Americana: Going Out in Style

Feel like a cipher in a computerized society? Long to be remembered for some bit of individuality? A Seattle firm, Quiring Monuments, will accommodate you. Last year some 1,000 customers, double the number in 1979, ordered personal designs etched into their gravestones, taking advantage of a technique developed in recent years. A few other firms are also beginning to use it. Says Vice President David Quiring: "People come in with a sketch of what they want. We stencil it, cut it into rubber, and using sandblast grains, we can make a fine, detailed picture" on granite.

Some of the designs, ordered by parents to commemorate young children, are heartrending. One pictures a leaf blowing off the tree of life. Adults often choose occupational symbols: a sewing machine, a policeman's badge, a B-52 in remembrance of a Boeing employee who was loyal to the bitter end. There are also golfers, fishermen, a teen-ager's customized 1965 Mustang complete to the license plate BAD NUZ, and a skier taking off on a jump, above the legend BILL WENT FOR IT. One woman had her stone engraved with four aces over the Christian symbol of the fish. "She might have been a Christian gambler," speculates Quiring. "Lots of times we just don't ask."