A tradition of personal service carries forward at the Shurtleff Funeral Homes through our licensed owner, Lee Shurtleff. Ownership was transferred to Lee in November 2021 from his brother, Michael, who had operated the businesses full-time since their establishment.
Lee is well-known throughout the region for his three-plus decades of service to Tompkins County government and for his many volunteer roles within the local communities. In addition, Lee prepared for his eventual move to ownership, by assisting Michael in nearly every aspect of the funeral homes starting in 1985.
Lee began with Tompkins County in 1988 as a full-time Emergency Services Dispatcher. In 1989, he was appointed County Elections Commissioner, overseeing voter registration and elections.
Having “stayed on” as a part-time dispatcher throughout that tenure, he leaped back to emergency services in 1997, when he was asked to develop the county’s enhanced 9-1-1 program under the mentorship of his friend, longtime Coordinator, Jack Miller.
Upon Jack’s retirement in 2002, Lee became Director of a newly-organized Department of Emergency Response, where he oversaw consolidation, construction, and implementation of the county’s 911 Center and its public safety radio communications system, which then stood as the most expensive and complex capital undertaking in the county’s history.
The family’s tradition of community service extended to Lee, when during his college years at SUNY Cortland, he first volunteered with the Groton Fire Department and was certified as an Emergency Medical Technician. Lee served as Chief of the Groton Fire Department for seven years and, 36 years later, he remains a firefighter and EMT with the department’s ambulance service. He also volunteers with the Genoa Fire Department and its Rescue Squad.
Lee has served as a member and president of the Groton Historical Association, the Groton Alumni Association, and the Groton Rural Cemetery Association, and has also chaired the board of directors at the Groton Community Health Care Center for over twenty years. He was a longtime member of the Board of Trustees at Cortland Regional Medical Center, and was board member for the former Dewitt Historical Association and the Groton Education Fund.
His passion for history is evidenced in his forty year role as the Village of Groton Historian, and reflects when he honors and celebrates the lives and legacies of those he serves today.
A graduate of Groton Central School, Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science at SUNY Cortland, and was awarded an Associates Degree of Occupational Studies through the Simmons Institute of Funeral Service in Syracuse in 1994.
Lee has served as President of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs (2020-2021), was a President of the Election Commissioners Association of NYS, and was a member of the NYS 911 Board, the NYS Emergency Services Council and the NYS Emergency Services Loan Fund Board. He is a proud member of the Sons of the American Legion of Carrington-Fuller Post 800.
