Tuthill’s funeral home on East Main Street under new ownership

The Reginald H. Tuthill Funeral Home on East Main Street has a new owner.

Sal Mangano, whose family has owned and operated funeral homes since 1911, closed on the purchase of Tuthill’s Funeral Home last Thursday.

Mangano’s family has owned the Mangano Funeral Home in Deer Park for more than a hundred years, making him the fourth generation in his family to enter the industry.

“We’re a family ourselves, so we understand how important it is to be there with the family in their time of loss,” Mangano said today.

Shortly after graduating college, Mangano took over day-to-day operations of the family’s Deer Park funeral home in 2000. He has been involved in the business since he was a teenager.

In 2012, the Mangano family also purchased another funeral home in Middle Island – the Giove Funeral Home.

“We’ve always been family-owned, and we plan to stay family owners,” he said. “A lot of funeral homes are selling out to big publicly traded companies.”

It’s important to keep funeral homes family-owned, Mangano said, because a family has a better capacity for understanding the unique needs of other grieving families.

“These families come to us at the worst point in their lives,” he said. “Through our ministry, we lead them through the process of saying goodbye. We listen to them. We talk with them. We answer to the families we serve, where these large companies have to answer to stockholders.”

The Manganos pride themselves on being there for its families “before, during and after the funeral,” he said.

That includes providing grieving clients access to bereavement resources, connecting them with grief counselors and helping them navigate government benefits.

“Families need guidance in their time of loss,” Mangano said. “Sometime, people turn to the internet, but someone’s guidance on the internet might not be correct. We provide them with the correct guidance, the correct answers.”

The existing Tuthill’s staff will stay on despite the change in ownership, Mangano said, including the funeral home’s current manager. “It’s going to be business as usual,” he said.

Tuthill’s first opened in downtown Riverhead in 1924. The Tuthill family went on to open the Alexander-Tuthill Funeral Home in Wading River in 1979, which is still owned and operated by the Alexander family today.

“I love the small, downtown feel of Riverhead,” Mangano said. “It’s a beautiful building in the heart of the vibrant downtown community. We look forward to serving the families of Riverhead and the surrounding communities in the best way we know how to.”