F. “Tiger” Marston, who has spent 25 years as the city of Mobile’s municipal cemeteries manager, is retiring this summer, closing out a career in the death care profession that spans half a century.
Marston’s connection to the work began long before he took the reins of Mobile’s city-owned cemeteries. Counting four summers during his high school years, 2020 marks his 50th year in the profession. He got his start as a teenager cutting grass and digging graves, work he has often described as learning the business “from the underground, up.”
Over the decades, Marston held a number of roles in the local death care industry before joining the city. He served as director of the Catholic Cemetery of Mobile, as vice president of Mobile Memorial Gardens, and as a funeral counselor at several funeral homes in the area, before spending his final two and a half decades as the city’s cemeteries manager.
In that time, he estimates he met and worked with thousands of families across Mobile and Baldwin counties, almost always during some of the hardest days of their lives. Unlike many professions where a first meeting is a happy occasion, Marston has said there is rarely room for that kind of pleasure in his line of work. Instead, he has described his focus as providing the best possible “family service” during moments that call for trust, care and discretion.
That trust, he has said, is not something families choose to extend so much as something they are forced to rely on when a loved one dies. Funeral and cemetery professionals are asked to step in during moments of grief and handle arrangements with dignity, a responsibility Marston said he tried to honor with every family he served.
Beyond the day-to-day work of managing burials and grounds, Marston became a familiar face to many in the Mobile area through the public tours, classes and presentations he led over the years. He guided the popular annual public tour series of historic Magnolia Cemetery each November, as well as year-round group tours for photography clubs, high school history and art classes, and Azalea Trail Maids candidates from schools across the region.
He also fielded requests to speak to dozens of local clubs and organizations, from small gatherings in someone’s living room to audiences numbering in the hundreds. Several film production companies that came through Mobile also sought him out, drawn to the historic architecture and artwork found throughout Magnolia Cemetery.
Among the most rewarding parts of the job, Marston has said, was his work with Eagle Scout candidates. Over the years, scouts completed hundreds of hours of specialized leadership service projects in Magnolia Cemetery on their way to earning Scouting’s highest rank. Marston, an Eagle Scout himself, said watching those young men complete their projects and earn the award brought him tremendous satisfaction. He has noted that he will retire just before young women become eligible to pursue the Eagle Scout rank for the first time, and said he regrets not being able to see that milestone through in his role.
Those tours, classes, service projects and presentations offered what Marston has called a welcome, happy respite from work that is inherently sad and stressful. He has encouraged the public to keep taking an interest in preserving Mobile’s historic burial grounds, including Magnolia Cemetery and the Church Street Graveyard, as he steps away from his post.
Marston’s retirement comes as the death care industry, like much of the country, contends with the COVID-19 pandemic. He has spoken about his admiration for first responders and frontline health care workers during the crisis, noting that his own son, an only child, is a physician working in a COVID-19 intensive care unit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His daughter-in-law is also a health care worker, along with several nieces, nephews and friends.
He has also asked the public to remember another group of workers affected by the pandemic: funeral directors, cemetery staff and others in the death care profession, whom he has referred to as “last responders.” Unlike many industries, that work cannot be done remotely or paused during a public health crisis. Funeral and cemetery professionals have continued reporting to work throughout the pandemic, often facing the added difficulty of arranging meaningful services while enforcing group limits, social distancing requirements and mask mandates. Marston has noted that their role has become only more important as families have been unable to be present with loved ones at the time of death in hospitals and nursing homes.
As he closes out his career, Marston has thanked the many families, students, scout troops and civic groups who trusted him and shared in his work over the past quarter-century managing Mobile’s municipal cemeteries.