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One of the headstones from Honor Life.
Randy Willis moved to San Manuel in 1968. His father was working for Cementation, a sub-contractor with Magma Copper. Randy says he remembers living in the miner’s bunkhouse with his dad. In the summer of 1968, his family moved to Oracle. He attended school in Oracle and graduated from San Manuel High School in 1976. He married Edelia Acevedo in 1978. He worked in the mines in south Tucson and Grants, New Mexico.
In 1984, he was the first employee in a startup company that was located in a two-car garage in Tucson. The company “Honor Life” provided headstones and memorials. He moved to the San Diego area in 1989.
Randy said, “I took my hard work ethic and turned it into a full-time business.” Randy is the President of Rayzist PhotoMask Inc. which includes Honor Life.
A memorial bench from Honor Life.
Randy will be offering the services of Honor Life to the Tri-Community. He says that they have done quite a few headstones in Oracle and Mammoth in the past but will now let it be known that they are available throughout the area.
“We provide top quality headstones for a fraction of what they would cost them to purchase in Tucson or other places,” said Randy. “Since we come to the area regularly, we do the installation on these as a free service.”
One of the headstones from Honor Life.
Honor Life provides headstones and memorials throughout the country. They offer a variety of headstone styles and can customize them including custom engraved photographs. Besides headstones, their products include benches, cremation urns and memorials. They also do donor recognition projects, custom memorials for cemeteries, mortuaries and funeral homes, cemetery and church niche walls and memorial gardens and civic memorials. Honor Life has provided engraved civic and veterans memorials from simple plaques to unique structures with complex engravings. All headstones from honor Life include FREE shipping to anywhere in the continental United States.
Some of their memorial works include the Palomar Veterans Memorial at Palomar College in San Marcos, California; the 40-foot-tall California Veteran’s Memorial in Sacramento; and the Hawaii Fallen Law Enforcement Officer Memorial in Honolulu. The Hawaiian memorial was done by Randy’s best friend and a former underground miner and Tri-Community alum and his wife, Henry and Lulu Acevedo.
Honor Life in Hawaii worked on the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.
Henry is the General Manager of Honor Life’s Hawaii branch. He was born in Tucson and raised in Oracle. He is a graduate of San Manuel High School, Class of 1976. Henry has been with the company since it started in 1990. He was hired to start and manage a monument shop. Prior to working for Honor Life, Henry worked in the mining industry at Magma Copper Company, Cementation and the Waste Isolation Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico where he worked in mine development and as a construction manager.
Honor Life in Hawaii worked on the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.
Honor Life has become the leading wholesale memorial company on the Hawaiian Islands. He takes personal pride in providing quality memorial products and outstanding service to his customers and clientele. They have worked on many projects on the island including one at Pearl Harbor, the Sun Yat Sen Memorial and were honored to provide the plaques for the Fallen Officers of Hawaii Law Enforcement Memorial in Honolulu.
Hawaii Fallen Law Enforcement Officer Memorial in Honolulu.
They have been honored and privileged to be doing the stonework and adding the names of those sailors and marines who survived the attack on board the U.S.S. Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, and have since passed away. Over 40 survivors have had their ashes interned with their “brothers” in the Battleship Arizona. The work is part of the restoration and renovation of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial.
Working on the Hawaii Fallen Law Enforcement Officer Memorial in Honolulu.
As you can see, these two local men have done well for themselves. Honor Life’s quality memorial products and outstanding services will be coming to the Tri-Community area soon.
“We take pride in helping families across the USA have a quality experience when dealing with such a tragic event. It’s a difficult time for people and our job is to ease the pressure and help bring some type of closure,” Randy said.
You can learn more about Honor Life, view their products and services at their very user friendly website: www.honorlife.com. You can contact them via Email at: info@honorlife.com general or call: Retail: (800)849-2873; Wholesale: (800)585-5768; Fax: (760)727-2986.
When calling in about the stones in the Tri-Community, please ask for Joshua Willis.
John Hernandez lives in Oracle. He is retired and enjoys writing and traveling. He is active in the Oracle Historical Society. He covers numerous public events, researches historical features and writes business/artist profiles.
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