When Miramar native Evans St. Fort opened St. Fort’s Funeral Home in North Miami Beach in 2003, clients were skeptical of a funeral director still in his 20s. After sitting with him for a consultation, however, they quickly realized that St. Fort had far more experience than his youthful demeanor suggested, since St. Fort had spent his childhood watching his father manage a funeral home in Haiti.
“Clients would come and sit with me and look at me crazy because I was just 24 years old, but I knew what I was doing,” he said. “They just couldn’t believe that they were talking to someone so young.”
Under St. Fort’s leadership, the funeral home has become well-known among Miami’s Haitian community and has served thousands of families over the past two-plus decades. While small mom-and-pop funeral homes have increasingly become a target for private equity and corporate ownership, St. Fort, now 46, said he has rejected offers to buy his business, preferring to keep the operation family-run. St. Fort’s commitment to both the Miami community and to Haiti, where families were offered free funeral services following the 2010 earthquake, was recently recognized by the city of North Miami Beach, which renamed a street “St. Fort Drive” last weekend.
St. Fort’s Funeral Home owner and funeral director Evans St. Fort began running the North Miami Beach business more than 20 years ago. (Miami Herald photo by: Carl Juste)…