Vandor Group Chairman and CEO Alan Elder announced the planned retirement of Gerald Davis as president, effective March 31, 2021, and affirmed his continuing service as a shareholding board member. Davis will also continue as a consultant focused on new products, research and design, and special projects.

Davis served as president of Vandor since 2000 and holds more than 50 career utility patents so far. But his innovations and improvements for the funeral industry and the reel-and-cable industry are just part of his story.

Davis started his career in the funeral industry as a part-time assembly line employee in 1977 at Spartan Casket Shell and was quickly promoted to purchasing manager and later plant superintendent. In the mid-1980s, he took a position with America’s oldest casket company, J.M. Hutton, followed by an opportunity to work closely with an innovative funeral home buying cooperative focused on Texas and Michigan. In 1989, he started working closely with the Elder family at Elder Davis Inc. and continued with its new owner when the company was sold in 1997. These experiences prepared Davis to lead Vandor and to anticipate growing consumer demand for cremation goods by creating Starmark Cremation Products in 2004.

Davis comes from a family of casket builders. His father, Forrest Davis, founded Goliath Casket in the mid-1980s, which continued for nearly four decades under the ownership of Gerald’s brother, Keith Davis. vandorcorp.com