Resthaven Funeral Home & Resthaven Memorial Park

A welcoming Lubbock funeral home

At Resthaven Funeral Home, we pride ourselves on providing a family-like environment for everyone who walks through our door. Our lobby is warm and inviting with neutral decor that has a calming effect. Over the years, we have remodeled and expanded our space to meet the growing and changing needs of modern families.

We have 4 arrangement rooms where you can meet with an experienced member of the funeral home team to discuss your funeral preferences in a private setting. Each room has a large flat-screen television that helps us walk you through the various funeral and cremation options. Two of the arrangement rooms have large conference tables, while the other 2 have comfortable couches for a more casual feeling.

The beautiful Abbey Chapel is a bright, contemporary setting for a funeral or memorial service. It has excellent acoustics and comfortable pew seating for up to 150 guests. The chapel also has video capabilities if you wish to show photos or videos before or during the service—and if you want us to help you create a multimedia tribute, we are happy to do so.

Multiple visitation spaces include 3 staterooms that can be configured to suit the size of your group.

Our reception room is another flexible space for hosting family and friends. Want a catered reception after the funeral? From a breakfast taco buffet to cake-and-pie bar to a sit-down steak dinner, we can handle the catering—so you can spend more time with the people who matter to you.

Full range of services

All of our services are designed to help you through one of the most personal and challenging stages of life. We understand that losing a loved one is an emotional and difficult experience, and we are committed to providing compassionate, professional and personal service.

Our funeral home team is available to work with you one on one to design a funeral or memorial service as unique as your loved one. From a fire-truck ladder arch for a fallen firefighter to motorcycles in the chapel, from a dove release to boxes of donuts as funeral takeaways, we take the things that mattered most to someone and create a memorable service filled with details and delights.

We are here for you

The team at Resthaven Funeral Home is honored to serve you. Please contact us if you need immediate assistance planning a funeral, wish to tour our facility or want meet with someone about planning a funeral ahead of time. We are ready to take your call.

Resthaven Memorial Park cemetery

Founded in 1948, Resthaven Memorial Park comprises 92 acres of manicured lawns, pretty gardens and undeveloped land for future generations. An abundance of pecan trees on the property provide a dappling of soft sunlight and shady spots on hot days.

Burial and interment options

As a full-service cemetery with a mission to provide personalized memorialization, we offer traditional in-ground burial; single, long and companion crypts; built-to-suit estates; in-ground inurnment; bench estates; pedestal and boulder inurnment; and cremation gardens. The cemetery has a single indoor mausoleum and 2 outdoor mausoleums. Glass-front cremation niches are available in these spaces.

Though there is an older upright monument section, all of the modern gardens allow only flat markers.

Religious monuments and other features

Religious monuments and statues pepper the cemetery grounds. In the popular Garden of the Empty Tomb you’ll find various religious figures, including a beautiful bronze angel atop the tomb. This 5-acre section of the cemetery is also home to the cremation garden and pre-developed family estates with landscaping and monuments already in place.

The serene pond near the Garden of the Empty Tomb provides a calming area for families and friends to reflect on memories of their loved ones. The Roman Catholic Garden is home to crosses that hold images depicting the entire storyline of Christ on the day of his crucifixion.

Other religious features of the property include a large bronze statue of Christ kneeling and praying in the Garden of Tranquility, a large concrete statue of praying hands in the Garden of Inspiration and a mural of the Last Supper, located north of the main cemetery entrance.

Come see for yourself

We invite you to visit our cemetery to see it all for yourself. If you wish to discuss burial options, please contact us and we will be glad to assist you.

History

In 1948, P.W. Curry founded Tech Memorial Park. Over the next few years, Bill Curry and James A. Curry joined P.W. in his business. Then, in 1954, R.P. Brown built a mausoleum on the cemetery grounds.

Funeral home constructed

In 1964, Edward Smith (a lawyer and CPA) and 4 other businessmen purchased the cemetery. Almost immediately, they began planning the addition of a funeral home, which opened in 1965. By 1979, Edward was the sole owner of both the funeral home and cemetery, which operated as Resthaven of Lubbock.

When he originally purchased the cemetery, there were only 3 buildings present: a small concrete block office, a maintenance building and a building that is now the interior part of the mausoleum.

Originally from Illinois and having served in the U.S. Army, Edward experienced a near-death experience in August 1963 that led him and his wife to decide to be buried in Lubbock. Though they came to the city initially just to purchase their burial property, they stayed. And they have yet to use their property. Instead, they continue their mission of serving the Lubbock community at what is now Resthaven Funeral Home and Resthaven Memorial Park.

Recent years

From 1984 to 1990, Edward’s son, Mark, was the company president while Edward retired from practicing law to focus entirely on the funeral home business. During this same time, Mark and the park’s superintendent, Ron Hillis, supervised the addition of the maintenance facility. There they manufactured concrete burial boxes and concrete vaults.

In 1990, Edward embarked on what he called the Empty Tomb project, an elevated 5-acre section of the cemetery guarded by a bronze angel and used to tell the story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ each Easter.

Today, Resthaven Funeral Home and Resthaven Memorial Park are members of the Dignity Memorial® Network of funeral, cremation and cemetery service providers.

The Empty Tomb

In the central part of Resthaven Memorial Park stands the Empty Tomb. Conceived by one-time cemetery president Edward Smith in the early 1990s and built with dirt removed from the land for interments, the elevated 5-acre section of the cemetery is guarded by a bronze angel. The centerpiece of the section—which holds a cremation garden and private estates, among other burial options—is a tomb made of concrete and with an interior bench for a body and a concrete door weighing 800 pounds that rolls on a gravel track.

The Empty Tomb exists to tell the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each year, the door to the tomb is closed on Good Friday evening. It is reopened on Easter morning. From 1994 to the present, ministers of different faiths have conducted interdenominational Easter sunrise services at the tomb.

We care about the community

The teams at Resthaven Funeral Home and Resthaven Memorial Park feel it's important to be involved in our community. We support a variety of programs and organizations throughout the year, including Meals on Wheels, the Ronald McDonald House, South Plains Food Bank, Lubbock Business Expo and the annual Mayor’s Beans & Cornbread Luncheon.

We also invite the public to join us for events at the funeral home and cemetery throughout the year. The annual Easter sunrise service takes place a couple of weeks prior to Easter and features the 14 Stations of the Cross, each 10-12 feet tall.

On Mother's Day, we distribute fresh carnations to families visiting our property and invite them to place the flowers on the graves of their loved ones.

The cemetery's annual Memorial Day event draws 300-400 guests. It is the largest Memorial Day event in Lubbock. Flags are placed on approximately 6,000 veterans’ graves throughout the cemetery, and we invite people to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The event includes a local speaker, ROTC, veterans groups, live music and singers, refreshments and a fun giveaway.

We also recognize how critical our public servants are to the safety and well-being of Lubbock. To honor their efforts, we invite the Lubbock Fire Department to our funeral home every June for Burn the Brisket. We host a similar event called Back the Blue for the Lubbock Police Department in September.

In November, we donate our time and energy to the South Plains Food Bank through our annual food drive. In December, we visit the pediatric units at both area hospitals, handing out teddy bears and coloring books to children.