Adzima Edward F Funeral Home

She started working at Bailey Funeral Home in Plainville in 1994, when she was a senior in high school, and remained there until 2016.Working as a funeral director is her calling, said Wasley, a lifelong Plainville resident. But the corporate management style at Bailey, which is owned by Houston-based Carriage Services Inc., made her uneasy. Her opinions on how the community should be served conflicted with managements, she said.How did she respond? She left Bailey two years ago and recently opened her own funeral home. The 5,000-square-foot facility debuted in May, but the noteworthy part of the project was not just that she built the facility from the ground up — at a time when there are fewer funeral homes in the state than in years past — but where she located it.Its 81 Broad St. address in Plainville is directly across the street from her former employer.Her decision to open a funeral home so close to Bailey, which was previously the only game in town, came not out of animosity, but rather practicality, she said. Broad Street is one of the few main streets in Plainville, and is home to Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church.Pressure from management to increase Bailey's market share in Plainville, a blue-collar community of less than 18,000 people about 15 miles southwest of Hartford, played a large role in Wasley's decision to leave, she said."[I had] different views, different values from management," Wasley said. "I wanted to have a locally run option for people. I wanted to be able to have the option to help people out financially if they weren't capable of paying for a service upfront."Bailey funeral director Paul Belval did not return a call seeking comment.Changing traditionsWasley said erecting her own funeral home — called Plainville Funeral Home — also came from a desire to provide more individualized services in an industry where customers are drifting away from the traditional in recent years. More American families are choosing to cremate their dead loved ones rather than bury them.It's a trend being felt by funer...