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From Granite Angels to Guitars, Technology Helps Make Personalization the Biggest Trend in Memorialization

Jan. 4, 2001

XENIA, Ohio - The last gift that Antoinette Clevinger got from her husband Mike was meant to touch the heart and last.

It's a granite bench memorial featuring a high-tech, photo-accurate portrait of the Clevinger family replicated on stone and produced with a tool that blasts particles under great pressure.

Signatures of each family member were carved on the portrait. On the back of the bench, Mike wanted to show the family home that he and Antoinette worked hard to build for their children. Working with memorial designer Eric Fogarty, president of Xenia, Ohio-headquartered Dodds Monuments and Dodds' artist Dan Hafer, a scene was designed showing the Clevinger home, including the stone gateway and basketball court.

The Clevinger's two dogs and cat patrol the front yard and Mike's Corvette that Antoinette loved to take rides in sits in the driveway. The scene, hand-etched with a diamond-tipped tool by Hafer in one week, will last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, according to Fogarty. Granite is the hardest natural stone after the diamond.

Fogarty credits the Clevinger memorial at Byron Cemetery near Fairborn, Ohio, for launching his company into designing highly personalized memorials, a specialty Dodds is known for in southwest Ohio. "When we installed the Clevinger memorial at the front gate to the cemetery, many families would stop to look at the artwork and begin to understand what can be done to preserve their memories," says Fogarty. "Only our imagination can limit the possibilities of what can be done."

Another example of personalizing memorials is the Dudley memorial in Ferncliff Cemetery near Springfield, Ohio. Fogarty received a call from Andy Dudley, who asked if an angel could be engraved on the memorial for his late wife, Marilyn. "We worked together and designed a memorial shaped like an angel," says Fogarty. "Marilyn's is the face etched on the angel."

Why do families go to such lengths to remember a person? "Memorialization, especially personalized memorials, helps in the grieving process, emphasizes the positive aspects of the lost loved one's life and kindles life-defining memories of the bereaved," says Fogarty. "Memorialization is an intensely emotional declaration of love and life."

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 2.3 million Americans die every year. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that about 1.8 million are given traditional burials. About half a million Americans are cremated. The majority of the traditional burials involve modest grass-level markers required by cemeteries or upright memorials with names, birth/death dates, epitaphs and religious symbols.

Personalization is a relatively new trend. Fogarty says that only one of 100 memorials that he developed 17 years ago was personalized. Today, one of five memorials developed by Dodds Monuments, which has six offices serving 10 counties in southwest Ohio, is personalized.

Personalization reflects the deceased's lifestyles, hobbies, interests and watershed experiences, such as wars. Fogarty has fashioned shapes with designs such as a lion, football, fire truck, guitar and a star.

On top of different shapes and varied etchings and designs, Dodds also offers scores of different colors of granite from North America and imported colors from India, China, South America and Europe. "Some of the vibrant red hues from India, for example, fly in the face of conventional colors associated with traditional memorials," says Fogarty. "Times have changed. You no longer have to memorialize people only in dark or gray colors."

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For more information about personalized memorials or to obtain sample photographs and interview Eric Fogarty, contact Fogarty at Dodds Monument at dodds@voyager.net or Stacy Lommel, Cold Spring Granite Company marketing manager at slommel@coldspringgranite.com. Dodds showcases granite from The Cold Spring Granite Company, the largest memorialization firm and granite quarrier in North America.