She said she thought of a career as a PA, but it was just a thought. She took subjects\u00a0which interested her, that she had an affinity for.<\/p>\n
In addition, the two years included a marriage to GHS grad Leroy Stafford, and the birth of son, Weston. Her life was full.<\/p>\n
At the end of her two-year stint at Northwest, the Staffords moved to Spearfish, S.D. where Melanie enrolled at Black Hills State.\u00a0 Again, she didn\u2019t choose a major, still uncertain where her career path would lead. And, as she did at Northwest, she took subjects that held her interest; subjects that might lead her to a decision; an idea of where she would feel comfortable.<\/p>\n
Melanie was in her second year at BHSU when Leroy went down to Florida to visit his father who lived there.\u00a0 They decided to move there, so after she finished her second year, she and Weston joined him.\u00a0Melanie said it was while she was studying at Black Hills, that she thought about becoming a funeral director.\u00a0 \u201cI was interested in going into the funeral industry before moving to Florida.\u00a0 It felt like a calling.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Once they moved to Florida, she took a job at Anderson-McQueen Funeral Homes where she was a part-time associate, meaning she assisted funeral directors with the funeral services \u2014 helping set up flowers, cleaning, driving the cars for the services, etc.\u00a0 This cemented Melanie\u2019s decision to follow her dream and become a funeral director.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then she enrolled in college and was surprised to find that many of the classes she had taken at Northwest and BHSU were required in the degree she was seeking.\u00a0 As a result it didn\u2019t take her long to earn her associates degree in funeral services.\u00a0 She enjoyed her job at Anderson-McQueen, a family-owned business, but she elected to go to work for Memorial Park, a larger company where advancement was more of a possibility.<\/p>\n
Sadly, it was during this time that her marriage ended; Leroy returned to Wyoming.\u00a0 Melanie and Weston remained in Florida.\u00a0 In the years to follow, she remarried and gave birth to KayLynn, twins Brycen and Peyton and son Devin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just a year ago tragedy\u00a0struck.\u00a0 Her youngest son, Devin, was killed in a bicycle\/car collision\u00a0at an intersection near their house.\u00a0 Melanie felt the comfort of son Weston, who is a martial arts instructor in St. Petersburg; he was the rock that held her together until her mother, Sharon, her brother-in-law and sister Chris and Sheila (Meredith) Kampbell and nephew Brady Shoemaker, all from Sheridan, arrived.\u00a0Melanie learned again how important family is.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
She and her now ex-husband share custody of their three children.\u00a0 KayLynn lives with her mother and the twins stay there most of the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After losing her son a\u00a0year ago, Melanie has more compassion for the people that\u00a0she meets and deals with on\u00a0a daily basis.<\/p>\n
What does Melanie like about her job?\u00a0 \u201cI love being able to help people.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what to expect when I first got into the business, never having had much exposure\u00a0to it previously.\u00a0 I feel very fulfilled\u00a0by helping people\u00a0in their darkest hours to be able to honor their loved ones in the\u00a0best way possible. I feel as though this business is what I was meant to do.\u00a0 I am very happy and can\u2019t imagine what else I would do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you wondered what happened to Melanie Meredith, daughter of Mike and Sharon Meredith, following her\u00a0graduation\u00a0from Greybull High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-61668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}