About Us
B.W. Foster Funeral Home, Inc., also known as Foster Funeral Home, was established by its predecessor, the S.J. Flynn Company (also formerly known as "Flynn and O'Connor Funeral Home"). A partnership agreement between Samuel J. Flynn and John F. O'Connor was signed on September 23, 1896.
Upon the death of Mr. O'Connor in 1933, Benjamin W. Foster joined the firm as an apprentice. In 1936, Mr. Samuel Flynn died, and Norwood B. Richardson and Benjamin W. Foster formed the firm of Richardson & Foster Funeral Home and moved the facilities from the original location at the corner of South and Court Streets to a facility especially built as a funeral home at the corner of High and Fifth Avenue (now Jamestown Avenue).
In 1954, Mr. Foster bought out Mr. Richardson's interest in the business and changed the firm's name to the present B.W. Foster Funeral Home. Ben W. Foster died in December of 1988 after 54 years of active funeral service to the Portsmouth/Chesapeake community. Two of Ben W. Foster's sons are currently active in the operation of this long-established funeral home, Bart T. Foster and Brian P. Foster.
After attending Old Dominion College in Norfolk, Bart T. Foster started his apprenticeship in 1966 at Foster Funeral Home in Portsmouth and Preddy-Teague Funeral Home in Charlottesville, Va. The apprenticeship was briefly interrupted by his service in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a hospital corpsman for two years, including service at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital Corps School, the Little Creek Amphibious Base Dispensary, and aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Lawrence (DDG-4). Following active duty, Bart continued as a drilling Reservist while continuing his mortuary education. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in September of 1971.
Brian P. Foster began serving his apprenticeship in 1972 at Foster Funeral Home in Portsmouth and continued his apprentice training at the Woody Funeral Homes in Richmond, Virginia, while studying at John Tyler Community College in Chester, Virginia, in its Mortuary Science Curriculum. In 1976, he was awarded an Associate in Applied Science Degree from John Tyler Community College. He returned to Portsmouth to rejoin the family-owned and operated funeral business. Both Bart Foster and Brian Foster have received their National Board Certificates from The Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards of the United States, and both successfully passed the Virginia State Board Examinations and hold licenses issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health Regulatory Boards as Funeral Service Licensees (funeral director and embalmer).
After seeing a need for a funeral service establishment in the Northern Suffolk area, Foster Funeral Home joined with the long-established Suffolk firm of R.W. Baker and Company Funeral Home, and together they built the Baker-Foster Funeral Home, Bennett's Creek Chapel, which opened in late 1992. By jointly building the new Baker-Foster Funeral Home facility, each firm realized a second location at one-half the cost of construction, thus resulting in a savings to their clients.
The reputation of Foster Funeral Home and R.W. Baker & Company Funeral Home, and the personal integrity of its principals, are well known throughout the Portsmouth/Chesapeake/Suffolk area. They aspire to continue to provide quality personal services to the citizens of this area, as they have done for well over 100 years.