09/21/2026
What a wonderful history of Windsor’s funeral families. For generations, these families have not only served Windsor and the greater four-county area, but have also cared for the historic former home of Tommy Bowen at 405 East Benton Street, which has served our community as a funeral home since as early as the 1930s.
The Hadley family is honored to have continued that tradition for the past 60 years. We deeply value our community and the trust families place in us to care for them through all seasons of life.
Do you have memories of our building or of the Houston, Turner, and Hadley families? We’d love for you to share them below!
THE HOUSE WHERE WINDSOR SAID GOODBYE
From Huston-Turner to Hadley Funeral Home
There are some buildings in a small town that hold more than rooms, furniture and walls.
They hold voices.
They hold footsteps.
They hold the memory of doors opening quietly, of neighbors arriving in their Sunday clothes, of flowers filling a room with their heavy sweetness, and of families sitting together because there simply weren't any words left to say.
For generations in Windsor, one of those places has been the funeral home on East Benton Street.
Today we know it as Hadley Funeral Home.
But if we could peel back the years—one name on the door at a time—we would find a story stretching back at least into the 1930s.
A story of Huston and Turner.
Then Huston.
Then Huston-Hadley.
And finally Hadley.
More than anything, it is the story of the people who chose a profession that required them to answer the telephone when someone else's world had just changed forever.
BEFORE HE WAS A FUNERAL DIRECTOR, WILLIAM TURNER WAS A TEACHER
One of the biggest mysteries when we began researching this story was simple:
Who was the “Turner” in Huston-Turner?
We can finally answer that.
His name was William Matt Turner.
William was born July 31, 1907, in Missouri and grew up in Benton County, the son of Ira Wellington Turner and Rosa Wilhelmina Acker Turner.
In 1910, little William was three years old and living in White Township, Benton County, with his parents and older sister Mildred.
By 1920, twelve-year-old William was still there, attending school.
But sometime during the 1920s, the Turner family came to Windsor.
And in the 1930 census we find 22-year-old William living with his parents at 506 South Main Street.
His occupation?
Teacher.
Not undertaker.
Not embalmer.
Not funeral director.
A public-school teacher.
He was even attending school himself at the time.
A 1937 newspaper index appears to indicate that William had taught in a rural school and was involved with Windsor's Boy Scouts. We still need the original newspaper clipping before we call every part of that record proven, but it gives us another glimpse of a young man already involved with the Windsor community.
On June 3, 1937, William married Mary Helen Robinson in Windsor.
And somewhere along the way, the young teacher chose a very different calling.
Funeral service.
HUSTON-TURNER MORTUARY
We have found the Huston-Turner name in Windsor records by at least the mid-1930s.
We have not yet found a document telling us the exact day the business opened, so we aren't going to make one up.
But by the 1930s, Huston-Turner was here.
And by 1940 there can be no question about William Turner's connection to it.
The 1940 census finds William, Mary Helen and their one-year-old daughter, Sallie, living at:
405 East Benton Street.
William's occupation was recorded very specifically:
“Hired Embalmer.”
He had completed two years of college, worked all 52 weeks of the previous year and was classified as a wage or salary worker in private employment.
Then, on October 16, 1940, William filled out his World War II draft registration.
There, in black and white, was his employer:
HUSTON TURNER MORTUARY.
The mystery of “Turner” was finally solved.
William Matt Turner was not simply a name someone remembered.
He was there.
AND THEN THERE WAS ELLIS HUSTON
The other name on that old funeral home belonged to a Windsor boy.
Ellis Maxwell Huston was born February 19, 1909, in Windsor, the son of Wilburn Edwin Huston and Mary Caroline Shull Huston.
In 1910, one-year-old Ellis was living with his family on Benton Street.
By 1920, the census described their home as being on East Benton Street.
So Benton Street wasn't somewhere Ellis simply came to work later.
It had been part of his world since childhood.
We even found Ellis in the 1926 Windsor High School yearbook, a teenage Windsor boy who could hardly have known where life would eventually take him.
On June 19, 1931, Ellis married Pauline Mayfield in Windsor, at the home of Pauline's mother.
They would have two children, Sue Ellis Huston and Robert Edwin Huston.
By 1940 Ellis was working as an embalmer.
By 1950 the census described him as operating his own business in the funeral-home industry.
So by mid-century, Windsor had two men whose names became associated with helping families through death:
Ellis Huston and William Turner.
Exactly how their legal business arrangement was structured remains one of our unanswered questions.
