Kei­th Bel­grove was born in­to the busi­ness of death.

As the sto­ry goes, his great great grand­moth­er Mary Bel­grove was born in­to slav­ery in 1827 in Bar­ba­dos.

And when the slaves were freed Mary left Bar­ba­dos and trav­elled to Trinidad.

“She op­er­at­ed a fu­ner­al un­der­tak­ing agency at St James Street in San Fer­nan­do,” Bel­grove told Guardian Me­dia.

“Her son Joseph William Bel­grove for­malised the busi­ness in­to a hab­er­dash­ery, wheel­wright trade and fu­ner­al ser­vice at 86 Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do on Au­gust 15, 1888,” he said.

“Since we have that in­for­ma­tion we took that as our for­mal year,” Bel­grove said.

Joseph William Bel­grove con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing his busi­ness un­til his death in 1910.

His son Vondyke Archie Bel­grove as­sumed the man­tle of lead­er­ship.

Li­onel Bel­grove, one of Vondyke’s three sons, con­tin­ued the busi­ness.

Li­onel even­tu­al­ly closed the oth­er busi­ness­es start­ed by his grand­fa­ther Joseph and con­cen­trat­ed pri­mar­i­ly on the fu­ner­al agency.

At 12-years-old Kei­th Bel­grove joined his fa­ther in the fu­ner­al agency.

“I was born in­to it,” he said.

In 1972 when Kei­th was study­ing abroad and ready­ing to take over the busi­ness he start­ed to make waves in the in­dus­try both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“You see those fu­ner­al leaflets that peo­ple use in every fu­ner­al? That was cre­at­ed and start­ed by Kei­th Bel­grove back in 1972 when I came home from busi­ness school. That was my very first in­no­va­tion and I am sor­ry I didn’t copy­right it,” he said.

Bel­grove said Trinida­di­ans who took his idea of the leaflets trav­elled to the Unit­ed States and that is what caused its us­age to spread.

“To­day that is a norm there and it is a norm here. Those are one of the im­por­tant things we did,” Bel­grove said.

But that was not all he did, Bel­grove said.

“They used to put the de­ceased at the bot­tom of the cas­ket. I felt that didn’t sup­port the emo­tion­al needs of the fam­i­ly so I re­designed the cas­ket and lit­er­al­ly placed the per­son high in the cas­ket and that changed every­thing,” he said.

When Bel­grove be­came a qual­i­fied em­balmer he start­ed to in­clude that fea­ture in all fu­ner­als.

“I start­ed to em­balm every client we worked with and I coined the term kiss­ing clean,” he said.

Un­der Kei­th’s’ lead­er­ship Bel­groves Fu­ner­al Home has grown.

There are now four branch­es of the agency; two of which house mod­ern cre­ma­to­ria to fa­cil­i­tate the pub­lic.

Af­ter­care coun­selling was in­tro­duced cou­pled with to­tal qual­i­ty ser­vice.

Four sub­sidiary com­pa­nies were cre­at­ed to sup­port the Fu­ner­al agency. Cas­ket and Fu­ner­al Sup­plies which con­structs its own coffins and cas­kets, Life­time Pro­mo­tions which pro­duces the on­ly tele­vised death an­nounce­ment in the coun­try: Pas­sages, Fam­i­ly Lega­cy Com­pa­ny which al­lows the pre-fi­nanc­ing of fu­ner­al costs thus al­le­vi­at­ing the mon­e­tary stress a fam­i­ly faces at a time of such loss, and Ceme­tery Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny which main­tains grave sites, sup­plies head­stones and is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing a mam­moth project to in­tro­duce an ul­tra-mod­ern high-tech lawn crypt bur­ial sys­tem to the coun­try in or­der to ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal as well as aes­thet­ic is­sues raised by our cur­rent sys­tem of ground buri­als.

Bel­grove re­mem­bers when the busi­ness branched out of its San Fer­nan­do base to Tacarigua.

“I came and in­ves­ti­gat­ed the area. I parked on the site had lunch there and imag­ined this fa­cil­i­ty and lo and be­hold it hap­pened,” he said.

At the Tacarigua site Bel­groves has cre­at­ed the Or­ange Grove Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens (OG­MG).

This ceme­tery is de­signed with a se­ries of un­der­ground cham­bers (crypts); each hav­ing a ca­pac­i­ty for four buri­als and is the on­ly of its kind in T&T, Bel­grove said.

“Sur­round­ed by op­u­lent, trop­i­cal plants, the Or­ange Grove Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, safe, and se­cure with 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty. A 26-foot eter­nal flame wa­ter foun­tain ir­ra­di­ates the sky in re­mem­brance of your loved ones, mak­ing it a tran­quil and pic­turesque re­treat,” Bel­grove stat­ed.

“The Or­ange Grove Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens guar­an­tees the peace of mind that comes with know­ing that your loved ones will rest eter­nal­ly in a se­cured and dig­ni­fied space, whilst al­low­ing you to reg­u­lar­ly pay trib­ute, re­lax and ap­pre­ci­ate the gar­den en­vi­ron­ment,” it stat­ed.

Bel­grove said over the past 134 years the fam­i­ly has trans­formed fu­ner­al ser­vices.

One of the things he has done is found­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion of fu­ner­al di­rec­tors.

Bel­grove said he has been push­ing for reg­u­la­tions for the fu­ner­al ser­vice in­dus­try in T&T.

“We can­not grow a pro­fes­sion out of an in­dus­try with­out prop­er reg­u­la­tions,” he said.

Bel­grove said when he en­tered the in­dus­try in 1974 there were on­ly 21 fu­ner­al homes.

Now there are 78, he said.

“Some are do­ing just about the most ridicu­lous things, no prop­er fa­cil­i­ties, no prop­er drainage sys­tem, no prop­er of­fice fa­cil­i­ty, no prop­er equip­ment yet still they are al­lowed to op­er­ate our as­so­ci­a­tion has be­come a tooth­less bull­dog,” he said.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly part­nered with the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards and some vol­un­tary stan­dards were es­tab­lished.

“On­ly three or four ad­here to them and we con­tin­ue the bat­tle for li­cens­ing laws,” Bel­grove said.

“I met the fu­ner­al ser­vice in a great mess and in to­day it is in a big­ger mess. We strug­gle for reg­u­la­tion and that still re­quires us to keep push­ing,” he said.

Bel­grove said the or­gan­i­sa­tion will con­tin­ue to in­no­vate. He has al­ready ear­marked his chil­dren to take over the busi­ness and con­tin­ue the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion.

“We will cre­ate. We will en­sure Bel­groves stands as a bea­con for what fu­ner­al ser­vices should be. More in­no­va­tion is com­ing and tech­nol­o­gy will dri­ve those in­no­va­tions,” he said.

Over the years Bel­grove has par­tic­i­pat­ed in thou­sands of fu­ner­al ser­vices.

Some in­clude names like Jean Pierre, Tubal Uri­ah But­ler and Patrick Man­ning.

Bel­grove thanked the pop­u­la­tion for plac­ing their trust in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He re­ceived the keys to the City of San Fer­nan­do, from May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo at a spe­cial func­tion at City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um, San Fer­nan­do in 2018.

Hen­ry Street in San Fer­nan­do has al­so been re­named Bel­grove Lane.