Leo C. Chase, Sr., who had previously managed the Huff Funeral Home in Lincolnville, opened this funeral home in St. Augustine in 1955, establishing one of the city's oldest businesses. After his death in 1977, his son Arnett Chase took over. Another son, Leo C. Chase, Jr., was the first St. Augustinian killed in the Vietnam War, and a nearby park was named in his honor in 1965. During the 1960s, the funeral home served as a sanctuary for civil rights activists facing harassment in St. Augustine, and its ambulance carried marchers to the hospital after they were beaten downtown. Dianne Chase, Mrs. Arnett Chase, took part in the demonstrations that helped lead to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although St. Augustine had many black elected officials in the decades after the Civil War, the shooting of black alderman John Papino by a white city marshal during an official meeting in 1902 ended black political office holding for more than 70 years. In 1973, Arnett Chase became the first black elected official in modern times when he was elected to the city commission. In 2008, a Chase limousine brought the Rev. Dr. C. T. Vivian, one of Dr. Martin Luther King's closest associates, back to St. Augustine, where he had been beaten and arrested while leading beach wade-ins and demonstrations in 1964, to address the second annual Freedom Trail Banquet sponsored by ACCORD.
