Owens Funeral Service celebrated the grand opening of their new location in Louisa County at 118 Jefferson Highway on March 29.

Rev. Dr. Larry Owens, Jr. is the owner of Owens Funeral Services. He opened his first location in Ashland in 2009 and second in Fredericksburg in 2014. Owens shared that he is excited to be joining the Louisa neighborhood in 2026.

A lifelong resident of Louisa is joining the new operation. Deacon Donald Quarles, the Manager of Owens Funeral Services, graduated from Louisa County Public Schools in 1977. He attended Virginia State University from 1977 to 1979 and graduated from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science in 1985.

Quarles worked as a tractor-trailer driver and later spent 12 years working with Dominion Power. His funeral service experience began interning at Bell’s Funeral Home and Thomasson Funeral Home. He went on to become a licensed funeral director and has been a Deacon with First Baptist Church of Louisa for the past 12 years.

“Death is a hard thing to deal with,” Quarles said. “I want to be able to let the families know that their loved ones are under good care. We want to be one of the top-of-the-line funeral homes here in Virginia.”

Owens highlighted that they provide funeral financing, cremation, a 300-seat chapel, headstones, and DVD tributes for loved ones.

“You can look at our mantra, ‘it’s not just a business. It’s our ministry.’ We understand that ministry is service… we’ve experienced death within our own families,” Owens said. “We know what it is like to be on both sides of the equation. One of the things that we try to implement is to treat people like we want to be treated ourselves — that’s been successful for us.”

Owens, a Hanover resident, is the former pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Montpelier, Virginia where he served for 8 years. He currently serves as the senior pastor of the Historic Canaan Baptist Church in Washington D.C., which he has held for the last 17 years.