Written in stone

Pulling into Fort Myers City Cemetery, Eric Letter takes a left on Beth El, a right on Judea, and another right on Galilee before he stops in front of a pink headstone that reads "Bertha."

"I think that's it," he says about a gray stone laying flat on the ground, craning to see through the passenger side window. "I'm gonna check," he says, stepping out of the pickup with a silver clipboard.

Kneeling down in the sandy grass beside the stone, he slaps the clipboard down. "Yep."

Letter's been coming to this cemetery since he can remember (and, yes, that's his real name), but he's never come here to grieve. This isn't a place of death for this fourth-generation tombstone carver. This is a place of business. An office.

For many, cemeteries symbolize the macabre and the grotesque. They are the stuff of ghost stories, down-and-out tales of loss, and lives gone too soon.

Not for Letter.

"There's nothing scary here. We're all going to die," he says. "I mean, look at this woman," he says, pointing to the neighboring plot. "She lived nearly 100 years. It's not like she missed anything."

As a child Letter would play among these headstones, watching his father and grandfather, both carvers, sandblast inscriptions into headstones. As an adult, this 40-year-old now runs the Fort Myers-based General Memorials and carries on the family tradition and craft.

"I grew up in this place," he says of the cemetery. "I used to play while my father and grandfather worked. We've done many of these around here."

He's come here on this day to sandblast Bertha's death date into stone.

Laying a metal carpenter's square on the granite slab, he traces the grid lines he'll use to make sure the date is aligned with Bertha's name. If he gets anything wrong, he'll have to provide a new stone. But he's not too worried.

"If your grandfather had you out here at 7," he pauses, drawing a line with his No. 2 pencil, "it just becomes second nature."

With the grid now in place, he unscrews a mason jar filled with an acrid smelling paste and swabs it over the section he'll be working on. He glues down a tan-colored stencil — "Nov 4 2005" — which will guide the rocketing sand he uses to eat away at the stone.

Letter gets up, flipping on the bright orange air compressor hitched to the back bumper of his pickup. The quiet cemetery near downtown Fort Myers fills with the engine's clanging whirl and piercing hisses of air.

Checking the idle and pressure, Letter hooks a hose onto the compressor.

To protect his face, he puts on a canvas mask that looks like some antique space helmet worn by a comic book villain. He grabs the rusty and worn blasting pot, the same his father used, and fills it with a bag of sand — 30 to 45 grit is best, he'll tell you.

With hose in hand, he holds the crayon-looking spout about six inches from the stencil. Pulling a lever on the blasting pot, he releases a surge of sand, the small grains pelting his thick forearms and bare hands.

"It's pure mayhem," he says of the speeding sand. "It will turn your leg into hamburger meat real quick."

He goes over the area in small concentric circles, making sure not to stay in any one place too long. After about 20 minutes, he's done. Letter shakes the beach-like sand from his body, takes off his mask, wiping the globs of sweat from his head, and inspects his work.

Satisfied, he pulls away the stencil and gets a tin of citrus cleaner and scrubs off the glue.

Over the past 4 1/2 decades the Letter family has been responsible for hundreds of these markers, Letter says. For these stone carvers, this cemetery is part art gallery and part family album.

• • •

Letter crouches in front of a headstone that his grandfather, Ernest Letter, carved nearly 45 years ago. Floral patterns decorate each corner of the gray granite. The only name on the stone is that of deceased, but Letter knows his grandfather's work.

"This is his," Letter says, rubbing his finger across the crisp lettering. "He made real sharp edges."

Each carver has a specific style, Letter explains. They practice an anonymous art form, never carving their names or initials into their work, never seeking credit when a stone is finished. They leave only the quality of their workmanship and personal style as signatures.

"My grandfather made his serifs longer," he says, pointing to the tips of his grandfather's lettering.

He walks down the column of graves a little further. "This is my father's," he says, pointing to a different stone for comparison. The edges are not quite as sharp, and the script is not as deep in the stone.

The Letter family tradition of carving began in the late 1800s when Eugene Letter — Eric Letter's great grandfather — went to work in a stone quarry in Vermont. The stock-and-trade has been passed down from father to son ever since.

Eric's grandfather, Ernest Letter, moved to Fort Myers in the mid-1950s, where he built the home where Eric Letter grew up. The house is now used as an office for General Memorials.

