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Sandra Rhodes Duncan, D. Joan Rhodes Brown and Kathleen Rhodes Astorga are certainly not typical executives, but they are all exemplary. As black women, they have overcome numerous obstacles to make a name for themselves and their family business, Rhodes Enterprises of New Orleans. As titles go, it would be difficult to pin one on any of them. They have their fingers in so many pies that the titles change depending on the company.
Their father, Duplain W. Rhodes Jr., is semi-retired at the age of eighty, but their mother remains active with the business. Two other sisters serve as consultants. Although their brother, Duplain W. Rhodes III, is president of the family's limousine service and involved in other family ventures, Rhodes Enterprises is definitely a company run by women. More important than their profit margins or marketing strategies, however, is the family's contributions to the black community, the Rhodes sisters say. Each is involved with a spin-off venture of the family business, which began more than 100 years ago and boasts a colorful evolution.
The Rhodes name is most often associated with the funeral home business. In 1885, Duplain W. Rhodes Sr., who had fled racial terrorism in the Thibodaux area, settled in New Orleans where black enterprise was at least tolerated, if not encouraged. With a horse-drawn wagon, he transported furniture to earn a living. At that time, there were no true funeral homes or burial services for blacks. They were simply embalmed in stables and their bodies turned over to their families. Rhodes Sr. used this injustice to his advantage. He learned the undertaking trade, and with his horse-drawn wagon, established the first funeral home for New Orleans' black community.
By the time his son, Rhodes Jr., took over, the funeral home business, complete with automobile hearses and limousines, was well established. There are now five locations, four in New Orleans and one in Baton Rouge. Last year, D.W. Rhodes Funeral Homes, Inc. coordinated burial services for nearly a thousand people.
In the 1930's Rhodes Jr. recognized the need to help many black families pay for burial services without draining their family resources, so he established his own insurance company, now known as Rhodes Life Insurance Company of Louisiana. The family...