Grave decisions: Ornate gravestones put a face on death

Thursday, June 21, 2001 | 8:27 a.m.

Been to the cemetery lately?

If you have you might have noticed that cemeteries, particularly those in the West, have become more personalized over the past decade.

No longer are the deceased only beloved fathers, loving sons and devoted mothers. They're avid football fans, dog lovers, bingo players, crocheters and fishermen.

Walking through a cemetery today is similar to flipping through a collective scrapbook of people's lives, where color photos emblazoned onto ceramic smile at you. Personal poems and humorous phrases tell stories, and keepsakes in glass cases add color to the memory.

Additionally, there may be the image of a favorite car, sports team, cat or motorcycle forever etched in stone.

"If you go look at a cemetery you'll notice that there is a considerable evolution of what is proper to go on a marker," said Roger Borst of Borst Designs, a California company that engraves images from photographs onto grave markers.

"One hundred years ago you'd likely see a cross or the Star of David," Borst said. "Very seldom would you see anything more than that."

But today city skylines, walleye fish, self-portraits and occupational emblems sandblasted onto grave markers are used to symbolize who the person was during his or her lifetime.

At Granite Masters Monuments on West Craig Road, there are plenty of designs from which to choose ranging from traditional fraternal and religious symbols to more contemporary designs.

"We have a couple thousand stock designs, from having a cat put on, to hunter designs to mountain scenes," Drew Gross, a sandblaster at Granite Masters, said.

"A family can custom design their own marker to fit the monument old cars from the 1950s, baseball, football stuff pretty much anything someone was avid about can be put on them," Gross said.

"We've actually engraved slot machines and bingo cards."

Often it's a decision between technology and tradition.

"The trend among baby boomers is to re-examine the whole aspect of memorialization," said Bob Fells, general counsel for the Virginia-based International Cemetery and Funeral Association.

"They're offering traditional funerals for their parents. They've got their feet wet and they're starting to think, When I go this is what I want.'"

Many are looking at different types of memorialization beyond granite and bronze markers, he said. Living memorials, such as trees and rocks, are becoming more common. Online website memorials are offered, as well as memorial kiosks at cemeteries where photographs and memorabilia can be viewed on computers.

In Nevada, where 57 percent of the deceased are cremated, people are opting for glass columbariums that include cremains on a shelf next to a photograph or other memorabilia.

Jean Hites, owner of Hites Funeral Home on West Sunset Road, said she encourages families to personalize memorials of the deceased.

"That's what makes the grieving process start and makes it become real," Hites said. "That person was original. Do what made him happy. If he loved sailing put a sailboat on there."

Services and burials are also personalized, she said. A family that had lost a father who had been a pipe smoker burned a pipe during his memorial service, Hites said. Scotch was set next to an urn containing his cremains.

Another man who was dying of cancer requested to be buried wearing his fishing gear and holding a fishing pole in his hand, Hites said.

"I see that more and more," she said. "We've given ourselves permission to go farther than we have in the past -- to make this more real."

And technology has made it more accessible.

While hand engraving on grave markers has always been available, it was expensive and based on an artist's rendition of the photograph or painting, Borst said.

"Even 20 years ago people would pay $500 to $600 to have an artist hand engrave. And that would take all day." These days, she said, "We take a photo, scan it in, engrave it directly on the granite."

Borst said the company engraves mostly portraits and religious imagery, but pictures of cars, pets and scenic designs are requested occasionally.

Currently Borst is engraving what looks similar to a motorcycle gang on a grave maker. The deceased was a member of a motorcycle club, Borst said. The photo is of its members, and will cover most of the gravestone.

Pragmatism vs. pomp

While religious and fraternal symbolism have ornamented grave markers for centuries, in the United States during the early part of the 20th century grave markers were much more simple. A name and date of the deceased was mainly all that were offered.

"There was a dead period (between WWI and WWII) as far as gravestone decoration is concerned," said Richard E. Meyer, an emeritus professor of folklore at Western Oregon State College in Monmouth and board member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, a Massachusetts organization dedicated to studying the cultural significance and preservation of gravestones and burial grounds.

At the turn of the 20th century marble was no longer used as the industry standard for gravestone markers and was replaced with granite, which is more dense and hard. The technology for engraving on granite had not yet caught up, said Meyer, who edits "Markers," the organization's publication.

Also, the dominant philosophy of the country had become more pragmatic, he said.

This continued in the 1930s when memorial park cemeteries grew in popularity.

The cemeteries, designed to appear similar to public parks, used flat grave markers rather than upright statues and monuments.

"They (markers) became very plain, simple, very utilitarian," Meyer said.

Different periods can be seen in older cemeteries, he said. A cemetery founded in 1870 will have a section with elaborate markers. But in the first four or five decades of the 1900s the markers were more nondescript, using only names and dates, he said.

"The decade of the 60s was the beginning of renewed personalization on gravestones," Meyer said. "With each decade there has been exponential growth, not only with visual images, but a resurgence of the idea of the epitaph."

Today homemade poetry on epitaphs ranges from grief and despair to offbeat humor -- a change from the earlier sentimental and Biblical epitaphs, he said.

"We've moved away from this avoidance behavior that we had for so long," Meyer said. "There's virtually nothing that can't pop out at you now."

In Oregon, where Meyer lives, one woman's grave marker features a Visa card and reads, "Charge it. Send the bill to heaven."

Personalizing grave markers is more common in the West, which has a younger, less-formal population and is less-traditional and rigid than the East, Meyer said.

Certain groups, such as truck drivers, loggers, fishermen and cowboys, are notorious for having grave markers personalized with their occupations, Meyer added. "Semi-trucks are on hundreds of gravestones."

When personalizing grave markers first became popular, it was very controversial among monument dealers who said that it was undignified, Meyer said.

Quiring Monuments Inc., in Seattle, was one of the first monument companies to see that personalizing was important, he said. The company is recognized in the industry for building the most creative and personalized memorials.

"We all want to be memoralized in some way," Russ Wiley, spokesman for Davis Funeral Homes, at West Charleston Boulevard, said. "But I think each of us has an idea of how we want to be remembered.

"It used to be considered out of taste to put -- if somebody did crochet -- a needle and yarn on a marker, instead of religious or fraternal (symbolism)," Wiley said. "But people are doing it now."

"The important thing is for families to have the death talk before death is eminent," Ned Phillips, spokesman for Palm Mortuaries, which has several locations in Southern Nevada, said. "We all have our own psychological needs ... Some people come every day to their (loved ones') grave space."

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