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Longtime Naples resident Thelma Hodges still celebrates life at age 94.

The co-founder of Naples-based Hodges Funeral Home with her late husband, Earl, in 1962 will be on hand this month to celebrate the launch of Hodges’ latest business venture, Hodges Life Celebration Center in Bonita Springs.

“She’s an absolute doll — very, very generous and sweet. I’m hoping we can extend that legacy they created into the Bonita Springs market area,” said Naples resident Michelle Matuszak, a licensed funeral director who is the location manager of the new venue.

Thelma Hodges will cut the ribbon and join a Champagne toast at 3:15 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, to christen the new Hodges Life Celebration Center during an indoor-outdoor grand opening party planned from 2 to 4 p.m. that day at the new venue at 26051 S. Tamiami Trail.

The theme of the celebration will be “Putting on the Ritz” and the business invites the public to “swing by for a roaring good time” by turning back time a century to the 1920s and seeing Hodges as never before. Because Thelma and Earl Hodges were born in the 1920s, event organizers kind of took some liberties, Matuszak said.

In 1955, Thelma Hodges, a longtime registered nurse, relocated from Boston to Naples to help pioneer what would become Naples Community Hospital. There she met Earl, then an ambulance driver, and they married in 1958 and started Hodges Funeral Home 60 years ago.

When the couple gifted $12 million in 2007 to International College to advance its status, the institution was renamed Hodges University in their honor.

“Earl and Thelma Hodges established the funeral homes earlier in their careers. Later in life, they sold the business to a corporation but they kept their familial ties and they’re still strongly involved in everything we do,” Matuszak said. “There’s a lot of influence that comes just from Thelma being who she is. She supports all of our endeavors even as a corporation. So, it’s a little interesting relationship that we have.”

The regional business continues to be based at Hodges Funeral Home at Naples Memorial Gardens in North Naples. “That’s where our main hub is. As a brand, Dignity Memorial is headquartered in Houston, Texas, however, we do try to treat this as much as a family-owned business as possible under the umbrella of the Hodges name.”

In addition to the funeral home at Naples Memorial Gardens and the new Life Celebration Center in Bonita, Hodges has three other area locations: Hodges-Jesberger Funeral Home on Marco Island, Hodges-Kiser Funeral Home in Fort Myers and Hodges at Lee Memorial Park in Lehigh Acres.

The business, which throws a birthday party every August for Thelma Hodges in Naples, wants to extend its brand a bit. The new Hodges Life Celebration Center in Bonita also serves as an event center. The grand opening intends to showcase that the venue can have a little fun.

“We would love to show the community what we do, which is host personalized events, fun events,” Matuszak said. “Every event doesn’t have to be a somber occasion. A lot of times now families are looking for something that is a little outside the box and we’d like to showcase that.”

Dignity Memorial, the nation’s largest provider of funeral services, bought the Bonita building and its 2-acre parcel after Chen’s Buffet permanently closed there in 2020 after operating about nine years. The restaurant space also formerly had been home to Duval Street Seafood Co. and R.J. Ga­tors bar and grill.

The approximately 7,000-square-foot freestanding building along U.S. 41 was transformed inside and out with additions to the structure that included a vaulted roof with a massive grand entry, an outdoor covered patio lounge and three different event spaces. The premium, standard and basic spaces can hold 83, 45 and 30 people, respectively, plus space is available in the main lobby vestibule area for up to another 42 people, which gives the venue a total occupancy of about 200, Matuszak said. 

“What we’re noticing, in general, is that funeral homes for the space that we offer are underutilized,” she said. “We have created a space where, yes, we would like to serve families of Bonita Springs and the surrounding areas for celebrations of life — so, funeral and memorial services — but we want to offer this space to the families and the community to use it as a space for parties, for celebrations that aren’t revolving around death to host a retirement party or a shower or even a community networking event. We’d like to host other events like maybe business seminars or just have this open space available for use to the community because it’s something that I think a lot of people are looking for spaces to have events.”

It’s a new idea for Hodges, which wants to extend its brand to also be known as a flexible event center, a stand-alone, state-of-the-art, multipurpose place where folks can host different kinds of catered events.

“Our main focus is serving the families of funeral celebrations of life services, that’s where are expertise is, but we’re also event planners,” Matuszak said. “By our job description, that’s what we do, so we can also help plan other parties and events.”

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