BETHLEHEM, Pa. – A Bethlehem-based funeral director received a huge honor this week.<\/p>\n
The American Funeral Director Magazine named Justin Keiper Runner-Up for Funeral Director of the Year. He joined 69 News at Sunrise Thursday morning to share more.<\/p>\n
He is among four runners up. The overall winner will be announced in December.<\/p>\n
Receiving the honor “means a lot to me,” he said.<\/p>\n
Keiper said he was 15 years old when he decided to go into the business. He said he shadowed at a few funeral homes. Keiper said he wants to help people get through tough times.<\/p>\n
“I just feel like it was a calling for me,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said he has been in the industry for 10 years. He is very active in the community. He discussed why that is important to him.<\/p>\n
People have a preconceived notion of what funeral directors are, that they are just some sort of “dark individual” who is at funeral homes all day, he said.<\/p>\n
He said he is trying to break down those walls a little bit.<\/p>\n
There is more to it than being at a funeral home, he said, adding he wanted to be visible in the community.<\/p>\n
Keiper talked about some common things families compliment him on about the service he gives.<\/p>\n
He recently started sharing his perspective on life as a funeral director on Instagram and Facebook. His latest post was on what strangers can mean to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This time of year can be tough for any of us missing loved ones. He offered some words of comfort as we head into the holidays. He said that grief is normal, and that “it’s okay to cry.”<\/p>\n
You only feel that way because the love you had for that person, he said.<\/p>\n
“Let your emotions out,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – A Bethlehem-based funeral director received a huge honor this week. The American Funeral Director Magazine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,28,17529],"class_list":["post-26729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-the-american-funeral-director-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}