The Collegian

Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Your News

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson Rany Mitchell, former owner of LT and CJ's, now sells gravesite monuments.

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson

Randy Mitchell says 50 percent of his sales come from referrals by those he's served in the past. The rest come from knowing people, and letting them know what he does. But he has a source for leads that's alien to most salesmen: the obituary pages.

"You never know what the reception will be," Mitchell said. After answering a newspaper advertisement and taking a short course, he's been selling gravestones since October of last year, and he's already worked for people in every stage of life and grief.

"Some people aren't ready to work on a monument for months," he said. "But that placement has a lot to do with closure. And there's always someone who misses a funeral. They want to pay their respects at a gravesite."

Mitchell, the former manager of LT & CJ's Pizza in Hillsdale, sells monuments for Delphos Granite Works, a memorial manufacturer two hours south of Hillsdale, in Ohio. The company sells stones across southern Michigan, northern Indiana and Ohio, but has lacked a presence in the central part of this state. Mitchell hopes to fill that void, and if he makes enough sales in a year, Delphos will partner with him to open a showroom in the area.

That's where the balancing act begins. Mitchell, dressed in work clothes and heavy boots, with a strong handshake and neat hair, seems a born salesman: chipper, enthusiastic and well-versed in his product. He once made his living in pizza, starting as a manger of Pizza Huts in northern Michigan in 1983. He ran McDonald's restaurants and Dairy Queens and sold for Schwann's and Coca-Cola before opening LT and CJ's Pizza in Hillsdale in June 2007. But "the economy finally did [the restaurant] in," and his side-gig of memorial sales will soon be his main source of income.

But unlike some huckster of Italian pies, in this business he can't use that handshake to twist an arm and clinch a sale. His customers are grieving. Rob Hayes, manager of St. Anthony's cemetery in Hillsdale, said it's hard to make a sale around the emotion.

"You have to show them their choices, the areas for burial, when the funeral will be, the prices. If they're in tears most of the time, it takes longer," Hayes said.

"At the time of loss, emotions run high, OK?" Mitchell asserts. "People have a need for this service, but you have to be genuine and sincere." He pulls his arms off the table and rolls his chair in toward the listener, in a gesture of practiced salesmanship and real concern.

"Selling in the home is especially beneficial to the family, since there's a comfort level that doesn't exist in the showroom or office," Mitchell said. "In the home, they have things that remind you of the person who was lost."

Those objects, pictures, flags, toy and golf clubs all feature prominently on Delphos' gravestones. By sandblasting or cutting with diamond wheels and lasers, craftsmen at company headquarters etch photo-quality images on the tombs. One stone features a couple's profiles in the upper left quadrant of the huge granite piece, over an image of him playing golf and her sunbathing on a beach. The surname, "CROW," in block script, is the only part of the piece that could be called traditional.

Mitchell sells simpler pieces like grass markers, which lay flat on the grass and maintain the vista of a cemetery. He flips through his black portfolio to a simple rectangle, with a woman and her husband's names and dates of birth and death. It's for Mitchell's grandmother.

"I lost my grandmother in February," Mitchell said, his face showing memory instead of emotion. "She was real tight with the Lord. She's OK."

Mitchell's markers cost $2,300 on average, but some sell for $1,800. Many of the pieces look like benches, and some have cabinets for cremation urns. Mitchell says his six-week training involved watching stone selection and cutting, so he knows how they get from raw rock to polished sheen. He pulls two square pieces of granite from his duffel, one black and one charcoal, and flashes them like playing cards.

"Red, gray and black are standard," Mitchell says, "but we use black for the elaborate stuff."

Cemetery sextons eventually place the markers on concrete foundations, which Hayes said are poured so long as it's not wintertime.

"We contract that through the custodian," Hayes said. "He does the mowing and he digs the graves." Hayes, who has helped run St. Anthony's graveyard since 1987, said there are 1,800 plots filled and 700 or 800 left. He said he doesn't know if he's got better at working with grieving relatives since then.

"I just don't know," he said. "Sometimes people thank me, which seems strange."

"It's something we'd rather not consider," Mitchell said. "When the time comes, they're grief-stricken and can't think. You've got to be willing to spend a couple of hours."

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