Spencer Leak Jr. got the text message around 1:30 a.m. at his home in Chicago’s south suburbs. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader who had marshaled a “rainbow coalition” while twice running for president, had died at 84.
“I got up, put my suit and my shirt and tie on, and I headed to their home,” Mr. Leak, a friend of the Jackson family since childhood, later said. A third-generation funeral director, he set to work doing what his family has done for more than 90 years: comforting the grieving, and ensuring that a family’s loved ones are buried with dignity and grace.
“He came within minutes, it felt like. He took such care of our family,” said Jackson’s youngest son, Yusef Jackson, who succeeded his father as head of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based advocacy group. In a phone interview, he recalled that when the family arranged for Jackson to be flown to his home state of South Carolina, where he would lie in repose at the capitol before being laid to rest in Chicago, Mr. Leak made his opposition plain.
“I will never put your father in the bottom of an airplane,” he said.
Instead, Mr. Leak personally escorted Jackson’s remains, driving a brand-new hearse from Chicago to South Carolina and back while also handling the funeral. It was “above and beyond the call of duty,” Yusef Jackson said. It was also not unusual for Mr. Leak, who “took his work as a calling, not a job.”
“He was our prince,” said Jackson.
Mr. Leak was 12 when he started working at Leak & Sons, as his family’s funeral home is now known. He was still working there — embracing grieving family members, assisting older mourners, opening and closing caskets — until shortly before his death on May 31 at 56, at a hospital near his home in Flossmoor, Illinois. His wife, Donna Leak, said the cause was a perforated ulcer that was hemorrhaging.
On Chicago’s South Side and in the suburbs nearby, where residents turned so often to Mr. Leak and his family for assistance, his death set off a period of collective mourning. “Everybody in the community is hurt by this loss,” said Charles Childs Jr., himself a third-generation funeral director at A.A. Rayner & Sons, the funeral parlor that handled services for Emmett Till and Fred Hampton.
Hailed by Mayor Brandon Johnson as a “pillar of Chicago’s Black community,” Mr. Leak sought to maintain the legacy of a family that has presided over funeral and burial services for singer Sam Cooke, comedian Bernie Mac and the budding rap star Juice WRLD. The funeral home is perhaps best known for offering free or discounted services, helping those in need lay their loved ones to rest with dignity.
“It was a ministry. But it was also what made the family legendary,” said William Hall, a Chicago alderman and pastor.
Mr. Leak “gave life and hope to people who were dealing with hurt and hopelessness,” said Hall, recalling how Mr. Leak handled the funeral for a 14-year-old boy fatally shot in November, after the city’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony. “He was present, without grabbing the mic. You felt his gentleness without him saying one word.”
In an average year, Leak & Sons works with as many as 3,500 families across three locations. Some are mourning victims of gun violence; in 2012 alone, the funeral home “served 107 of the city’s 511 homicide victims,” according to Crain’s Chicago Business. During the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately affected African Americans and other people of color, Mr. Leak presided over so many funerals he lost count of the death toll.
“There was no way he was going to let a loved one be buried and not have the basic accoutrements of what dignity looks like,” his wife said. “It didn’t matter if you had a lot of money or no money.”
The business traces its roots back to 1933, when Mr. Leak’s grandfather, the Rev. A.R. Leak, started a funeral home using a $500 loan from his wife and another $500 that he earned while working at the Chicago World’s Fair.
At a time when Black Chicagoans were turned away by segregated White funeral parlors, the business established itself as a community anchor with links to the civil rights movement. Mr. Leak’s grandfather was a friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (he provided limo service when King visited the city) and helped desegregate Chicago’s historic Oak Woods Cemetery, joining an estimated 2,000 people in a march to the cemetery gates, bearing signs that read “No Jim Crow in Heaven” and “Discrimination in Life. Segregation in Death.”
By 1993, Mr. Leak was working side by side with his father, Spencer Leak Sr., as the funeral home’s vice president. He rose to oversee daily operations while making a few updates to the business, including replacing its sign. The new one was intended to reflect the business’s long family history, though it irked his father.
“He said, ‘You have up there that your grandfather founded this funeral home in 1933. Your grandfather didn’t found this funeral home. He co-founded it. Our business was founded by God. Take the sign down and put that back up.’ Cost me $5,000,” Mr. Leak told Fox 32 Chicago last year.
An updated version of the sign still hangs outside, crediting God as the company’s founder.
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The eldest of three brothers, Mr. Leak was born in Chicago on Oct. 22, 1969. The family business kept his father so busy that his mother, Henrietta (Salter) Leak, sometimes organized Mr. Leak’s birthday party at the funeral home so that his father could attend.
His friends’ parents, Mr. Leak recalled, got “a little freaked out.” But for Mr. Leak, the funeral home was practically an extension of his home. At an age when his voice had not yet deepened, he began answering the phones. “Hello, ma’am,” callers would say, before Mr. Leak explained who he was. By age 15, he was washing limousines and serving as an attendant.
“The day after I got my driver’s license, I was picking up families for funeral services,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Mr. Leak studied mortuary science at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and was soon on call seven days a week, stepping away from Thanksgiving dinner at times to assist a family.
“For all that pain and grief, he was still joyful,” his wife said. He went to his daughter’s cheerleading events and his son’s football games, at times coming straight from the funeral home and heading right back. He danced to house music, a staple of Chicago nightlife. And he loved collecting vintage cars, including a 1940 Cadillac convertible that he showed off just a few years ago, when he personally drove Mayor Lori Lightfoot away from city hall at the end of her term.
Away from the funeral home, Mr. Leak mentored young people through the organization 100 Black Men of Chicago. And he turned his annual birthday bash, an event that drew more than 4,000 friends and family members to the Hyatt Regency hotel, into a clothing drive, with guests asked to bring a coat for donation to those in need. “It was the party of the city,” Hall said.
In addition to his wife and his parents, survivors include his two children, Emma and Spencer Leak III, and two brothers, Stacy and Stephen Leak.
Five days before he died, Mr. Leak posted a Facebook video from a staff meeting in which he welcomed Leak & Sons’ newest employee: his 22-year-old son, who is set to start mortuary science school in January. “Make your dad proud — make your grandfather proud — make your great-grandfather proud,” Mr. Leak told him.
His son replied, “I’m not going to let you guys down. I promise.”
This article is part of A Notable Life, an obituary feature telling the stories of remarkable people every Saturday.
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