The Spooner Funeral Home began when the Dahl Furniture and Funeral Home was established in 1930 in the Isabella Grocery Store, where Harry Dahl had worked for 10 years, located next to what would become the Palace Theater on Main Street. After purchasing the store, he discontinued the grocery business and opened a furniture store and funeral home combination business. Both the furniture store and the funeral home were located at 234 Walnut Street with the furniture store being the front portion of the store and the funeral home occupying the back.
On May 9, 1947, a fire burned the north side of Walnut Street from the Palace Theatre east, including the Dahl Furniture and Funeral Home. A temporary office for the funeral home was established in the vacant Episcopal parsonage on the southeast corner of Elm and Summit Streets. The furniture store was rebuilt at its former location. The Episcopal parsonage was purchased by Harry Dahl and then sold and moved to a location on South Summit. On the original site of the Episcopal parsonage, Harry Dahl then built the funeral home. Although there have been several additions and cosmetic changes to the original building through the years, its location at 211 Elm Street was convenient. Dahl Funeral Home also owned and operated the Municipal Ambulance Service for 35 years until it was sold to the City of Spooner in early 1970.
Harry’s son, Mort Dahl, joined his father’s businesses in 1968 and took over in 1979 after his father’s death. Mort continued to run both businesses until 1989 when he sold the funeral home to Gary Nathan, who then owned the Anderson-Nathan Funeral Home in Hayward. With the ownership of the funeral home passing from Mort Dahl to Gary Nathan, the funeral home was able to conduct cremations at the Anderson-Nathan Funeral Home, thus maintaining complete knowledge of the entire cremation process from the time of death until the return of the cremated remains.
Gary Nathan continued ownership until he sold both the Anderson-Nathan Funeral Home in Hayward and the Dahl Funeral Home in Spooner in November of 1997 to Keystone North America, Inc., based in Tampa, Florida. In April of 2010, the two funeral homes became part of the Service Corp International (SCI) family based out of Houston, Texas.
In the July of 2014, the funeral home was purchased by Marcus Nelson and Michael Bratley who had worked at Dahl and Anderson-Nathan Funeral Homes since 1998 and 1997 respectively. Marcus and Michael continued to run the funeral home as Dahl Funeral Home until the summer of 2016, when talks began with the City of Spooner for the sale of the funeral home to the City. The sale was completed in October of 2016 and renovations were made so the building could be converted from a funeral home to the City of Spooner Police Station. Upon the sale of the funeral home, the operations of Dahl Funeral Home were merged with that of the Scalzo-Taylor Funeral Home.
The Scalzo Funeral Home was originally established by Andrew “Andy” Scalzo in 1977. In 1976 he purchased the residence that sat at the corners of Rusk Street and Highway K, had it removed, and proceeded to build the funeral home. He, along with his father, Richard “Dick” Scalzo, ran the funeral home until 2004 when he sold it to Patrick Taylor from Swedberg-Taylor Funeral Home in Webster. Patrick continued to run the funeral home under the name Scalzo-Taylor Funeral Home until he changed the name to Taylor Family Funeral Home just prior to the sale of the funeral home to Marcus Nelson and Michael Bratley in April of 2014.
In 2016, when the Dahl Funeral Home merged with the Scalzo-Taylor Funeral Home, the name was changed to Spooner Funeral Home, which operates under the Bratley-Nelson Funeral Homes and Crematory family of funeral homes, along with the Hayward Funeral Home (formerly Anderson-Nathan-Koerpel) and the Solon Springs Funeral Home (formerly Brown Funeral Home).
