‘How Honored and Privileged I Was’: After 47 Years, Tom Cicalese Retires from Hoyt Funeral Home

Tom Cicalese was 18 years old when he moved to New Canaan to work at Hoyt Funeral Home.

A Hartford native, Cicalese had an uncle and cousins who owned funeral homes upstate. Since age 13, he’d done odd jobs during the summer in the nursing home where his mother worked as an administrator.

“It allowed me to see life through a different lens,” Cicalese recalled one afternoon this week from the sitting room of Hoyt Funeral Home on Main Street.

He graduated from high school at age 16 and went on to “embalming school” in Boston for two years before sending out applications around Connecticut for a job in a funeral home. It was 1974—Richard Nixon was president, Terry Bradshaw was leading the Pittsburgh Steelers toward a Super Bowl win—and the Hoyt family hired him.

“It was a bad summer job,” Cicalese said with a smile.

A bad summer job that lasted 47 years. 

In October, after entertaining offers for more than one year, Cicalese sold the business to trusted local professionals that he’s known for decades, and has retired to his home in Old Saybrook, marking the end of an era at one of New Canaan’s most important institutions.

Soft-spoken, understanding, kind, dapper and detail-oriented, Cicalese has tended to generations of New Canaan families at times of pain and loss. 

“I want to say how honored and privileged I was to work in the town with the folks that were here,” Cicalese told NewCanaanite.com. “It was just a great relationship. A real trusting relationship. And I’m going to miss that the most.”

Cicalese refers to Hoyt’s as “the heartbeat of the community.”

“It actually is where people have left their loved ones, here, as a sanctuary for generations, and honored their lives,” he said.

“It goes from the death that occurs to the death that matters,” Cicalese said. “And that’s what ritual does. And that’s what we provided. Ritual.”

He and a business partner had bought the business from the Hoyts in 1980. Cicalese became sole owner about 20 years later, and through those decades “there was never a time where I was disappointed coming into the profession,” he said. 

“I was honored to help those I was here for for 47 years,” he said. “ For some reason or another, I was able to and honored to walk with them on the worst days of their lives. It was just something that came to me.”

Cicalese decided to retire, he said, “because it was time.”

“I was tired. I had some health concerns, also, and then dealing with COVID and all the changes, I thought, ‘OK, I’m 66 years old, it’s time, and if not now, when?’ I wanted to enjoy whatever time I had left. I lost a lot of friends the last few years, my age or less. And I thought, ‘OK let’s get out while we can.’ ”

A father and grandfather, he added, “I have a family that I’ve kind of put aside on the back burner for many, many years. Many holidays. Many Christmases and many nights and weekends and family get-togethers that I never quite made. It’s time for me to do that. There will be other people, good people to take up my spot. I did the best I can to figure out who would be best for New Canaan.”

Over the past 18 months, Cicalese said, he’s had offers from as far away as Vancouver and Salt Lake City, as well as many local Connecticut and New England people. 

“And it boiled down to two people that I know and know well that are local,” Cicalese said. “One actually lives in New Canaan, one lives in Wilton. They both own funeral homes in Stamford. Everyone is familiar with their names—Tom Gallagher and Nick Cognetta. So everyone knows them and I thought, OK, this will probably be the easiest transition for both the community, for myself, my family. For the staff, which is all staying in place.”

Gallagher, who owns a funeral home that operates out of Cognetta’s in Stamford, said it’s “bittersweet to come back here into New Canaan with Tom.”

“Because ironically, Tom is the one that actually allowed me to get my license—he gave approval for me to become an actual field director in Connecticut by his examination,” Gallagher said. “That was 1997. So here we are 25 years later, come full circle. It’s a nice place to be able to be.”

During his near half-century in the profession, Cicalese himself had served as an examiner for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, giving practical embalming exams for students who are getting licensed in the profession, as well as conducting peer reviews for the state when issues arose at other funeral homes. 

Cognetta, a New Canaan resident since 1993, said it’s “befitting” that he is succeeding Cicalese as a co-owner of Hoyt’s Funeral Home. The two had been in business together for many years in Norwalk with a company that they later sold back to the manager there. (A self-described micro-manager, Cicalese in 1980 also launched Hoyt Livery, a company he later sold to New Canaan’s Santo Silvestro, he said.) 

“We think with our combined staff and our combined ability to manage the larger volume and larger staff, it’s a very good fit,” Cognetta said.

Cicalese said that selling to Gallagher and Cognetta was a matter of finding a “comfort zone” for the funeral home he cares so much about.

“This is my baby, this place,” he said. “There was never a day that I regretted coming in here. We had some rough times and we dealt with some rough situations and rough families and rough everything. We get them on the worst days of their lives. But I really, really enjoyed what I did.”

Cicalese said his plans now include volunteering, perhaps for the Red Cross or AmeriCares—”I like to try to offer what I can, what I know”— looking for a home in Florida and playing pickleball.

“I love pickleball,” he said, adding, “I can watch my grandson do sports. I can do a little boating.”

Cicalese pulled out his phone to review a working “bucket list” that includes walking the Camino de Santiago or “Way of St. James” pilgrimage in Spain.

“That’s on my bucket list,” he said. “I want to do some camping in the national parks. Travel. Probably end up going to be a second career somewhere along the line here, once things settle.”

“I have had an absolute great run,” Cicalese said. “I have no complaints. And my biggest goal here was to leave the building vertically instead of horizontally. I always wanted to be able to walk out on my terms.”