Burial site carver sets memorial in stone

The morning after Ronald Reagan died, 82-year-old stone carver Nathen Blackwell got a wake-up call from the presidential library near Simi Valley, Calif. Library officials were scrambling to prepare the hilltop burial site personally chosen by the nation's 40th president as his final resting place. They wanted to know how to replace a discolored bronze presidential seal mounted on a limestone wall with a black granite one Blackwell had carved.

"They wanted it up by Friday," said Blackwell, an English-born craftsman who lives in Ventura, Calif., and who has painstakingly cut large letters into the stone walls of the presidential library for years. "This seal will not color or change for 10,000 years. I guarantee it."

Last Sunday's task was the first in a series of assignments the stone carver expects in coming weeks as he helps complete the Reagan memorial, a cliff-side site where westerly views include a panoramic farm valley and the Pacific Ocean far beyond.

"I'm just looking forward to doing this for such an important person," said Blackwell as he held with muscular hands a 3-pound silver-headed hammer used for his most precise cuts.

At the top of Blackwell's agenda is the carving of inscriptions on Reagan's headstone, the centerpiece of a 20-foot-wide, horseshoe-shaped memorial site where a crypt will hold the remains of Reagan and eventually his wife, Nancy.

The headstone, a Georgian gray granite, is stored in a library basement and was not to be set until after Friday's burial, Blackwell said. At a minimum, the Reagans' names and dates of their births and deaths are to be inscribed on it. Then, sometime in the future, the curved limestone wall that defines the memorial and blocks the public's view of it may be encased with a granite of tans and browns to protect against deterioration, said library executive director R. Duke Blackwood.

Since he began working for the Reagan library about four years ago, Blackwell has chiseled names on the donor and trustee walls in the rotunda, where Reagan's casket was placed Monday and Tuesday for public viewing.

Blackwell also has carved the presidential oath into granite next to a piece of the Berlin Wall displayed on an outside terrace of the library, and this year completed the gold-lettered cornerstone of a $20-million exhibit hall unveiled in February by Nancy Reagan in honor of her husband's 93rd birthday. Blackwell and his wife, Mildred, stood for photos with the former first lady. The stone cutter had first met her a couple of years ago when she asked to be introduced and signed a book about Reagan for him.

"I found her a very delightful, very gracious lady," Blackwell said. "I just pray she'll have good health to get her through this awful period."