Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home & Crematory
3750 N Montana Ave
Helena, MT 59602
chris@aswfuneralhome.com
406-442-8520
Campaign Statement
My name is Chris Holt. I am a Mortician in Helena, Montana with Anderson Stevenson Wilke & Retz Funeral Home. I am a fully licensed Mortician/Crematory Technician for almost 20 years.
I currently serve the Montana Funeral Directors Association as the State’s Representative to the NFDA. I began my journey with the MFDA as a District Governor in 2012-2017 before advancing through the chairs beginning as Secretary in 2017 all the way through to serve as a two-time President of the association before serving in my current role.
I am a second career mortician, entering the profession later in life. I worked part time for a corporate firm beginning in 2001 as a removal technician. As life progressed, with marriage and starting a family, I knew my first career, property management, was not going to help provide for my family. Working in this profession part time made me realize how important and vital this profession is.
With guidance and persuasion, I uprooted my young family and moved to Gresham, OR to attend Mortuary School. I worked at a corporate funeral home in Oregon while going to school until my graduation in 2007. I moved my family back to Montana to Helena and began my career as a Mortician with a corporate funeral home that then became a family-owned firm in 2010.
In the years serving as a Mortician and then on to my various roles in Montana’s association, I realize how important an association is to help, guide, and educate our members. An association builds relationships that can provide crucial insights into issues we all face. By networking with peers and merging ideas with one another for the greater good makes us all better as members and as an association. Innovative ideas, techniques, and resources are shared together mutually.
An association provides us with an opportunity to advocate for profession, providing meaningful and pertinent information and resources to help our members professionally and personally. Relevancy is key also. We need to keep being at the forefront of modern technologies and ideas that could help our members in their day-to-day businesses and personal lives also.
I am running for the NFDA At Large Position because I am enthusiastic about providing members with all the tools and resources they need to be successful. Having worked from the ground up, I realize how details matter, communication matters, teamwork matters, learning what works and what does not and sharing that with members, helps us all to become a stronger association. We are all integral in this process, no matter how small or large our contributions, it allows us to make our profession better, our association better, and ourselves.
I ask for your vote for the At Large Position to help me provide you with the necessary resources to bring your firm, your employees, and yourselves to be the best you can. Assisting you to be the leader in your community, your profession, personally, that is my goal. The task is daunting but not insurmountable.
