Western-Star.com

Saints and angels on pedestals, hillside mausoleums and other towering monuments to the dead line the older sections of Calvary Cemetery in Kettering and Moraine, some dating back a century or more.

But aside from their grandiosity, the words etched in these stones are often simple: name, date of birth and date of death.

In modern times, thanks to technological advances, creative thinking and the increasing availability of etch-friendly black granite, monuments can state so much more than that, no matter the size.

Some tell stories.

The images on Matt Dudon's headstone, for instance, tell you the blond-haired athlete played and coached soccer, loved racing and Corvettes and may have left behind two treasured pets, a dog and exotic bird, when he died Sept. 19, 1992, at the age of 29.

Louis J. Raterman (Dec. 2, 1925 — Sept. 8, 1999) loved fishing. The etching of a man in his fishing boat reeling in a catch tells you so.

"After they started quarrying the black stones and getting it out of the earth, that's when etching became possible," said Dan Hafer, a fine artist for the Xenia-based Dodds Monuments. "It created instead of a white canvas a black canvas, so it's a matter of taking away instead of putting on."

Dodds President Eric P. Fogarty said the price for a monument correlates with its size, shape, color and extent of artistic detail, from around $400 for a simple, flat marker on up.