CEMETERY MONUMENTS DESIGNED BY COMPUTER

Chris Liley views pre-programmed images of roses and wedding rings that can be added to monuments. Photographs of homes and people can be scanned into the computer and added to the stone.

A red granite monument is positioned to have lettering and images embedded in it by a robotic "blaster" using aluminum carbide particles.

In the sculpturing room, Dave Foster prepares to spray garnet on a monument. Garnet is used to give detail to images such as flowers, hands and wedding rings.

There are few things that cannot be designed on computers. Images of airplanes, automobiles, buildings and superhighways are created on computer screens long before they are built in the real world.

Chris Liley of Marble Hill uses his computer to fashion a vast array of lettering and design possibilities for cemetery monuments.

There was a time, says Liley, that lettering on monuments, or tombstones, was available in just three styles, "now there are over 400 styles to choose from, which has opened up a wide market of possibilities."

And the designs that can be set into monuments are no longer limited to fish, deer, roses and wedding rings. Now, an aerial photograph of the family farm or a picture of a favorite pet can be intricately "carved" into stone.

An outdoorsman who hunted with a black powder rifle, for example, can have one positioned on the memorial so the barrel points toward the man's name.

A woman whose passion was making quilts can have a quilt, complete with colored patches, draped around her birth date.

"More features are available than ever before," said Liley, manager of Liley Monument Co. in Marble Hill. "We've been using computers in our work for about two years, and there's software and programs available."

Liley says "highly personalized" monuments are becoming increasingly popular, just as personalized license plates have found a niche in society.

"We do a lot of custom designing of monuments. We talk to the people about a person's life, what they liked to do, how they might want to be remembered," said Liley, who, after three years of study and accreditation, recently passed a National Monument Builders Association test to become a certified memorialist, one of about 100 in the country.

The first step in acquiring that special memorial, says Liley, is choosing the monument. Granite monuments are the most durable. After diamonds and sapphires, granite is the hardest natural substance on earth.

Monuments can easily weigh a ton and come in a variety of colors. Liley buys American black granite from Virginia, green granite from Ireland and a blue-coral granite comes from Switzerland.

"We get a black granite from Africa and Canada, a brown comes out of North Dakota, pink out of Texas, red from Oklahoma and blue from Lake Placid, New York," he said.

India produces black granite, gray granite is quarried in Georgia and red granite is found in Missouri.

Monuments vary in size and shape and all arrive polished. Prices range from $200 for a flat marker to the average price of $1,500 for a double marker.

Monuments are stored near the business and a jib crane, anchored 9 feet into the ground, is used to load them onto a railroad cart that a tractor pulls to the processing area.

The processing area is in a new $500,000, 3,500-square-foot building that Liley designed on his computer.

When a monument is chosen, the customer views it on the computer screen and the designing process begins.

"People will come in and say they want a picture of their farm on the stone, or a picture of the old home place or of their relative," said Liley, who entered the monument business in 1981. "If they have a photo we can scan the image into the computer. If they don't we hand draw it."

The computer's design program carries pre-set images of such things as flowers, crosses, hands held in prayer, wedding rings.

"We might ask a person what was momma's favorite flower," Liley said. "If it's a rose or whatever, we put the image on the screen. There's different shapes and sizes of roses to choose from, and we move the image around the stone to where the person wants it to be.

"We have different types of fish to choose from. There are images of deer and guns ... a lot to choose from. There's also emblems for fraternities, gentiles, masons, there's the Star of David."

A person also selects the size and style of lettering to appear on the stone. Special inscriptions can be added.

When the look of the monument is decided upon, a print of it is made. The customer may take the print with them to show others.

The information on the custom-designed monument is sent to a machine called a plotter. The plotter cuts the lettering and designs into a section of rubberized stencil.

The stencil is glued to the stone, and a conveyor system rolls the stone into one of two robotic "blasters," where it's bombarded with aluminum carbide particles, not sand. The carbide cuts into the stone a quarter-inch deep or more.

The stone is then rolled to the staining room where the background of the lettering is stained with different colors of lithochrome.

In another area, frosting is applied. "That's when the polish is taken off certain areas to make them stand out more," said Liley.

Sculpting is the next step. A small shaping nozzle spraying garnet is used to apply detail to designs. Colors are added with an air brush or by hand brushing. A clear coat seals the monument.

There are about 12 employees at Liley Monument Co. and the business processes between 1,200 and 1,500 monuments a year.

The company did the work on the war memorials in Cape Girardeau, St. Francois, Stoddard and other counties. Only American granite was used.

A custom-designed monument Liley is especially proud of is in Patton Cemetery. It notes the death of former Patton resident Edward O'Kelley, the man who killed Bob Ford, who killed Jesse James.

O'Kelley killed Ford in the wild silver mining town of Creede, Colo., in 1892. The monument, commissioned last year by a relative of O'Kelley, has a likeness of him emblazoned over his name, and on the back of the stone are detailed scenes of Creede.

"It's a neat historical marker," Liley said.