William's 1940 census calls him a hired embalmer and wage worker even though the Huston-Turner name was already in use. We have not found a partnership agreement telling us whether they were equal owners or what percentage each man held.
So we won't guess.
What we can say is that the name Huston-Turner was real, William worked for Huston-Turner Mortuary, and both men became funeral directors serving Windsor.
WHEN THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR NEEDED A FUNERAL DIRECTOR
William and Mary Helen Turner had children of their own.
Sallie came first.
Then, on January 28, 1941, came a little boy named William Lynn Turner.
Later came another son, Max Eugene Turner.
But in the summer of 1949, death entered the funeral director's own home.
William Lynn was only eight years old.
On July 30, 1949, the little boy died following a terrible accident involving a runaway horse and being thrown from a wagon.
He was buried at Laurel Oak Cemetery.
There is no need for us to invent what William and Mary Helen felt.
Any parent reading this already knows.
A man whose profession required him to stand beside Windsor families in their darkest hours now had to stand in that darkness himself.
The funeral director had become the grieving father.
William Lynn was laid to rest at Laurel Oak.
Many years later, his parents would be buried beside him.
A FUNERAL HOME IN A SMALL TOWN
By 1950, William Turner was 42 years old.
The census no longer called him simply a hired embalmer.
It called him:
FUNERAL DIRECTOR.
Industry:
FUNERAL HOME.
And one little number on that census may tell us more about the life than a paragraph ever could.
Hours worked the previous week:
70.
Seventy hours.
Because death didn't watch a clock.
There were no convenient business hours for a heart attack in the middle of the night, an accident on a country road, or an elderly Windsor resident quietly taking a final breath at home.
The telephone could ring at supper.
It could ring after midnight.
It could ring on Christmas morning.
And someone had to answer it.
That was small-town funeral service.
WHAT WOULD WINDSOR HAVE SEEN?
By the 1940s and 1950s, Huston-Turner appears again and again in records of Windsor deaths.
A family would lose someone.
Arrangements would be made.
Neighbors would hear.
Food would begin appearing at the family's house.
Cars would pull toward East Benton.
Inside the funeral home would be the familiar things generations remember—the subdued voices, polished furniture, floral arrangements and that unmistakable mixture of cut flowers and enclosed rooms.
People didn't need directions.
They knew where to go.
Because in a small town, the funeral director didn't usually bury strangers.
He buried the people he passed on the sidewalk.
The woman who had sat two pews ahead at church.
The farmer whose truck he recognized.
The former teacher.
The neighbor.
The friend's mother.
Sometimes, perhaps, someone he had known nearly all his life.
A 1943 Missouri death certificate actually bears the funeral director's name:
Huston-Turner, Windsor, Missouri.
The Windsor Review continued recording funerals at Huston-Turner through the 1950s. In 1953, for example, services for Fred Marti were held at Huston-Turner Funeral Home.
And a Windsor Review account from 1955 still referred to the Huston-Turner Funeral Home.
THEN SOMETHING CHANGED
This is one part of the story we still haven't solved.
As late as November 1956, the Windsor Review was still calling it Huston-Turner Funeral Home.
But on April 11, 1957, an obituary for longtime area resident William Allen said his services were conducted at:
Huston Funeral Home.
Turner's name was gone.
That gives us a surprisingly narrow window:
November 1956 to April 1957.
Something changed during those few months.
Did William sell his interest?
Did he retire from the business?
Did he move?
Was there simply a change in the business arrangement?
We don't know.
And until we find a document telling us, we're leaving that question exactly where history left it.
Unanswered.
William later lived in the Kansas City area. He died April 24, 1985.
Mary Helen died June 19, 1985—less than two months after her husband.
They were buried at Laurel Oak beside the little boy they had lost in 1949.
ELLIS CARRIED ON
With Turner's name gone, the business continued as Huston Funeral Home.
Records from 1958 and 1960 clearly use that name.
Ellis Huston remained in funeral service.
A 1964 Missouri death record identifies Ellis M. Huston of Windsor as funeral director.
But another change was coming.
In June 1966, a young couple named Bob and Gayle Hadley purchased the funeral business from Ellis Huston.
And another Windsor funeral-home family began.
BOB AND GAYLE HADLEY
Bob Hadley was born March 28, 1936, in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Gayle Gannaway was born in 1938.
They married October 10, 1959.
Bob served in the United States Air Force and eventually pursued funeral service as his profession. While Bob attended mortuary school in Dallas, Gayle worked at the Baptist Building doing editorial and clerical work.
After Bob graduated, they returned to St. Joseph.
