Insight North Page 2
		Although monuments are the bread and butter of the granite and marble business, that's truer for the other monument companies in Colma than it is for Fontana's, he says. V. Fontana and Co., he says, is using the 100 tons of granite it imports each year to build more than tombstones. FOR EXAMPLE, THE two veteran craftsmen in Fontana's shop at Clark Avenue and F Street near the business's original location, Pete Masnada, a San Franciscan who has logged 35 years with Fontana, and Ray Ward of San Mateo, a 26-year employee, are working on a variety of projects, including the intricate, hand-done lettering and artwork for tombstones. There's a pair of 1,400-pound chairs they're crafting out of Tennessee marble to be placed at the Greek Amphiteater at the University of California at Berkeley, a gift from a pre-World War II class to honor its war veterans. There's granite surface plates with exact measurements and perfectly-level surfaces that will got to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for use in some of the experiments there. There's dining room and conference		room tables and granite-top kitchen counters, one of the latest rages to take advantage of the impenetrable surface granite affords. "You put granite kitchen counter in a home and it will outlive the house," Fontana says unhesitatingly. Thouse countertops cost anywhere from $2000 to $14,000. There are awards plaques in every shape and form, from a 20-foot-long granite plaque that will honor the donor of a University of California at San Francisco building to a Vietnam War memorial in Ogden, Utah. There's a 6-ton granite monolith dedicated to Golden Gate Bridge engineer Joseph Strauss and funder A.P. Giannini, a monument at the Portola Discovery Site in Pacifica's hills that is multi-sided with plaques describing the views from each spot around the monument. THERE'S A MONUMENT and plaque dedicated by the First Marine Division for a month-long battle in 1944 on the islands of Peleliu and Ngesebus in the South Seas. And there's the works of V. Fontana and Co. at Seton Medical Center in Daly city, at the San Francisco Opera Go to Page 3