Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994 TAG: 9403210021
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
David Kunca, who runs Kirk's antiques shop on Second Street, says he came by the stones legitimately, buying them from a monument company at a bankruptcy auction, and he sees nothing wrong with selling them as folk art.
No matter how he got them, an Archeological Society official told Kunca in a letter last week that he is helping create a market that could encourage thieves to take old markers from cemeteries.
Joey Moldenhauer of Salem, the society's past president and chairman of its cultural resource committee, asked Kunca to stop selling the stones.
Kunca isn't budging, and he isn't answering the letter, either. "If they're so concerned," he said Thursday, "they can buy them from me and give them a proper burial."
Among several stones at the shop Thursday were some from the mid-1800s and the turn of the century.
Moldenhauer particularly objected to the display of a stone for a baby boy. "His little existence on this Earth is being sold," he said after the tombstone situation was discussed at a society meeting in Roanoke on Tuesday night.
Kunca said he bought the stones at an auction at Marsteller Corp. on Franklin Road. Marsteller, founded as City Marble Works in 1887, was forced into bankruptcy in 1992. It still is selling stone and flooring supplies and its property is now for sale.
Kunca said he bought only a few stones, "maybe 10, at the most." He said many more were available, and other antique dealers bought some, too.
Dudley Marsteller Jr., president of Marsteller Corp. and grandson of its founder, expressed grief Thursday that the old stones were being sold this way. "It's very embarrassing to me that this has happened. It is awful."
With the bankruptcy, he said, he was forced to sell everything at the November auction.
The company had stockpiled old-fashioned stones that had been replaced with granite ones, and old stones that contained sandblasted errors in the inscriptions. Marsteller had thought the stones might be used as material in another kind of project some day. Instead they wound up in the hands of antique dealers.
"It never occurred to me that anybody would sell them," he said. He asked that anyone buying the stones not display the names they bear.
Kunca said he went to the auction to buy old ceramic fireplace tiles, not tombstones. "I like unusual stuff in my store."
He was offended that the society's letter informed him it's against the law to take gravestones from cemeteries. "I certainly wouldn't ransack a graveyard."
Kunca said the buyer of one tombstone at his shop planned to use it on a dog's grave. Another was going to put two stones atop a knoll that people said looked like a burial mound. Others intend to plant the stones deep in the ground as yard ornaments, with inscriptions buried and only the decorative tops showing.
The prospect of scattering tombstones around the region and confusing history for future generations deeply troubles the archaeologists. Moldenhauer said people are "creating pseudo-graveyards and misrepresenting the historical and genealogical records."
Marsteller agrees. "That's something we were very sensitive to in the business."
Moldenhauer has printed up fliers asking historians, preservationists, genealogists, clergy, cemetery owners and funeral directors to encourage Kunca to stop the trade.
"I really don't understand why people are so upset about the tombstones," Kunca said. "I don't think it's sacrilegious or anything else. I haven't done anything illegal with them."
Gerard Wertkin, director of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, said although some tombstones are significant works of art, he and his institution "stand solidly against the commoditization of gravestones. They are cultural and religious artifacts of very significant importance. They stand as bearers of local and family history."
"I take it there's nothing illegal" about the stones for sale in Kunca's shop, Wertkin said, but added, "One still hates to see it, because it is an invasion of a privacy long-gone and shouldn't become a commodity."
Several decades ago, Wertkin said, it was not unusual to find tombstones in folk art collections, but people complained about the stones being traded and feared it would encourage graveyard scavengers. Now, he said, he rarely sees tombstones in the market any longer.
"It's something I don't personally think much of," said Bob Beard, an antique dealer on the Roanoke City Market. "It might develop a market or something."
by CNB