Then Windsor came calling.
In 1966, Bob and Gayle purchased the Huston funeral business and came to a town that would become their home.
Bob's later obituary described his life's work beautifully: serving bereaved families during a difficult time in their lives. He became deeply involved in Windsor, including First Baptist Church and local civic organizations.
And Gayle?
Gayle became far more than “the funeral director's wife.”
She became a funeral director herself.
For more than 30 years, she worked alongside Bob caring for Windsor families.
She played the piano.
She sang at funerals.
And anyone who has ever researched someone buried at Laurel Oak Cemetery owes Gayle a little thank-you.
Because she spent summers walking Laurel Oak Cemetery and compiling a directory of the burials there.
Think about that.
The woman who had helped Windsor bury its people then walked among their stones, recording their names so they wouldn't be forgotten.
That seems especially fitting for Windsor.
HUSTON-HADLEY
For a period after the 1966 purchase, Windsor records used the name Huston-Hadley Funeral Home.
It was another transition.
Another name on the door.
But many of the families walking through it were the same Windsor families who had known Huston and Turner.
Eventually the Huston name disappeared too.
And the funeral home became simply:
Hadley Funeral Home.
ANOTHER GENERATION GROWS UP IN THE FUNERAL HOME
Bob and Gayle had two children, Bruce Aaron and Susan Gaile.
Bruce grew up around funeral service.
This wasn't simply where his father went to work.
The funeral home was part of family life.
And eventually Bruce chose the same profession.
He graduated from the Dallas Institute of Mortuary Science in 1982 and returned to Windsor.
His wife, Sheila, later joined the business.
Then, in 1998, Bruce and Sheila purchased the funeral home from Bob and Gayle.
The business had passed to another generation.
And the family history tells us something that helps us picture life inside that building.
The Hadley children were raised in the second-story residence of the funeral home, just as funeral families before them had been.
Imagine growing up there.
Downstairs, people might be gathering to say goodbye to someone they loved.
Upstairs, there might be homework on the kitchen table.
A television playing.
Children getting ready for school.
Supper cooking.
Someone laughing.
Life and death separated by a staircase.
There is something profoundly small-town about that.
THE FAMILY CONTINUED
Bruce died in 2015, but the family's connection to funeral service continued.
Sheila carried on.
And in 2017, daughter Lauren joined the funeral home full-time as a third-generation funeral director in the Hadley family.
So what began generations earlier with names like Huston and Turner became something much larger than a business transaction.
It became a succession of families caring for other families.
AND THE DOORS ARE STILL OPEN
This is where our story is different from many of our Open for Business — Back Then stories.
There isn't an ending where the doors were locked and the building sat empty.
Hadley Funeral Home is still there at 405 E. Benton Street.
The same address where the 1940 census placed William Turner and his young family while he was working as a hired embalmer.
Think of how much Windsor history has passed through that little stretch of East Benton.
World War II.
Young men leaving Windsor and some not coming home.
The Korean War.
Vietnam.
Factories opening and closing.
Businesses coming and going.
Children growing up.
Families moving away.
Others coming home.
And through all those years, when Windsor lost someone, there was a funeral home there.
The names changed.
Huston-Turner.
Huston.
Huston-Hadley.
Hadley.
But the purpose remained remarkably similar.
When somebody died, somebody answered the telephone.
Somebody opened the doors.
Somebody turned on the lights.
Somebody helped a family decide what came next.
And somebody stood quietly nearby while Windsor said goodbye.
NOW WE NEED YOUR MEMORIES
There are still pieces of this story that aren't hiding in government records.
They're hiding in your houses.
Do you remember Huston-Turner Funeral Home?
Do you remember Ellis Huston or William Matt Turner?
Does anyone remember why Turner's name disappeared from the business around 1956–1957?
Did your parents or grandparents ever talk about them?
Did anyone in your family work there?
Do you have an old Huston-Turner funeral fan, calendar, memorial folder, advertisement, receipt, photograph, matchbook, business card or newspaper clipping?
And especially—does anyone have an old photograph showing the funeral home and what 405 East Benton looked like in the Huston-Turner years?
Please don't assume something is too small or unimportant to share.
Sometimes one old piece of paper tucked into a family Bible answers a question we've been chasing for weeks.
And if you knew any of these families personally, we'd love to hear about the people behind the names.
Because this isn't simply the history of a funeral home.
It's the history of a place that Windsor families trusted with something precious:
their final goodbye.
And after all these years, the lights are still on.
Saving Windsor’s Past while preserving its future.
