Rosalind Knight has been in business for herself in Mathews County for the past 22 years, but she played an integral part in the century-plus-old family business—Knight Funeral Home—long before that.

A North Carolina native, Knight came to Mathews straight out of college at Hampton Institute and set about teaching music at then-segregated Thomas Hunter School, which housed all 12 grades.

She met her future husband, R. Stanley Knight, at one of her first PTA meetings. He was not only a businessman who had inherited the funeral business started by his father, Frank Knight, but he was also a civic-minded person who served as president of both the NAACP and the PTA. At their first meeting, he convinced the bright new teacher to raise money for a piano for the high school.

Eventually the two married, and Rosalind Knight, who had a long-standing fear of death, was catapulted into the world of the funeral business.

"I couldn’t even watch a hearse going down the roa...