Meeting an Important Financial Need

Carrying on a family tradition of providing families with compassionate and dignified funerals as President/Supervisor of Donald E. Lewis Funeral Home has been Mike Lewis’s life work. Originating with Mike’s father, the Lewis family has been dedicated to faithfully serving their community in the oldest established funeral home in Warren, purchased by his father in 1972 and later by Mike and his wife, Lisa, in 1997. 

Faith and prudent financial management are part of every day at work for Mike, a meaningful parallel to his current board service at the Catholic Foundation. 

For Mike and Lisa, joining in the mission of the Catholic Foundation included their recent decision to establish the Michael and Lisa Vavala Lewis Family Endowment for Saint Joseph Cemetery through the Foundation. The endowment will support the perpetual care and upkeep of Saint Joseph Cemetery in Warren. “We both have loved ones buried in Saint Joseph Cemetery,” Mike shares when asked why they established this fund. As funeral directors, their family has seen first-hand the hard work and dedication required to maintain a cemetery. With fewer traditional burials and some Catholic families not burying in the Catholic cemetery, the cemetery committee is faced with less income than needed to maintain such beautiful grounds.  “We know that they are in dire need of financial sustainability, and we also wanted to honor our loved ones with the Michael and Lisa Vavala Lewis Family Endowment,” Mike shares. “We hope that other families decide to start an endowment for the cemetery as well.”

The Foundation’s practice of investing with Catholic values is particularly attractive to Mike and Lisa. “People who invest with the Catholic Foundation are establishing a gift that will be a legacy for our future Catholic people,” they said. “It is an invaluable gift those in the future will appreciate. If we believe in our faith and want it to continue, now is the time to choose to give and make a lasting example of who we are as Catholic individuals.”

Mike and Lisa see the Foundation as a way to help “keep our churches and schools and Catholic charities strong in the future. Keeping our Catholic community in good financial order provides for the mission of our church.” As member of its governing board of directors Mike has a bird’s eye view of the Catholic Foundation’s independence as a Catholic community foundation. “The Foundation is a strong fiduciary carrying out the desires of those who establish an endowment for a specific purpose and ensuring donor intent far into the future.”