Muncie-based Wearly Monuments has opened a location in the former Greenfield Granite property.
Mitchell Kirk | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — A Muncie-based monument maker has opened in the same storefront from which another monument company operated before shutting downin 2020 amid mounting legal troubles and the death of its owner.
Wearly Monuments has moved into the building at 952 W. Main St., where Greenfield Granite had operated for decades. Greenfield Granite closed after the woman who ran the business with her husband took her own life in September 2020. The husband’s subsequent bankruptcy is leaving several of the business’s customers doubtful that they’ll ever be reimbursed for services they paid for but weren’t delivered.
Brian Whittaker worked for Wearly Monuments for 20 years before becoming the company’s first non-Wearly owner since its founding in 1899. He believes Greenfield makes the company’s 41st location. All of Wearly Monuments’ locations are in Indiana except for one in Ohio.
“From a business point of view, we had always hoped to have a store in the Greenfield area,” Whittaker said. “We have sold and erected monuments there for lots and lots of years, but when the need arose for a full-time professional monument company, it just seemed like a natural fit for us to do that.”
Joe Riggs, manager and sole employee of Wearly’s Greenfield location, looks forward to helping customers remember those they’ve lost.
“We’re here to help them create a lasting tribute to their loved one,” said Riggs, also the pastor of Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Greenfield. “I feel like that’s what a monument does — it kind of tells a story of not only who they were, but what they enjoyed a lot of times. Some of the monuments are pretty elaborate anymore, with the etchings and the carvings.”
Wearly Monuments is leasing the property from Daniel and Sue Mize of Greenfield, who bought it in September 2020 from Cynthia Heck, mother of the late Amie Strohl, who ran Greenfield Granite with her husband, James Strohl.
Amie Strohl took her own life on Sept. 8, 2020. Several small-claims cases were pending against Greenfield Granite, filed by customers who accused the business of not providing goods and services after receiving payment. The Greenfield Police Department was also in the middle of an investigation into the business after receiving similar complaints from dozens of customers. The police investigation did not result in charges.
A little more than a week after Amie Strohl’s death, the Indiana attorney general filed a civil case against Greenfield Granite and Heck, its registered agent, in Hancock County Circuit Court. The case resulted in a judgment of nearly $380,000 against Heck and the business.
According to the Indiana Secretary of State’s office, Greenfield Granite was dissolved in August 2021. The business, which was known as the oldest continuously run business in Hancock County, provided grave markers for thousands of families for more than a century.
James Strohl filed for bankruptcy in October 2020 in a case that closed a year later. According to court documents, there were 16 claims filed in the case totaling nearly $414,000. About half of the claims regarded goods and services Greenfield Granite didn’t provide after receiving payment for them. The $380,000 judgment from the attorney general’s civil case was among the claims as well.
Court records state that nearly $290,000 in claims were scheduled, all of which were discharged without payment.
Left unclear is how the result of the bankruptcy case impacts the Greenfield Granite customers who paid for monuments and engravings but never received them. Attorneys involved in the case did not return requests for comment.
Three claimants in James Strohl’s bankruptcy — Greenfield Granite customers Robert Johnson of Greenfield, Penny Brawner of Fortville and Joseph Franke of Indianapolis — said what little they have heard about the case leads them to believe they won’t be getting the goods they paid for or their money back.
Johnson paid nearly $1,300 to Greenfield Granite for a granite stone and was waiting to get it engraved before Amie Strohl’s death and the business’s legal troubles came to a head.
“I guess I have to live with losing the stone,” he said.
