One of the highlights of our new Funeral Center is now available for your families—our full-size video wall. We now offer this permanent part of our suite for visitation and funeral services to be a part of your life remembrances at Callaway-Jones. For more than 30 years, the Brazos Valley has benefited from the expertise of RDM Pros, including CEO Rudy Grimaldo, COO Thomas Mata, and co-founder, James Haislet.
We were excited to partner with RDM to make my audio and video visions for the funeral center a reality. Rudy, James, and their team are superb at working with your design and developing your video/sound plan. Installation was seamless—they’ve done this type of work for years and are indeed RDM Pros
The minute you drive under the porte cochère, you hear soothing, gentle ambient music, which continues once you are in our lobby. We have a 90” flat panel television there, with multiple television screens throughout our center, to watch tribute video or even the full service, anywhere in the building. Another subtle benefit are free wireless hotspots throughout our center. You may wish to live-broadcast a life and legacy service via Facebook, or stream it to those who are out of state or out of country, who want to participate in real-time together with you. Finally, we have high-definition video recording capability if you want to record services to share later with your loved ones.
Acquiring these elements of preserving and sharing the life and legacy of your loved ones was a substantial investment, but I am so pleased that we can offer these options to our families. When you attend a funeral service or visitation here, you’ll realize what our family’s vision can mean to yours. We have many custom themes for families to select as the backdrop, including military, nature scenes, beach scenes, and sports. Our great thanks to RDM for creating and installing the premiere audio-visual system in our new funeral center. Come by and see for yourself how amazing it is as you consider, “How will you be remembered?”
James Haislet and David Cooper began their Rental – Duplicating – Marketing business initially in an office complex in College Station over 35 years ago. Quickly they outgrew their space as their reputation around town grew widely for supplying sound and recording major musical events, from the Brazos Valley Symphony to the annual OPAS Galas to American Heart Association Heart Fundraisers. When James relocated the business to the current location on E. 29th Street in Bryan, he added a team of DJs and sound equipment that kept up with entertainment demand. Haislet eventually began adding in video equipment to meet client requests, adding yet another dimension to offer clients.
In 2012, when Rudy Grimaldo, Jr. substantially invested and became co-owner with Haislet and Thomas Mata, they renamed the business RDM Pros. Rudy had a vision for the business to expand to a full-service multimedia production company, enhancing their excellent audio productions by adding large-scale video productions and photography, which also means full-service storytelling. That’s exactly what we do in our Funeral Center—we tell your life stories.
The way I envisioned the new building, naturally, electronics and technology were uppermost in my thoughts. Each year I meet with privately owned funeral professionals around the country and we discuss the latest available resources that our clients prefer. I gave a lot of thought to what could make our services more meaningful to our families.
You’ll remember, in previous days, it might be very hard to see the officiant and speakers in the front of the service in our chapel. Rudy and I discussed how we could address that problem with the installation of our new video wall, where there’s a choice of several exceptional themes in the background. The tribute video is broadcast on both sides of the screen. No longer do you have those annoying, loud video projectors that make noise as the motors of the screens go up or down, so you’re not distracted during the service.
Frequently, in our Brazos Valley community, we find that when someone dies, so many people want to attend funeral and cremation services that there can be an overflow crowd who want to pay respects. We built our Bluebonnet Community Room to accommodate over 300 people. But, by locating outstanding high definition televisions in each room, we assure that everyone can see the service as it proceeds.
We’re definitely as traditional in our funeral services as you want us to be; please know that just because we have new technology doesn’t mean that we’ve abandoned all the time-tested ways of honoring loved ones, and how we’ve always celebrated lives and legacies. But, we have invested in some specific improvements, such as free WiFi throughout our building, to accommodate people who want to be with us for services, but distance and other commitments might prevent them from doing so.
In the past, if a family member wanted to participate in a funeral but they were stationed around the world in military service, they had to have someone read a message they sent. Imagine how meaningful it is when they we can bring them in, personally, via Skype and have their message clearly seen and heard by those gathered? Also, if you have loved ones in distant towns who cannot fly or travel to the service that day. We now have the capacity to broadcast the service as it happens, so anyone with a computer can watch and participate.
As one additional benefit of our technology, upon your request, we can video your loved one’s service to share later with those who could not attend, and for you to have as a special keepsake. Most of the changes and improvements we’ve made are subtle. It’s not necessary that you see how different things are today as long as you remember that every upgrade and improvement we’ve made in technology is made with you in mind. What you need, want, have asked for, and might not even know you need or want is what our family has spent hundreds of hours considering, planning and, thanks to Rudy Grimaldo, Jr., and his outstanding team at RDM Pros, we can offer you many new service options today in our new Funeral Center. Please feel free to drop by at your convenience and we’ll show you personally what we offer.
