Page 114 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2026

The Coast Men Behind
Family Businesses
Jeff Bertucci, Frank E. Bertucci,
Ryland Bertucci, Paul J. Bertucci
and Matthew Hessell
story by Cherie Ward
There is something particularly Southern about learning a
business from your father.
Long before there are titles on office doors or decisions to
make about payroll, expansion and the future, there are smaller
lessons—show up, work hard, treat people right, know your
customers, take care of your employees. And never ask someone
else to do a job you wouldn’t do yourself.
Across the Gulf Coast, those lessons have helped turn family
businesses into local institutions.
Few illustrate that legacy better than F.E.B. Distributing
Company in Gulfport.
The business began in 1934 when Salvador J. Bertucci founded
S.J. Bertucci Company and began distributing JAX beer along the
Coast. In 1946, his son, Frank E. Bertucci, joined the operation,
and the company took the name it still carries today, F.E.B.
Distributing.
Salvador’s grandsons, Frank and Paul Bertucci, later joined the
family business and eventually took leadership roles. Beginning
in 2008, a fourth generation followed, with Ryland Bertucci,
Matthew Hessell and Jeff Bertucci coming aboard.
More than 90 years after it began, F.E.B. remains family-owned
and operated.
That kind of longevity isn’t unique on the Coast.
Dixie Glass in Pascagoula has built a family legacy of its own.
114 | October 2026 Founded in 1946, what began as a hometown glass shop has
grown across three generations into a company serving South
Mississippi from multiple locations.
McMurphy Homes represents another Coast tradition passed
through generations. The family-owned company has been
building homes in South Mississippi since 1955, leaving its mark
not only through the family business itself, but in the homes where
generations of other Coast families have built their lives.
Allen Beverages traces its history to 1947, when Cleve Allen
founded Spur Bottling Company in Gulfport. Its first delivery
was made with a single Army surplus truck just one day before a
hurricane struck the Coast. His son, Drew, joined the company
in 1975 and later became president and CEO. A third generation
followed when Drew’s children, Andrew and Grace, joined the
business.
Perhaps no Coast family business, however, has received quite
the national spotlight as Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Home.
Its roots stretch back more than 150 years and six generations
to Edward “Ned” O’Keefe, an Irish immigrant whose Ocean
Springs livery business began providing funeral services following
the Civil War. The business passed from one generation to the
next, eventually becoming Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Home.
One chapter of that history even reached Hollywood.
The 2023 film “The Burial,” starring Tommy Lee Jones as
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