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The Beacon of The STone InduSTry www.slipperyrockgazette.net
July 2019 Volume 25.7
Top: Double vanity with matching vessel sinks is a decorative contrast to the vanity tops and the chiseled edge backsplash.
Left: This striking granite island is the focal point of this custom kitchen. Below: Archive shop photo, Rausch Brothers Monument Company.
The Long and Winding RoaTd to Moda Stone
he year was 1931, and as Americans watched President Herbert Hoover
deal with a failing economy (the Great Depression) and an ecologi- cal disaster (the Great Dust Bowl), the world anxiously watched the rise to power of a new and fanat- ical political faction in Germany – dire times, but not everywhere.
1931 was also the year that Valentine Rausch was hired by the Columbia Granite Company, a quarry and monument supplier owned by Dewey Kaddatz and Roy Steiner. Little did Rausch re- alize that he was laying the foun- dation for Life Song Monuments, a memorial fabrication company nearly 100 years into the future.
How do these previous events relate to Moda Stone, you won- der? Well, for starters, it’s how the unlikely formation of this month’s feature company began, recalled Great Grandson and President, Tim Rausch.
“My cousins operated a com- pany called Rausch Granite Interiors and Rausch Brothers Monument Company in Southeastern South Dakota. The two companies stayed together
Peter J. Marcucci
Photos Courtesy Moda Stone
until the 1950s when my grand- father, Herman, moved here to Rapid City, South Dakota, and started the Rausch Monument Company. It operated through the 1980s during which time, my fa- ther, Charles, took the company over in 1985, and by 2017 re- named it Life Song Monuments. There were a lot of transitions and new locations for these fam- ily-owned companies throughout those early years. As for Moda Stone, it actually came to fruition from Rausch Granite Products by my dad, Chuck Rausch, to do contracted installations of countertops until 2007, when we opened our own fabrication plant here in Rapid City. The company name was then changed to Moda Stone in 2014, mostly due to the fact that the name Rausch was pretty much synonymous with headstones, and we needed our brand to stand alone from the world of monuments. Hence, the birth of Moda Stone.”
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