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Divine Stone

Forty Years Ago

40 years ago today
D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon checks his level on a sill skeleton bed mould base on April 13, 1981.

Photojournalist Robert F. Rodriguez chronicled the Dean Morton Era stoneyard almost from its beginning. He has been in the process of digitizing thousands of his images. As he began digitizing this latest batch, he was struck with the fact that they were images he took forty years ago. Today, Robert sent them to us and we are grateful.

forty years ago today
View of raw limestone blocks stacked and waiting to be cut on April 13, 1981. The lower stone, second from left, bears the destination – St. John – written in crayon.

Robert’s images here capture a day in the life of the stoneyard. Everyone busy, active, producing stones for the Southwest Tower. We see large quarry blocks that have arrived and soon to be marked for sawing.

forty years ago today
Sawyer Robert Stanley keeps an eye on the rotary saw on April 13, 1981.

As he saw these images after all this time, he thinks about them and well….Robert says it best…

” April 13, 1981 seemed like a routine day in the stoneyard… all the stonecutters were at their bankers, the clink-clink of chisels reverberating. Alan Bird and Ruben Gibson were playing an unending game of musical limestone blocks. They were squeezing cut stones into tight spaces. A small group of well dressed tourists stopped by to see progress.

  • Ruben Gibson doesn’t know which way to turn as he is seemingly surrounded by stacks of cut stones on April 13, 1981.
  • Alan Bird stands atop a flat limestone block just stacked to remove the straps on April 13, 1981.
  • A well dressed tour group visited the stoneyard that day on April 13, 1981.

…But seen through a 40 year prism, the day becomes a snapshot, a day preserved, a day recorded for posterity.

Cynie Linton uses a wide chisel to clean out roughed out limestone on her stone on April 13, 1981.

I’ve been scanning and digitizing my stoneyard negatives for some time now and, as I was entering the date, it stuck me that these seemingly mundane events at the stoneyard happened exactly forty years ago. How the years have passed and I feel fortunate that I can look back at the day and have a record to show what happened.

Forty Years Ago
Manuel Alvardo works on an edge of his limestone block on April 13, 1981.

My photographs show a busy banker area with Jose Tapia and James Jamerson working so closely together that they were almost back to back… Poni Baptiste meticulously checking her stone against the zinc templates…Nelson Otero, usually working on the planer, picking up a chisel to work on stone.

  • Forty years ago
    Jose Tapia and James Jamerson, two of the five original stonecutters, work back to back in the carving shed on April 13, 1981.
  • Forty years ago
    Arlene “Poni” Baptiste uses a long chisel to work on her stone on April 13, 1981.
  • Forty years ago
    Nelson Otero, who usually shapes stones on the planer, works on a stone block on April 13, 1981 after getting some pointers on cutting stone from Jose Tapia.

The sawing and cutting area was so crammed with a recent delivery of limestone blocks that they could barely find room for the finished stones until they could be stacked outside. Alan Bird, Ruben Gibson and Robert Stanley gingerly hoisted stones and stacked them like huge puzzle pieces.

Alan Bird, Robert Stanley and Ruben Gibson prepare to move a flat limestone block near the entrance to the stoneyard on April 13, 1981.

Truthfully, nothing special happened that day and I have a record to show how my dear colleagues went about their business on this very ‘uneventful’ day.” – Robert F. Rodriguez

  • We are indebted to Robert F. Rodriguez for sharing the events of Forty Years Ago, Tuesday, April 13, 1981

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