Dan Long already has his headstone picked out ? a sleek slab of black granite with his name carved into it.
“Just have to carve the date of death, and I hope my son will do that,” said Long, who works alongside his son in the carving shop at Joseph L. Mathias Monuments, at the corner of Main and Center streets in Westminster.
A sign hangs outside, announcing the business?s 100th anniversary.
Long has been carving monuments for nearly half of that.
At 65, he could retire, but he has enjoyed chiseling into stone ? either by hand or with tools ? to mark for eternity where the deceased lie.
“As long as the boy is there, I?ll be around,” he said.
The boy is 26 years old and called “Little Dan,” despite standing 4 inches taller than his father, who taught him the art of chiseling tombstones.
After 48 years of sandblasting and carving intricate leaves and roses, Long said he can spot his distinct monuments in a sea of other stones at cemeteries.
As fashions go in and out of style, so do trends in headstones, said George Irwin, who co-owns Mathias with his wife, Marilyn, and brother-in-law, Vernon Merkle.
It?s all about laser etching in black granite these days.
What can be etched is limited only to customers? imaginations, he said, but in traditionally agrarian Carroll County, scenes of deer and farms are common themes.
Benches for graveside reflection also are popular today.
Back in the 1960s and ?70s, it was all about flat, bronze plaques.
And decades before that, marble, malleable enough for the hand carving that predated electric tools, was the rock of preference.
Marble is too soft, though, and many are unreadable after decades of wind, rain and snow.
Business has grown every year for Mathias, Irwin said, despite a jump in the number of cremations.
“I get a lot of satisfaction helping people,” he said. “Normally, when people are looking for monuments, they are looking for closure.”
More information
Joseph L. Mathias Monuments
175 E. Main St., Westminster
410-876-7981
