A Grave Problem With Y2K

Jesse and Lewis Stibitz are pragmatic people who like to save money and plan ahead. They don’t flinch at the prospect of death.

Because of that, they now have a Y2K problem etched in stone. Specifically, it’s engraved on their pre-carved headstone, where their dates of death are already started off: “19 .”

The question is, 19 what? The century is running out of numbers, and the Stibitzes, who are 82 and 84 years old respectively, are doing quite well, thank you.

“When we had that done in the ‘50s, I said to the man who did the stone, “What if I don’t die in 19-something?” Jesse Stibitz said. “And he looked at me and said, ‘You will.’ Well, [the carver] is dead a long time now, and here I am.”

The Stibitzes are like many couples who prepaid for their burials down to the last detail, including headstones carved in advance. The names, a bit of Bible verse, and the birth date were all included in the “final rate” or “pre-need” packages offered by cemeteries.

And so were the first two digits of the year of death. Since monument makers charge by the character, a few dollars could be saved by carving the first two numbers in advance.

With more Americans, especially women, living into their 90s and beyond, those blank spaces have been going uncarved. And chances are that many will remain that way for what’s left of the 1900s.

From New England’s stony churchyards to the mausoleums of New Orleans, to the lawns of Southern California marked with bronze plaques, an estimated 250,000 empty graves with the numbers 19 carved on their headstones are out there, waiting.

Just as programmers are scrambling to fix a glitch that allowed a computer to assume that the first two digits of its internal date were 19, cemetery administrators and headstone manufacturers are discussing their “millennium problem” at conferences, membership meetings and even in special how-to seminars showing how to fix that which is cast in stone.

Up for grabs is who will pay the costs of fixing the problem: the consumer who paid cold cash long ago for a complete package, or the company that sold it to them? Also of concern is which repair method will endure for generations to come.

But since 2000 is still 11 months away, no one is taking corrective action just yet.

“Put it this way, nobody’s saying, ‘Save yourself some money, die early,’ ” said Billy Schlitzberger of Houston, who inherited his monument business from his father.

Schlitzberger said his father, who was known as “Papa Stone” in the industry, set up shop in 1922 and worked in it for 66 years before being buried in a nearby Catholic cemetery. He never included “19” on any headstone.

“My daddy never made that mistake . . . because he saw that coming out of the last century. There were people in 1922 dying with 18 on their stones, and as a young man he took note of that. . . . We just left them blank.”

Jesse Stibitz occasionally visits her future grave and gazes at the double granite stone with the couple’s names and the “19 blanks,” as she calls their pre-carved years of death.

The Mt. Carmel, Penn., couple bought their plot more than 40 years ago, along with the headstone--or actually, the back of another couple’s headstone that was already in place at Mt. Carmel Cemetery. The whole package cost less than $1,000.

They were barely hitting middle age at the time, but Jesse Stibitz has always been able to look death in the eye.

“It doesn’t bother me one bit,” she said. “I’m real realistic, I think ahead. Not as far as the date goes, but that wasn’t my fault.”

Options being discussed for fixing stones like the Stibitzes’ include the following:

* The epoxy method, in which a gluelike adhesive is mixed with crushed stone the color of the marker and affixed over the offending numbers. The procedure is the cheapest, but is not as long-lasting, and the repair may be slightly visible, especially when it gets wet.

* The attractive and affordable bronze option, which calls for bolting a bronze plaque with the correct dates over the outdated one. It is dismissed by purists as a Band-Aid approach.

* Longer-lasting but costlier spot polishing or refacing. Refacing involves cutting off the entire front panel of the stone and re-carving it, guaranteeing a fresh, updated look. Spot polishing involves grinding down just the 19 and replacing it with 20.

Who Will Pay for the Repairs?

The cost could range from about $200 for epoxy to $2,000--as much as it generally costs for a new gravestone--for a complete refacing.

Greg Patzer, executive vice president of the Monument Builders of North America, an industry group based in Des Plaines, Ill., said the epoxy method should work fine in most cases. The method, used in the past to correct errors, can have a life span of several decades if done correctly. Schlitzberger conducted hands-on seminars for the trade association on the epoxy method last year.

But that doesn’t mean he and other memorialists, as certified headstone carvers are called, endorse the epoxy. They prefer refacing or at least spot polishing.

“Spot polishing only involves a mild depression,” according to Jed Hendrickson, who inherited Santa Barbara Monumental Co. from his grandfather, and is president of the California Monument Assn. Hendrickson said “for some reason in California, especially Southern California, our grave carvings are very shallow. . . . It won’t be that hard to polish the numbers down.”

Hendrickson does not like epoxy because “it’s an adhesive. It won’t last as long.”

Similarly, he dismisses a bronze plaque as a patch job that costs almost the same as classier methods.

Another hot topic at industry conferences and seminars is who will handle the cost--the consumer or the company.

At El Toro Memorial Park in Orange County, there are half a dozen pre-inscribed “19 “ death dates among the more than 7,000 graves, including two elderly women, one born in 1922, the other in 1915. Neither woman nor any next of kin could be located for comment, illustrating another problem cemetery administrators say they often have.

“People move, and you’d think they’d notify us, but they forget, I guess,” said El Toro secretary Dianna Torrence.

Wherever they are, when their time comes, their estates or relatives may end up footing the bill for the headstone they thought they had paid for long ago. El Toro is a county-administered burial ground, and the mortuaries the two women made original arrangements with more than 20 years ago have changed hands.

“Unless they’ve got a contract with the original company, they could be out of luck,” said Orange County Cemetery District executive manager Sam Randall. “After all, you can’t just erase it.”

Monument makers say the pre-sales agreements are usually handled by mortuaries and funeral homes, not by them. They predict that cemetery owners, many of which are large conglomerates that have bought up family operators, will refuse to pay.

“It would not surprise me if they would simply tell the family that the whole stone will have to be replaced,” Hendrickson said, “then bill them for the cost of a whole new memorial, not even mention the options.”

But a spokesman for Houston-based Service Corp. International, the largest death care industry chain, said the company would honor any previous arrangements.

Terry Hemeyer of Pierpont Communications, which handles media inquiries for the company, said officials have discussed the millennium problem and determined that “the consumer would not suffer.”

All sides agree that because the whole death care industry tends to think long-range, most stopped carving 19 in the 1960s or ‘70s, forestalling future shock.

“My customers are thinking 10 or 15 years while I’m thinking 100 or 500 years,” said Hendrickson, who considers each of the 125 headstones his company produces each month as not just works of art, but as permanent installations.

Dick Fisher, publicity manager of Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries, which has five locations in Greater Los Angeles, responded dismissively at the thought that the company’s burial grounds might have a “19” problem.

“First of all, we don’t have gravestones, we have memorial tablets [set in the ground],” he said. “We actually pioneered memorial tablets, and we never pre-carve anything. We don’t anticipate any problem.”

Jesse Stibitz said she had been assured by the cemetery sexton that although the repair would not be included in the couple’s prepaid package, it would be relatively easy and inexpensive for her children to fix.

She said she told her son and daughter it would be OK if they stuck a real Band-Aid over the offending numbers.

“Just kidding!” she hastily added.