Lanterns

Gaydos Monument Company was founded in 1949 by John Gaydos, Jr. and his wife Carmie Grassi-Gaydos, both first generation immigrants.
 John and Carmie started the monument company in their home on Oak Spring Road in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Their purpose was to provide high quality memorials at reasonable prices to friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances in the community.  
 They raised three children in the same home as they nurtured their business, usually seven days a week, including holidays - some folks could only stop by on a holiday.    
 Together, in 1963, they borrowed a small sum from a local resident of the village of Canonsburg, to build a plant and showroom for the monument company. The showroom, until then, had been John and Carmie's modestly decorated basement; their office... their kitchen table.
Their method of transport and installation of granite monuments (weighing hundreds of pounds) was old fashioned rubber washing machine rollers, a steel bar (for lift), an old coal shoot window with a plank running from the floor of the basement to the outside (to move display pieces from outside-in and vise-versa); a small pick-up truck would be borrowed from a neighbor.
Their neighbors and friends were their crew until their children, Roger, Charlotte, and Debra were old enough to help out. Their 1963 endeavor, across the street from their home was finally a dignified place to showcase their granite monuments - the very same building Gaydos Monument Company operates from today.
In 1981, John Gaydos, Jr. retired and his son, Roger, purchased the family business. Roger J. Gaydos, Sr., his wife Ellen, and all seven of their children have spent years working at the family business.  Three of their sons: Roger Jr., Mike, and Mark, continue to work at the monument company today.  Having maintained the family business through three generations, the Gaydos's have a true understanding of what it means to preserve family heritage - the very mission of crafting granite monuments.
Since Roger took the reigns of the family business, he has instituted a more global approach to fabricating and delivering granite monuments without sacrificing personalized service and reasonable pricing, following the tradition of his mother and father. His focus is to teach people how to really serve the public, harness the latest technology, select the finest granites from around the world and produce the finest product possible. Roger remains ever-committed to improving the monument company, recently building a new warehouse and office space, redesigning the showroom, and retooling the granite monument fabrication at Gaydos headquarters building in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
  The changes have more than tripled production capacity and accommodates the largest granite monument inventory in the Mid-Atlantic region to meet the demands of our growing retail and wholesale customer base.