Ernest Letter began training his own son, David Letter, the craft. David Letter eventually started General Memorials.

Both David and Eric consider Ernest a master teacher and craftsman. A perfectionist, Ernest Letter was stern and demanding when it came to carving, they say.

"He took his time," David Letter, 72, says. "I remember when I was a boy, we were working on stone markers for a veterans memorial. I had to beat the bottom of the granite off so it would sit flat on the cement. He made me go over that thing three times before he was content with my job."

"He wanted things done properly," he says. "He would work to make things perfect and, boy, you'd better as well."

Beyond Eric Letter's reverence for the master carvers in his family, he has also become an admirer and aficionado of hundreds of other unknown masons that preceded him.

"A freaking artist did that one," he says, standing over a granite cross, engrossed with its blossoming stone lilies. The cross, carved in the late 1800s, is covered in black soot, moss and sprouting plants. Standing only two feet and seemingly tattered, the ornate stone is easily overlooked.

"I've wanted to wash it off," Letter says, "but if I do that it will draw people's attention, and some punk might come over here and knock it down."

• • •

Since the late-1800s, tombstone carving evolved from the hammer and chisel to a more mechanical stencil and sandblasting operation. "These are production pieces now," Eric Letter says of the modern-day process.

Where old-timer carvers worked from clay models, sketches and hand-cut stencils, pounding out stone with wooden mallets and metal chisels, many of today's carvers use graphic design programs and computer-generated stencils.

Letter compares the evolution to writers shifting from using ink and scrolls to word processors and printers.

"It may look less romantic," Letter says, "and people say sandblasting is easy, but nothing is ever easy as someone else makes it look. I've been doing this all my life. All I have to say is, 'You try.'"

Sandblasting makes carving faster and cheaper, plus the letters and designs are crisper and resist wear better than hammer-and-chisel gravestones, Letter explains.

Carvers have also found that customers like the look of a sandblasted stone better.

"The insides of the letters come to natural Vs in granite when I use the sandblaster," Letter says. "A lot of people look at it an think I did it with a chisel."

The cost of doing all the work by hand, however appealing and artistic, is prohibitive, Letter says. "A headstone that would cost you $300 with a sandblaster would cost you $3,000 if you wanted me to do it by hammer and chisel," Letter says. "People don't want to pay that kind of money."

"I can blast 12 letters in 30 minutes, which could have taken me half the day if I had to do it by hand," he says.

• • •

"We went to a cemetery on our honeymoon," says Jennifer Letter. "On family vacations, we have to stop at local cemeteries," she says. "It's about seeing other people's work."

These visits seem to be the one tradition that will continue when Eric Letter retires. "Our girls get all into it. They love it as much as their father," she says of the cemetery stops.

When the Jennifer and Eric married nearly nine years ago, Jennifer worked for an alarm systems company.

"When I first met him, I was like, 'Eww, tombstones!'" she says.

These days, her feelings have changed. Now, she's as enthusiastic about the artistry as her husband, helping customers design their tombstones.

"We have people ask for all sorts of things," she says, "we've drawn skeletons, tractors, pickup trucks. We just want the customer to be proud of their memorial."

None of their three daughters plan to go into the family business, though. And that's OK with Dad, who adds: "I want them to go to college and get a real job."

• • •

Of all the people whose living depends on death — morticians, makeup artists, priests, and gravediggers, for example — these stone carvers leave the most lasting and visible reminders of people's lives. These stones last longer than the surviving family and friends. They last longer than memory.

For Letter and the legions of other carvers, these stones also are testaments to broken knuckles and sandblasted skin. To family tradition and selfless artistry.

Eric Letter's still touring the cemetery, looking for a piece he carved when he was in his 20s.

The nearly 4-by-4-foot slab has a pineapple resting on the bottom, leaves splaying out. He had carved slight ridges in the middle where each leave bends. The back is recessed about one inch, making the lettering jut out from the background.

"I carved this one using a chisel and a sand sandblaster," he says, rubbing the raised letters. "The family really wanted a pineapple. I came up with the design myself."

"It was for a horticulturist," Letter goes on. "It took one week."

It is one of the only pieces he's done where he's used all the skills of each generation. This stone brings out a pride in his voice.

He doesn't know what he wants on his headstone. All he knows is where he wants to be buried. Next to his grandfather in Alva