Epitaphs:
Fowler man bringing back this once dying art form
By Jack Pyott,
THG Features
George Newton has been
carving headstones for the diseased in the small northwestern Indiana town of
Fowler since returning home from a stint in the Korean War in the early 1950s.
As the owner of Newton’s Monuments, he has seen it as his mission to provide the
deceased with memorials befitting their lives, whether they were rich or poor,
young or old.
Over the last half-century
that Newton has been in business, he has always felt that there was something
missing from the headstones he was carving. Sure, they had the name and birth
and death dates of those people lying eternally under them, but other than a
picture of a religious symbol, his stones did not really tell anything about the
life of the person.
Newton decided last year
that he would offer his customers an epitaph on their headstones, free of
charge. Once commonplace on memorials, the epitaph is a brief literary
description on a headstone commemorating that person’s life. This art has all
but died out in the last century, but Newton is determined to make sure it is
not gone forever.
Customers can create an
epitaph on your own for Newton to inscribe, or tell him
about your deceased relative’s life and he will create one for you. So far, the
residents of Fowler have been very satisfied with Newton’s work.
“When my no good cheating
husband finally died, I wanted everyone to know what a dog he was for eternity!”
said town resident Dixie Minton. “George did a wonderful job.”
When one visits St.
Mattores Cemetery in Fowler and walks up to the grave of Vincent Minton, his
epitaph is noticed immediately. It reads:
Low in life,
Lower in death,
We are all glad this a-hole
Has taken his last breath
Just looking around the
cemetery at some of the newer monuments, one can see the handy work of George
Newton. On the grave of Gus Stanton, who died last year at the age of 34:
A pretty nice guy
But didn’t amount to much
I guess he shouldn’t have played
With fireworks
Newton himself has his own
headstone carved and ready for the day when the reaper comes for him. All that
needs to be added is the date. When I asked George if he thought that was a bit
morbid, he laughed. “I have been making cash off of people dying for years. I
wanted to do my own stone so nobody could write something sucky about me.”
When George Newton is laid
to rest, six feet above his coffin it will read:
