PHIPPS MEMORIAL

Baylor graduate, Joe Phipps, keeps his family’s tradition alive at Phipps Memorial monument business, “the last of the custom, family-owned monuments.”

Jim Phipps, Joe Phipps’ father, married the owner of Dietz Memorial’s daughter. Phipps’ father then went to work for his father-in-law, but in 1939 decided to break away from Dietz and start his own company, Jim Phipps Memorial.

Joe Phipps is now the owner of his father’s business, but when he took over, the state said he could not come in with the same name because Jim Phipps Memorial was a partnership between his father and mother, so he shortened the name of the company to just Phipps Memorial.

This family is on its third, soon to be fourth, generation of ownership.

“My family has been doing this for ever and ever and ever,” Phipps said.

Aimee Wood, Joe Phipps’ daughter, said “as kids, we would all come down here and have to work and sort.”

Dietz Memorial and Phipps Memorial, both being monument building businesses, caused Jim Phipps to initially be in competition with his family when starting his own company. “His competitors for a long time were his family,” Wood said.

At Phipps Memorial, you are not charged by the letter, unlike most other monument businesses. “You could write the Gettysburg Address,” Phipps said, for the same price as just a few words.

Every job at Phipps Memorial is done the “old fashion way,” in house, at this location. Doing it this way is more cost efficient for the customers because the product is not going through so many different hands.

“We’re the only ones that will call you and give you a couple days’ notice that we are going to be setting the stone in case you want to be there for closure, nobody else does that,” Phipps said.

Customers can personalize their stones however they would like. “A woman had a barracuda put on her husband’s side of the stone because during their honeymoon they’d almost got attacked by a barracuda, so that was important to her,” Joleen Mazarka, the head artist at Phipps Memorial, said. “People can really personalize it, we can pretty much do any art they want.”

“She (Mazarka) can do everything quicker, better than what I used to do,” Phipps said.

Phipps memorial uses newer technology which causes them to be able to execute all of the “unusual stones” that customers ask for, Phipps said.

There is an extensive variety of stone kept in house at Phipps Memorial. “We have the most stone on hand in Waco, I would say,” Woods said. Phipps has anything from Canadian Pink, which Phipps’ competitors call red, but he swears is pink, to Tropical Green that he used to construct monuments for Baylor, to Georgia Blue, the most popular stone due to it being so inexpensive. Phipps said he will even order special stone requested by the customer from anywhere in the world.

“Everybody wants something a little bit different,” Phipps said.

Phipps Memorial cares immensely for their customers and the Waco community. “We provide for Emergent, we give them a free stone, at Restland Cemetery, if a church said somebody died and didn’t have any money, we have always provided a free stone for them, and VA markers, for veterans, free of charge,” Phipps said.

Phipps also accommodates different religious traditions. “Hebrews have extra letters in alphabet, so they will actually come in to check the Hebrew writing and then they go through the ceremony to bless it, then we take it to the cemetery,” Phipps said. “Hebrews cannot have a stone set for 12 months, so after the 12 months they basically take it to the cemetery, we put a sheet over it to veil it and then they will have a ceremony where the rabbi will come out and bless the stone in the cemetery, unveil the stone, they will have chanters and they’ll have their ceremony and dedicate the stone.”

“If you’re in the modern day, everything has been in a cardboard box, been shipped around so you don’t have any customer service,” he said.

“The industry is going more commercial,” Phipps said.

Genaro Barron cuts the stones and has been for decades. Phipps will occasionally let him cut a “fun stone” however he would like, and create his own design, “I let him enjoy life a little bit,” Phipps said.

“I have been working for this company for over two decades,” Barron said. “I enjoy customizing stones for families, whether it’s adding additional designs to an existing stone or cutting stones to a unique size.”

There is a heated room specifically for cutting stencil at Phipps Memorial. Making sure the room is the perfect temperature is important because if it is too cold or too hot it can cause the stencil to shrink or expand and not allow for an accurate cut.

Kyle Rydell, a stencil cutter at Phipps Memorial, said that at first, it can be hard to cut stencil to be perfectly accurate, but “everyone here has their own technique when it comes to the stencil.”

Phipps explained how he then modified the tables used to cut stencils. Usually, these tables have four wheels and will sometimes roll when people are working, which can cause unwanted error.

“I put the special wheels on the table and cleats on it, and then we can lift it up on a machine to move it around, but he [Rydell] can sit there and work on it and it’s not going to run on him, I learned that at Baylor,” Phipps said.

Phipps Memorial had the honor to do work for the government and did all the work for President George Bush in Fort Hood. Also, at Fort Hood, he crafted a memorial for the special forces and then was gifted a special forces award.

“We do a lot for the veterans and we do excellent work,” Phipps said.

Any such business must have large enough rooms to allow space to work on these gigantic pieces. “We are the only ones with big enough rooms to handle stuff for the government,” Phipps said.

Other opportunities Phipps said he received were to make monuments for the Oklahoma bombing, the Vietnam War and the Korean War memorials.

Phipps will at times be asked to construct these memorials, but other times he said he does it out of the kindness of his own heart.

“In the beginning it started out that they would come to him with bids, asking him to submit a bid, but I feel like over time they just called him,” Wood said.

“Usually any job that can’t be done, I get,” Phipps said.

Phipps said he was invited to attend a trade school in Elderton where students are taught how to quarry stones, make stones, create quality artwork on stones and how to efficiently sell stones. He was one of the first people to obtain all four diplomas in one year.

“I’d like for it to last forever,” Phipps said about his company.