By CLAYTON PARK

When David Quiring Jr. got out of the Army in 1965, his goal was to return to University of Washington to finish his degree in education.

However, his dad, David Quiring Sr., had other plans for him.

Quiring recalls being invited into his dad's office where the elder Quiring pulled out some letters he had specially made to add to the sign for the family business, Quiring Monuments: "& Son."

Quiring talked his dad out of adding the extra letters to the company name, insisting that he really wanted to become a teacher, not a monument maker. He did, however, reluctantly agree to "temporarily" run Quiring Monuments so his dad could devote time to another business he had recently purchased.

In 1969, Quiring's "temporary job" turned into a permanent one when his dad suddenly died of a heart attack.

Thirty years later, Quiring continues to run Quiring Monuments, although, even at age 57, he maintains that he still harbors the dream of someday returning to school to complete his degree and become a teacher.

Not that Quiring's in any hurry to quit his current job, mind you.

He's got his hands full running Quiring Monuments, a business was recently honored as one of this year's recipients of the Mayor's Small Business Award for outstanding business achievements and service to the community. Quiring Monuments was the only North Seattle business to receive the award this year.

Quiring Monuments, now in its 74th year, has been at its current location, 9608 Aurora Ave. N., since 1949, when Quiring Sr. moved to Seattle from Wichita, Kan., where he learned the trade from an uncle who had a monument business there.

Originally, the Aurora site doubled as the family home, where the company's sales office also served as the family living room.

The company has grown over the years, from only three employees when Quiring Jr. went to work for his dad in 1965, to 36 today, which include Quiring Jr.'s sons Jeff and John, son-in-law Dave Haab, and nephew Chris Green, the company's general manager.

Quiring's enthusiasm and passion for the business is quite evident when showing off the facility where the meticulous work of sculpting and sandblasting the marble monuments takes place.

He proudly notes that Quiring Monuments has become an industry leader in innovating new techniques for monument-making that has allowed for the integration of sophisticated graphics, from photos and realistic illustrations to sculpture art and an array of stylized typeface fonts that would be the envy of any magazine.

In addition to running a successful business, Quiring has also been active in the community. He is a past-president of the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association, and was recently elected to the board of Seattle/King County Crime Stoppers. He also serves as president of the North Precinct Advisory Committee.

Over the years, Quiring Monuments has received numerous awards from its peers in the monument-making industry, including four first-place awards in the Monument.Builders of North America's international memorial design contest last year.

Quiring has also been quoted as an expert in the field of memorialization in Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal, and was recently mentioned in a nationally-broadcast commentary by noted radio personality Paul Harvey.

Quiring is especially proud of his company's achievements in "taking memorialization to a new level." "Here's the difference," he explains: "In the past, people were only interested in adding religious symbolism or meaningless additions like flowers that didn't look like flowers" to tombstones, "just to fill space."

"We've added graphic design to create stories in stone," he said, noting that his company, which employs a number of artists, blends computer graphics with the "uniqueness of hand-drawn artwork."

Some examples:

€ One recently completed monument shows illustrations of the deceased person's favorite activities: a seaplane soaring into the clouds (he was a pilot), the fishing boat he owned, and an image of him skiing. It also includes handprints of his children, a letter from his family and a poem.

€ A monument made to mark the grave of the late noted artist George Tsutakawa includes a bronze bas relief sculpture made by Tsutakawa's son, along with a large reproduction of Tsutakawa's trademark brush-stroked signature.

Quiring Monuments does more than make grave-markers. The company created several of the carved-in-stone signs for the Seattle Art Museum, and recently refurbished Wallingford artist Ron Petty's Fisherman's Memorial sculpture at Fisherman's Terminal.

Quiring may not have originally intended to take over the family business, but in hindsight he says he's glad he did.

The monument business, according to Quiring, is "one of the things that most people have not planned for at all ... yet it's the thing that lasts beyond the funeral or burial. It helps put down in a permanent basis the unique qualities of their loved one.

"We take 70, 80, 100 years of life and we condense it through the use of symbols and a few written words to create a clear glimpse of the uniqueness of that person. That's why this job is never boring."