Why People Are Turning to East Funeral Home For Their Local Obits
East Funeral Home has been around Texarkana long enough that most people over sixty remember their parents writing obits through them back in the day. The place sits on State Line Avenue and handles a decent chunk of the local death care market for both the Texas and Arkansas sides of the border. That cross-state detail matters more than you might think, since obituary filing rules can shift depending on which state you're routing things through. Most families don't realize this until they're already filling out paperwork. The obituary process itself is straightforward if you know the sequence. You contact the funeral home after the death occurs, provide the biographical details, decide on publication outlets, and pay any associated fees. Simple on paper. It's the edge cases where things get complicated. I ran into this with a client last year who had a grandmother who'd lived in Texarkana for forty years but recently moved to Little Rock for care. Her death certificate listed a Texas address, but she'd been publishing her personal ads in Arkansas papers for two decades. We ended up filing the obit through the Arkansas route to honor her actual community ties, and it cost about twenty dollars more in placement fees. Nobody told us this upfront. I had to figure it out by calling the circulation desk at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and asking specifically about non-resident obituary policies. They let it slide because her family still had property in Bowie County.
Texarkana Residents Pay Tribute To Beloved Family Members Through East Funeral Home Obits
If you're looking to go this route, here's what actually happens. First, you'll need the full legal name, date of birth, date of death, and a brief life summary. East Funeral Home will typically ask for at least three to five sentences of biographical content. They'll handle the formatting and submission, but they won't write the obit for you unless you pay for their writing service, which runs somewhere around seventy-five to one hundred dollars on top of standard fees. Bring your own draft if you can. It saves money and ensures nobody anthropomorphizes your dead aunt into sounding like a corporate press release. Publication options matter. The Texarkana Gazette runs obits at roughly two dollars per line with a minimum of ten lines. That means a basic obit will set you back around twenty to forty dollars. The Arkansas side has similar rates through the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, though their digital-only placement can be cheaper if you don't need print. East Funeral Home usually has relationships with both papers, so they can handle dual-state publication in a single transaction. This is useful when the deceased had family split across the state line, which is extremely common in Texarkana given how the border runs straight through the middle of the metro area. Timeline is another thing people get wrong. Standard obituary submission through East Funeral Home takes about twenty-four to forty-eight hours from receipt of finalized copy to publication. If you need same-day or next-morning placement, call them directly and ask about rush processing. They sometimes accommodate it, sometimes don't, and they won't promise anything until they check with the newspapers. I learned this the hard way when someone needed an obit published before a Friday service and we missed the Gazette's Thursday cutoff by about three hours. Ended up running in Saturday's paper instead. Annoying, but fixable if you catch the deadline early.
Common Mistakes That Delay or Complicate the Process
The biggest mistake I see is people sending in incomplete information and expecting the funeral home to fill in the blanks. They won't. East Funeral Home isn't going to dig up a birth certificate or track down a middle name. If you omit the veteran's discharge date, the military honors mention disappears. If you leave off the surviving siblings, someone in the family will notice and be upset at the funeral director, not you, but it still creates an awkward situation. Double-check every name, date, and relationship before you sign off on the copy. Another issue is photo submissions. If you want a photograph included, which most families do, you need a high-resolution digital file. Something at least six hundred by eight hundred pixels works. A pixelated headshot from a 2008 Facebook profile will look terrible in print and get rejected by the newspaper's art desk. East Funeral Home can accept photos via email or USB drive. Don't send a link to a cloud folder unless they've explicitly said that's okay. Their older staff members still prefer physical media, and even the younger ones don't want the headache of tracking down a missing file. There's also the question of survivor listings. Some families want to include deceased relatives in the survivor section as "predeceased by," which is standard practice. Others forget to mention them entirely, which can feel like an oversight to extended family. I once worked with a client whose mother listed all six surviving children but forgot to mention the brother who died ten years earlier. The extended family noticed within hours of publication. It wasn't a crisis, but it was a lesson in being thorough. Include everyone who matters, living or dead.
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What It Actually Costs
Pricing through East Funeral Home breaks down into a few categories. The funeral home's obituary preparation and submission fee typically runs between fifty and one hundred dollars depending on length and complexity. Newspaper placement fees are separate and vary by outlet. The Texarkana Gazette charges per line with a ten-line minimum. Digital-only placements through platforms like Legacy.com run cheaper, sometimes under twenty dollars, but they don't carry the same local weight. If you want both print and digital, budget around one hundred to one hundred fifty dollars total for a standard obituary. Don't overlook the option of bundling. If you're already working with East Funeral Home for the actual funeral or burial arrangements, the obituary fee may be reduced or included in a package. It's worth asking. I've seen them offer a twenty-five percent discount on obit services when bundled with a basic direct care plan. The front desk won't volunteer this information, so you have to bring it up yourself. Payment is straightforward. They accept cash, check, and card. If you're handling this remotely from out of town, ask about phone or online payment options. East Funeral Home has been modernizing their intake process, but they're not a tech company. Don't expect a fully automated portal. A phone call and a credit card number over the line is still the norm.
When This Approach Might Not Be the Best Choice
East Funeral Home is a solid local option, but it's not the only game in Texarkana. For families who want complete control over timing and content, self-publishing through newspaper websites directly can be faster and cheaper. The Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette both allow online obituary submissions without going through a funeral home. You save the preparation fee, but you lose the guided process and the relationship with a local funeral director who might catch errors you'd otherwise miss. There's also the question of longevity. Funeral home-published obituaries often get picked up by regional aggregators and archived indefinitely. Self-published online obits can sometimes get removed or buried under newer content depending on the platform. If preserving the tribute for decades matters to you, the funeral home route has an edge. If you just need something posted quickly and cheaply, do it yourself. The cross-border reality of Texarkana means you should think about which state's audience you're targeting. An obit published only in a Texas paper might miss half the people who actually knew the deceased. An obit only in an Arkansas paper does the opposite. Dual publication costs more but gets the right people the notice. East Funeral Home can coordinate both, but you need to tell them upfront which papers matter to the family. Don't assume they know your social circle.
