Honoring those who have gone before is Upstate Memorials’ business
Nothing about the dying of a cherished just one is effortless. But Hunter Ruff desires Upstate households to permit his loved ones to make just one aspect of the system a little easier.
Upstate Memorials creates, sets, inscribes and renovates the gravestones and monuments that memorialize the people its customers want to honor.
“I like to enable people get through their time of uncertainty. I communicate them by the complete system and information them and response their concerns,” states Hunter Ruff, who owns the firm with his spouse of 10 many years, Kindra.
“We want to make factors as straightforward and quick as households need to have.”
Ruff manufactures the memorials in Elberton, Ga, even though his enterprise is integrated in South Carolina. He and Kindra – and their two sons and twin 8-thirty day period-aged daughters – live in Anderson.
As for services, the company installs and cares for monuments any place in the Upstate.
In the next week or so, Ruff also will open an office environment and showroom at 4043 Calhoun Memorial Highway in Easley – about midway in between Anderson and Greenville.
Ideas are to increase a pc layout method that will let families to create exactly the memorial they want.
Shoppers will right away be equipped to see the memorial on the laptop or computer display or on a printout. “They’ll be ready to complete the process in 1 vacation,” Ruff states.
Monuments can be simple or elaborate, and costs can vary from “a number of hundred dollars” for a granite headstone to million-greenback mausoleums.
“There’s so a lot you can do. Some individuals want to go all out, and some individuals want to be tremendous uncomplicated. There is no ideal reply,” he describes.
About 40% of Ruff’s customers choose gravestones and have them set up even though they are still dwelling. “It’s anything they want, a thing they intended. Their young children you should not have to stress about it.”
Just after the customer dies, Ruff returns to put the day of death on the stone.
Also, far more consumers are choosing cremations alternatively than regular burials.
“We’re looking at a lot of folks get a grave plot and a headstone. Then, they bury the cremains,” Ruff says.
The company also would make monuments – or columbaria – that maintain the cremains.
“They are super well-known. Folks place them at the cemetery or on their residence or anywhere they want,” Ruff states.
Like a headstone, a columbarium can be basic, such as a granite monument with home for two containers of cremains sentimental, this sort of as a bench or columns that are developed so that cremains can be placed inside and sealed – sometimes with a sculpture of a Bible or symbol on major.
Ruff has also produced substantial public monuments.
In April, he installed a memorial at a park in Anderson County that honors a longtime County Council member. Ruff placed a bronze plaque into a massive, distinctive landscape rock.
Granite can be observed all in excess of the United States – like in Elberton. But bronze manufacturers are significantly less typical. Bronze items occur to Ruff developed and inscribed.
“We offer with bronze a good deal, but we will not manufacture it,” he suggests. “I have it produced to the customer’s get.”
Ruff also set up a monument honoring the lives of troopers from the Iva group who died throughout wars. A commitment ceremony was held final weekend for the monument and Iva’s Veteran Memorial Plaza.
Ruff developed the memorial as the finances and programs altered. The top rated is a six-foot polished boulder with the names etched into it. It steps nearly 8 toes tall with the bases. A semi-trailer truck and a crane were necessary to set up the piece in downtown Iva.
The names on the memorial were added making use of a precision sandblasting system, but Ruff states other artwork on the task was etched by hand at the plant in Elberton.
“The gentleman who did it has working experience. So that designed it distinctive, also. It experienced a exclusive artist-variety touch,” he explains.
Ruff experienced been in and out of the granite company for 10 many years when he launched his very own business this year. His father has been in the business for far more than 30 several years and has owned Hunter Granite Revenue in Elberton for extra than 25 yrs.
Even though Ruff does his production in his father’s plant, which is about 35 miles from Anderson, the businesses are independent. Kindra keeps the textbooks for her husband’s enterprise. And Ruff’s brother is starting to perform on the restoration of gravestones.
It’s no incident that the manufacturing plant is in Elberton, which deems itself “The Granite Cash of the Planet,” and utilizes the slogan “Rock Solid.” Its 1st business quarry and manufacturing plant were set up in 1889.
Granite comes into the plant as huge blocks on semi-trailer trucks. Some pieces are as massive as a whole-measurement truck, Ruff states.
The granite is unloaded with a crane and lower into extensive rectangular slabs with a round saw that is about 10 toes in diameter.
From there, the slabs could go into a polishing mill.
“The first rock appears flat. The sharpening offers the slabs that glossy complete,” Ruff claims.
Next, a “guillotine” breaks the slab into lesser pieces – based on the sizes shoppers have requested. Stonecutters condition the headstone.
If the stone is to be inscribed – by sandblast or etching (by laser or hand) – it goes up coming door to a expert just before coming back so that Ruff can supply and put in it.
The grey stone people today see most usually might be mined in Elberton or nearby Oglethorpe County, Ga.
“It’s a major granite market there. We ship our granite all over the country,” Ruff says.
Other granite shades, stones and products come from about the globe.
“We fairly significantly supply any assistance that will involve monuments,” Ruff suggests. “We are relatives-owned and -operated. We very significantly do every thing.”
This short article initially appeared on Greenville News: Honoring individuals who have absent right before is Upstate Memorials’ company
