Company’s longevity is monument to family

By Don Shilling

The Beights have been cutting stones for monuments for more than a century.

EAST PALESTINE — O.T. Beight Sons, a fourth-generation monument-making business, almost didn’t get past its first customer, let alone survive 111 years.

The year was 1897, and Oscar Tobias Beight had just taken over three orders that were left when the owner of a New Castle, Pa., monument shop had died. Beight lived on a farm in Unity Township near East Palestine but spent the week working at the shop.

The first customer didn’t like the way Beight made an “H” on a monument and demanded the stone be redone. Beight didn’t agree but did the work, and he later told his family that his first customer was the meanest man he’d ever met.

“He almost got out of the business on the very first job,” said his great-grandson, Eric Beight.

Eric, 45, is glad O.T. stayed with it.

O.T. moved the business to his farm and then passed it down to his sons. Today, Eric uses his great-grandfather’s home as the office for operations that produce about 400 monuments a year.

Inside the office is a photo of O.T. and his crew — dressed in suit jackets and bow ties — placing that first monument at a cemetery in Enon Valley, Pa. Eric asks his father, Cecil, to remind him which person in the photo is O.T.

“He’s the one who looks like you,” Cecil tells him.

If the family needs another reminder of the longevity of the business, the base that was rejected for that first monument sits in the parking lot under a planter.

Like his great-grandfather, Eric Beight understands that the only way for the business to survive is to keep the customers happy. That can be a struggle sometimes, but usually it’s rewarding, he said.

“You think, ‘This is going to be here forever.’ It’s a monument. It’s going to outlast you, and it’s going to outlast your kids. When it’s done, you step back and think, ‘I did that,’” Beight said.

It’s especially gratifying to work with a family on a special design, he said. Recently, he helped a local family memorialize someone in a grand way. With the family’s input, Beight designed a monument with statues of Jesus and Mary on top of a large granite base. The final cost was $40,000.

Being a fourth-generation stonecutter is important to Beight.

Granite markers are delivered to the business once a week from Vermont manufacturers who import them from around the world and cut and polish them. It used to be that all of stones on the delivery truck were blank, but now 80 percent are lettered, Beight said.

That shows that more local residents are ordering their monuments through funeral homes or other retail businesses that use stonecutters in far-off areas, he said.

Beight & Sons, however, has survived this change because of its personal touch, he said.

He’s had computerized equipment that turns out letter stencils since 1993, but he still creates letter stencils for last names by hand so that he can achieve a look that he wants. He prefers bolder letters with larger serifs.

“In my eye, it just looks better,” he said.

Letters are cut into the granite by sandblasting.

Occasionally, someone will order raised letters on a monument, instead of letters dug into the stone. In that case, Beight chisels the stone away by hand to create the letters.

The computer, however, comes in handy in creating special designs on markers.

“It used to be that the shape of the stone was the beauty. But now, people want their house or their tractor on it. Motorcycles are big,” he said.

Beight has 300 designs on his computer, but he often works with a customer to create a custom design.

Beight has expanded the business since he started taking over ownership from his father and his late uncle, Dale.

He opened a Boardman retail store in 1993 and bought a monument company in New Castle in 2000. Beight & Sons was producing only about 180 monuments a year before those moves. But as sales have increased, so have overhead costs and demands on Beight’s time.

He laughed when he said he might be able to make the same profits with just the original business at 505 state Route 170. The expansion, however, has allowed him to employ four family members, including his wife, Katie, who runs the Boardman store. The company employs seven overall.

Beight also farms 120 acres of crops with his cousin, raises buffalo and operates the Buffalo Hollow concert venue.

“I used to go golfing once a week, but now I don’t do that,” he said.

His father said the business is a lot more hurried today. The delivery truck comes once a week now, but up until the 1950s, the granite markers were delivered by train to East Palestine only twice a year.

First with horses and then small trucks, Beight & Sons would take weeks to haul the markers back to the business. It could take up to a year to complete a monument.

“No one would call up and say, ‘Where’s my stone?’” Cecil Beight said.

“Now,” his son said. “If you tell someone six weeks, they’ll call at five weeks and say, ‘Where’s my stone?’”

But still he pushes on, trying to keep the customers happy. After all, 111 years is nowhere near enough.

He and his wife, who live across the street, have four children between ages 1 and 25, and he’s hoping that one of them will take his place as a fifth-generation owner.

shilling@vindy.com