About us

Our history

Our establishment was founded in 1954 in Wickliffe, Ohio, by the late Louis R. Orlando, who passed away in 1978. We have been fortunate to be able to serve families at the same location for over 70 years and plan on being able to serve many more families with professionalism, dignity, and care for many years to come. 

Louis was a U.S. Navy veteran, and later enrolled in the Cleveland College of Mortuary Science. Following his education at the mortuary college, he went on to serve his apprenticeship with Cohen-Margowsky Funeral Chapel, a former Jewish funeral home that was located in Cleveland, which was owned and operated by the Kumin family before they merged their business with Berkowitz & Sons Orthodox Funeral Home to form Berkowitz-Kumin Memorial Chapel in Cleveland Heights, and now does business as Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz Memorial Chapel. 

Following his apprenticeship and obtaining licensure as a Funeral Director and Embalmer in the State of Ohio, with the help of his family and great work ethic, was able to save up enough money to eventually acquire property to build the current funeral home which was founded as Louis R. Orlando Funeral Home, Inc. and was one of the first funeral homes to be built as a funeral home in Lake County. Louis also operated an ambulance service and an invalid car service, which was very common for funeral homes to do at the time, helping many people throughout the Wickliffe community, which also helped build his reputation as a trustworthy and honorable businessman. 

Continuing the tradition

Louis was very generous to many charities, civic and religious organizations, and always found time to help to volunteer his time with many of these organizations. As his business grew, he decided that it was necessary to add an addition to his funeral home in 1963 to make it more spacious to better serve his families. In March of 1978, Louis unexpectedly passed away, and his two nephews, Bruce Orlando and Anthony Donsante, who had been working at the funeral home for about three years and were still newly licensed, had to take on a huge responsibility to quickly learn how to manage and operate their uncle's funeral home.

Bruce and Anthony, through hard work and perseverance, were able to maintain and build the business that their uncle founded by doing business just as their uncle Louis did. Both of them became very active in the community, just like their uncle, and fostered and built many new relationships over the years. In 1984, the funeral home was renamed Orlando-Donsante Funeral Home. Bruce and Anthony owned and operated the funeral home until April of 2018, selling to Anthony Previte, as no other family members had aspirations to get into the business. Rather than selling their business to another firm, it meant a lot to them that their uncle Louis founded the business as a sole proprietorship. They felt that this was the best direction for the future of the funeral home and deep down knew that their uncle would be proud to give a young man an opportunity to build upon the legacy and business that he himself, Louis R. Orlando, worked so hard to build.

Anthony Previte, along with his wife Celeste, was honored and grateful for the opportunity that was given to them by the Orlando and Donsante families to continue a legacy of serving families in Wickliffe and surrounding communities in the spirit that Louis would have wanted. The future looks bright, and they look forward to enhancing the facility along the way, as well as their services to better serve families for many years to come.