A grave debate about headstone art

At 65 years old, Charles De Christopher is a third-generation gravestone carver, in love with the simple beauty of the monuments that once had a monopoly in burial gardens.

Yet these days, he often finds himself selling headstones in the shape of motorcycles, automobiles, and teddy bears - what he calls "tacky" memorials that defy what his heart tells him is beautiful and sacred.

As the owner of the successful Philadelphia-based memorial dealer De Christopher Bros. Inc., he knows the industry is changing. Modern headstones featuring etchings of the deceased, or perhaps fashioned in a shape evoking their favorite pastime, are all part of what the business is calling "personalization."

And while some artists privately lament the vanishing beauty of more classic tombstones, personalization continues to gain ground. The eight Philadelphia Archdiocese cemeteries decided last year to permit carved and etched portraits. First seen in the early 1960s, the trend to such personalization is proving unstoppable.

The debate, of course, signals more than just a difference of opinion about art. It raises questions about religion, the purpose of graveyards (to cheer the living or honor the dead?), and our legacy to future generations.

Many don't know it, but headstones, according to folklorist and gravestone scholar Richard E. Meyer, are objets d'art, America's first form of sculpture. And like much of American culture, cemeteries are becoming more secular, and the headstones reflect that.

"Secularization runs right alongside of personalization," Meyer said from his home in Salem, Ore. "It signals a decrease in religiosity, a shift in religious emphasis."

For the local archdiocese, the change to allow personalization was popular, said Robert Whomsley, director of cemeteries.

"More families expressed a desire to include some form of personalization on memorials, so we established the new rules and regulations to adjust to the new trends."

At the same time, he says, they maintain the cemeteries' Catholic identity "by always being mindful that memorials should tell the story of our faith, the life and death of our lord."

"There are some cemeteries in Philadelphia with a nice big estate monument with a name like [and here his accent changes to British] Higgins that might say that a personalized memorial which had a hot rod on it or a picture of a house would not be as dignified," Quiring said.

But he believes traditional headstones act to overemphasize death and mourning, making a visit to the cemetery drab and boring. Personalization highlights unique and happy images from a person's life, and the result is a cemetery that the living can enjoy.

"Let's say that a guy has an Irish background. Why shouldn't his heritage be represented by that?" Quiring asked. "I mean, shouldn't he have a green stone?"

Pictures of marijuana leaves, emblems of the Black Panthers, images of Marilyn Monroe holding her billowing dress in The Seven-Year Itch - they are all reminiscent of what the pharaohs did in ancient Egypt, he said. "They left messages which defined who that person who lived really was."

Carmen Vigezzi, 83, remains skeptical. Now an independent designer living in Colchester, Conn., Vigezzi, a Catholic, is a second-generation stone carver who studied at the Barre School of Memorial Art in Vermont. His father, he says, got a classical education in Italy, where he graduated "as a sculptor, as an artist" from a school in Milan before coming to America to teach carving at the Cooper Union.

In time, Vigezzi believes, people will walk through personalized cemeteries and "remember us as pretty shallow."

"These headstones say that we are not a very cultured society, that we are a very argumentative society, that our country is being run by television, and that it is ostentatious."

Still, the numbers show more people are embracing it.

Dave Pace, president of the Monument Builders of North America, estimates that personalization currently constitutes at least 30 percent of revenue at every monument business in the country. That's up 20 percent from just 10 years ago.

As a gravestone carver and member of the American Institute of Commemorative Art, he is today working in Mississippi fashioning an almost life-size memorial, at a cost of $6,000, of young Josh Golmon standing with his guitar.

A quick conversation with Josh's mother, Anita Golmon, who is a Pentecostal and works as a director of a preschool, makes clear why she lovingly and painstakingly chose every detail of this personalized gravestone for her son, who died at 22.

"I've walked through so many cemeteries without pictures and wondered, 'What kind of person was this?' I've always been a visual person."

But Golmon also wanted Josh's good looks memorialized. "All moms think that their children are the prettiest, but Josh was absolutely gorgeous. Everybody has always told me that they miss his smile." A vase on the headstone will also bear an etching of a smiling Josh.