A press release came out this week revealing the Aurora African American Heritage Advisory Board’s Leader of the Year, who will be honored Feb. 27 as part of Aurora’s Black History Month events.
AP style dictates that after first reference I should refer to the winner, Shirley Payne, by her last name. To the community, however, she is known only as “Ms. Shirley.” And as the owner of James-Payne Funeral Service – the only Black-owned funeral home in the Fox Valley, according to several sources – that name has become synonymous with compassion.
“No matter your church, neighborhood, alma mater, political party, fraternity or sorority, “ said Clayton Muhammad, “if you’re part of the Aurora Black community, more times than not, Ms. Shirley is our common denominator and caretaker at our darkest moments in life.”
Muhammad, a former top official with the city of Aurora, would know. It was Payne, along with the late Aurora Ald. Scheketa Hart-Burns, who helped him through the loss of his mother in 2017. And it was also Payne who helped Scheketa’s widower William Burns navigate the sudden death of his wife in June of 2023, which is also the year Payne became owner of the funeral service.
“For us, she was family first and then funeral director,” Burns said. “But for so many others, she is the funeral director who becomes family … and that role remains long after the service and season are over.”
Sherman Jenkins, former Aurora alderman and executive director of the Aurora Economic Development Commission, and past board chair of the Quad County African American Chamber of Commerce, called Payne “an inspiration” to Black business owners who has taken many “entrepreneurs under her wings and demonstrated to them how persistence and determination are keys to being successful.”
“You won’t find anyone,” Jenkins added, “to say a negative thing about her.”
Still, Payne’s rise to a leadership role in the community did not come easy. She arrived in Aurora from Memphis in 1979, newly divorced with three small children, and found work as a porter – often driving pilots to and from airports – at the North Aurora Holiday Inn along Orchard Road.
Determined and with a gift for numbers, Payne quickly climbed that proverbial ladder to become general manager of the facility, which by then was a Super 8. And she did so by also working two part-time jobs at Kmart and Fermilab.
Payne started as a part-timer at James mortuary in 1986. She went full-time in 1995, helping transition the business a couple years later from Galena Boulevard to the present location on Hill Avenue, and became general manager in 2005 after the death of Roland James.
It was a career path that required plenty of business acumen, of course. But in an industry that deals with grief and death, it’s the heart more than the brain that has to show up each and every day.
“She has been a staple in our community for a very long time,” said the Rev. James Barry, who has known “Ms. Shirley” since he was the teenage son of pastors performing funerals himself. Even years prior to becoming leader of Harvest of Faith Church in Aurora, Payne taught him to “remain calm,” he told me, when dealing with the “good, bad and ugly” that often accompanies end-of-life services.
“Because a funeral director comes in contact with a lot of people in the African American community, she has built many relationships” to the point, Barry said, people will drop in on a regular basis just to talk to “Ms. Shirley.”
It’s her “authentic spirit” that resonates so strongly with people, Barry added. So it’s no wonder 73-year-old Payne – who has successfully grown the Aurora funeral service since taking ownership, according to multiple sources – doesn’t like to use the word “work” when talking about her career, preferring instead to think of herself as “counseling” those in grief and “praying with them.”
In addition to her critical professional role, Payne’s bio notes she’s active in her church and has been honored multiple times by the city of Aurora for her service and charitable contributions. Among them: she sits on Aurora’s Aging-in-Community Advisory Board and served as vice president of the Hill Avenue Business Association. She is also a chaplain and member of the senior citizens committee for the Top Ladies of Distinction West Suburban Chicago Chapter, whose President Cheryl Woods-Clendening described her to me as “a beautiful spirit.”
Those three words would hit home to Rita Robinson, whose son Richard “Tre” Winfrey died in September after living for nearly two decades as a quadriplegic from a 2007 drive-by shooting in Aurora.
Although “Ms. Shirley” would always greet her with a smile, a hug and encouraging words, when the day came this grieving mother had to make arrangements for her son’s funeral, “she really helped me through this difficult time,” said Robinson, “… letting me know that she is walking with me and everything will be fine … reminding me of my strength and the love I had for my son.”
“Miss Shirley Payne is the perfect blend of compassion, tenderness and reason, paired with a soothing or calming disposition when dealing with people who are in the throes of a tumultuous storm of grief and perplexity,” said the Rev. Gregory Jones, pastor of Greater Mount Olive Church of God in Christ in Aurora.
“She is an asset to society,” Jones said. “The world is better because she is part of it.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
