BOYS growing up in the 1940s and 50s often set their sights on a dream job. Engine driver, jet pilot, fireman maybe.

Usually it involved a big gleaming machine, and Trevor Hunnaball was no exception. Only in his case the vehicle was a hearse.

As far back as he can remember Trevor had just one ambition... to be a funeral director.

And even after 50 years in the business he has never been able to explain why.

All he knows is that his mother tells a tale which shows the interest was there from a very early age.

"She used to get very embarrassed because when she was pushing me around town in my pushchair I got really excited whenever I saw funeral cars pass by," he said.

It didn't take long for his childish fascination to turn into a serious ambition from which he never wavered.

Trevor, 65, now heads a family firm employing more than 30 people and handling almost 1,000 funerals a year.

For half a century he has taken pride in helping people through the worst times of their lives... even though it still sometimes reduces him to tears.

"From as long ago as I can remember I always wanted to do this job. I never deviated from it.

"In the playground at primary school the other boys would all be talking about what they wanted to do – usually drive an engine – and I would say I wanted to be a funeral director.

"They just got used to it, I suppose. It's not that I was morbid, it was just what I wanted to do."

In fact, in every other way, Trevor was a typical lad, keen on sport and dodging piano practice to go and play football.

He grew up in Essex with parents Jack and Jean, and sister, and his brother who far from sharing Trevor's ambitions became an architect.

No one else in his close family had connections with the funeral business although he thinks one distant relative may have been an undertaker in London.

"My father was in the gas industry. My parents never tried to dissuade me from what I wanted to do, although at times they did suggest I might like to do something else."

By the time Trevor was 13, they had accepted his choice of career and his father got him the promise of an apprenticeship with W H Shephard Funeral Service in Colchester.

Efforts by his careers teacher to persuade him to do something else were doomed. When he left school at 15 he stepped straight into the job, learning every aspect of the trade, including coffin making, embalming and funeral arrangements.

He started work on December 27, 1957, at a time when a teenage undertaker was a real oddity.

But he never found it caused too many problems socialising with mates or chatting up girls.

"It's like any job that's done behind closed doors. People are interested to hear about it," he said. "But it was really an old man's job in those days, you almost had to be ancient to do it. I went into it with a completely open mind.

"My boss Jim Shepherd's son wasn't interested in the business at that time and Jim treated me more like a son than an employee.

"I qualified as a funeral director at 21 and as an embalmer a year later. After eight years I became a director of the company, then managing director."

Meanwhile he had met and married his wife, Melanie, and the couple were also running hire cars including four Rolls-Royces and two Bentleys.

But Trevor's real ambition was always to have his own funeral company and eventually they took the plunge and bought up an existing firm in the early 1980s.

It became the first of many. Melanie trained as a funeral director and their son Saul, daughter Polly, and Trevor's stepson, Chris, have all since joined the business.

Son Simon suffered brain injuries at birth and lives in care. But even so there is a connection with the family firm because Hunnaballs buys coffins for stillborn babies from the home's workshop.

Only son Matthew has taken a completely different course. He's a Lloyds underwriter.

The Hunnaball Family Funeral Group now has eight branches, including one in North Street, Sudbury, which opened three years ago.

They pride themselves on being innovators in the business. Trevor is a director of Green Woodland Burial Services which gives the choice of being buried in a woodland site with a commemorative tree.

"We were also among the first to employ women. Female funeral directors used to be really rare, but now there are many more of them.

"I think that it is sometimes more reassuring for a bereaved family to see a female face."

But there is no getting away from the fact that Trevor has chosen one of the most difficult and potentially painful professions.

"You have to try to have a detached sympathy or you would never get through it.

"But sometimes you get a funeral which leaves you feeling physically and emotionally drained.

"There are times when the circumstances really get to you. I often have a cry sitting at the back of the church. You wouldn't be human if it didn't affect you. When you get a premature death it really tears families apart. And you relate it to your own family – I have children, grandchildren.

"And it isn't really just an age thing. Someone could die aged 100, and their children might be 80 but they have been together all those years.

"This is where it helps that we are a family firm. We can sit down at the end of the day and counsel each other. We don't hide anything.

"And we think of everyone who works for us not so much as employees, but as family. We all support each other."

But when he does need to escape the pressure he has the perfect solution moored by the river in Ipswich – an ocean-going motor cruiser.

"I find it's the only place I can actually switch off, out there at sea," he said, but even so he does sometimes take bereaved families out on the boat to scatter their loved one's ashes.

Trevor has seen many changes in his 50-year career. "I think funerals are coming full circle.

"In Victorian times they were very elaborate. Then in the 1960s when cremation started to become much more popular people would go for something much more simple.

"Now a lot of families are choosing more elaborate funerals again. We do one or two a month now with a horse-drawn hearse."

Apart from his own business, Trevor is a leading light in the National Association of Funeral Directors. He was national president in 1995.

Despite turning 65, he remains totally dedicated to his profession and has no plans to opt for an easier life. "I am still full of ideas and ambitions, and I'm not ready to retire just yet," he says.