Is Baldwin County's Only Cemetery-Funeral Home Combination, 100% Locally Owned to Provide the Service You Deserve.

About the Owners ~ Our Philosophy ~ Our History

About the Owners . . .

David and Sarah Spivey lead the management team at Pine Rest Memorial Park and Funeral Home, South Baldwin's leading cemetery and funeral home. Both licensed funeral directors, they take a great deal of pride in the fact that Pine Rest is 100% American owned, and is 100% locally owned. Their goal is to provide every family they serve with the very best in service.

David R. Spivey, CCE, has been involved in the cemetery business here in Foley "since I was big enough to reach the handles of a lawn mower," starting to work at the cemetery mowing the lawns as a teenager. After graduation from Foley High School, David earned his BA degree from the University of Alabama, then spent four years as an Army officer in the Military Police Corps. In 1974, he returned to Foley to join his father, Roy Spivey, in the operation of Pine Rest Memorial Park in Foley, and Baldwin Memorial Cemetery, Pine Rest's sister cemetery in Robertsdale, Alabama.

Since that time, David has distinguished himself in his profession, serving as president of two state cemetery associations, and as a member of the board of directors of the International Cemetery and Funeral Association and of the Southern Cemetery Association. He has also served the international association as a member and chairman of the Small Cemetery and Funeral Operations Committee, and has been a program speaker at association meetings across the United States. He has spoken to many groups about cemetery and funeral home planning and has served as a consultant to the City of Auburn, Alabama in the planning of a new municipal cemetery. David holds the coveted CCE (Certified Cemetery Executive) designation, a professional designation bestowed on the top 5% of cemetery executives in the world.

David has always been active in the South Baldwin Community, serving as officer and director of many organizations, including the Foley Rotary Club, the South Baldwin United Way, the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce, the Foley-Gulf Shores JAYCEES and the City of Foley Library Advisory Board. He is a multiple recipient Rotary Club Paul Harris Fellow. He has served as president of the Foley Middle School PTA, and served as an assistant Scoutmaster with Boy Scout Troop 77 in Foley. He is a licensed aircraft pilot, and enjoys watching his daughters play fastpitch softball. He currently serves as commander of the South Baldwin Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, the Auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

Sarah C. Spivey, RN, BSN, is president of Pine Rest Funeral Home, Inc., and is responsible for the addition of the funeral home to Pine Rest Memorial Park. She is a native of Murray Kentucky, where she attended high school and earned her bachelor's degree in nursing from Murray State University. Following graduation, she held many challenging nursing positions in Kentucky and Tennessee, before moving to Daphne in 1986. Before leaving her nursing career to join David, Sarah had most recently served as inpatient hospice head nurse at Mercy Medical in Daphne and Director of Nursing at Foley Nursing Home, where she initiated the patient rehabilitation program for residents of the facility.

Sarah left her nursing career in 1990 to join David in the family business. She soon felt that the construction of a funeral home adjacent to the cemetery would be beneficial to the community in that it would offer the convenience of cemetery and funeral home combined to the families of the South Baldwin area. She and David spent two years examining the needs and desires of the people of South Baldwin, before beginning the construction of the most beautiful funeral home in the area. One of their greatest aims was that Pine Rest Funeral Home not look or feel like a funeral home. "We planned the building ourselves, always keeping in mind that we didn't want our funeral home to be dark, oppressive, or gloomy," says Sarah of the facility. "A death in the family is depressing enough by itself .. the funeral home shouldn't add to that depression."

Sarah is deeply involved in the South Baldwin Community, especially in the area of youth sports. She served as the first female president of Foley Sports, Inc., which coordinates all the city's youth activities, and has been a girls' fastpitch softball coach for several years. She is a member of the Foley Rotary Club, and is a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow. She also serves on the board of the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce and South Baldwin Extended Academics, which provides free tutoring for students in need.

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Our Philosophy . . .

Our philosophy is simple. It is cast in a bronze plaque in our funeral home lobby. The plaque reads...

"We dedicate this facility to
the service of our community,
treating every family with the
highest degree of compassion,
dignity and professionalism."

