Odd Jobs: April

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Gene Chapman Etched In Stone

By Joleen Hammell

Gene Chapman, owner of Roseville-based Chapman Monument Co., first began “selling stone” when he was 5 years old. “He would collect as many pretty rocks as he could find and try to sell them to neighbors for a nickel,” remembers Chapman’s mother and company vice president Adele Veerkamp.
    Chapman, 43, chose to build on that early entrepreneurial foundation and has been sculpting monuments, mausoleums and memorials and personalizing gravestones for more than two decades now.
    Born and raised in Arroyo Grande, Calif., at age 9 Chapman sent in a cartoon that was published in the local newspaper, The Five Cities. Despite such early recognition of his talents, Chapman found his interests leaning more toward working with stone. After graduating from high school, he took a job at Union Granite Co. in Rocklin and met George (whose last name has faded from Chapman’s memory), an 80-year-old stone cutter from Georgia who taught Chapman “the trade.”

Monumental Technique
“I picked his mind for every piece of information I could,” says Chapman, adding he learned 18th-century stonecutting techniques that he still uses today. By relying on a hammer and chisel, rather then opting for modern-day advancements such as the sandblaster, Chapman hopes to preserve the authentic look and feel inherited from the octogenarian.
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