Pine Rest is 100% locally owned by the Spivey's, and we are very proud of that fact. At a time when big conglomerates are buying out locally owned funeral homes, the idea of service seems to have less importance than in the past. At Pine Rest, we know and understand that our families rely on us to provide the cemetery and funeral home professionalism they deserve. We also know that if we provide the very best in service to our families, Pine Rest will continue to be South Baldwin's leading cemetery and funeral home.

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Our History - Pine Rest Memorial Park

Pine Rest Memorial Park was established in 1926 by a local resident, and was run by several managers over the years. Old newspapers from the 1930's contain advertisements which tell residents that they could purchase their cemetery property by going to one of the local banks! In the late 1940's, Pine Rest was purchased by a Tuscaloosa family who also owned cemeteries in Tuscaloosa and Pensacola. They changed the cemetery's name to "New Pine Rest Memorial Park," and developed three new sections at the west end of the cemetery. They also abandoned the older sections, which soon became overgrown with weeds, briars and volunteer trees. Management was poor and record-keeping was almost non-existent. The owners decided to sell the cemetery, and they sent one of their sales representatives to Foley to find a buyer for the cemetery. The man they sent had worked as a traveling salesman in the South Baldwin area, and was somewhat familiar with the area. His name was Roy Spivey. He came to Foley to find a buyer for the cemetery, but as he examined the cemetery and the area, he decided that he didn't want to sell the cemetery, but he wanted to buy it himself. He purchased the cemetery in 1954, and moved to Foley. He reclaimed the older, abandoned sections of the cemetery, began the task of building proper records for ownership and burials, and changed the name of the cemetery, removing the word "New" from the name. This move was made because Roy Spivey felt that every property owner in the cemetery, and every burial in the cemetery should be treated equally. While reclaiming and renovating the old sections, he went on to develop new section in the cemetery. From the time of his purchase of the cemetery until his death in 1988, Roy Spivey doubled the size of Pine Rest Memorial Park, and transformed it into a modem perpetual care cemetery. In 1959, Roy Spivey founded Baldwin Memorial Cemetery, Pine Rest's sister cemetery in Robertsdale, Alabama, 14 miles north of Foley. Baldwin Memorial Cemetery is also a perpetual care memorial park. David Spivey returned to Foley following his tour of duty with the US Army, and joined his father in the operation of the cemeteries. Under David's direction, Pine Rest has become one of the few cemeteries in the state to be fully irrigated with an automatic sprinkler system. In 1990, construction of the Magnolia Mausoleum and Columbarium was completed, providing above-ground entombment for families who prefer mausoleum or cremation to ground burial. Also begun during this time was the establishment of "estate" lots, allowing for larger or more elaborate memorials than are allowed in the traditional sections, and for the placement of private mausoleums. Today, Pine Rest Memorial is Baldwin County's largest and most modem perpetual care cemetery. All records and maps are computer-maintained, and maintenance is at it's all-time high.

Our History - Pine Rest Funeral Home

In 1993, David and Sarah Spivey began to explore the possibilities of constructing a funeral home adjacent to Pine Rest Memorial Park. With the sale of the other local funeral home to a foreign company, Foley was left with no locally-owned funeral home. Sarah Spivey was the driving force behind the effort to examine the market and the need for a funeral home owned and operated by a local family. Further, the construction of the funeral home adjacent to Pine Rest Memorial Park would provide Baldwin County's only cemetery-funeral home combination, a concept which has been proven to be favored by families all across the United States. The convenience of having cemetery and funeral home co-located has been widely accepted. For the next year, Sarah and David developed their business plan as well as the floor plans for the funeral home facility. Most of the building design was done by David and Sarah, because they didn't want Pine Rest Funeral Home to look or "feel" like a funeral home. The design of the building itself, the furnishings, the colors and the decor were planned to be light, comfortable, and warm. According to Sarah, "We didn't want Pine Rest Funeral Home to look or feel like most funeral homes ... dark, depressing and heavy. We wanted our facility to be bright and airy."

Construction began in early 1995, and Pine Rest Funeral Home conducted it's first funeral on August 28th 1995. Since that time, Pine Rest Funeral Home has been very well accepted by the community, with the number of services conducted growing notably each year. As soon as Pine Rest Funeral Home opened, David and Sarah realized that their vision had been well placed. "From the day we opened," says David, "families have commented on how beautiful our funeral home is. They have told us that it doesn't feel like a funeral home, and they are happy that we have such a beautiful facility."