Fourth-generation stonemason encourages trade specialities

While some families are full of farmers or bankers, the Kirkpatricks of Grant are full of masons.

Jason Kirkpatrick of Kirkpatrick Masonry in Grant is a fourth-generation stonemason.

Kirkpatrick has been in Imperial this year for the mason work for the veterans memorial along main street on the courthouse lawn.

He was back last week to count bricks and see how many personalized bricks were purchased.

While there are a few stonemasons in southwestern Nebraska, the need is still there.

“There’s not many young kids doing it,” Kirkpatrick said. “You need to have somebody to teach them and there’s not very many guys who are doing that anymore.”

One issue, Kirkpatrick feels, is that students believe they have to go to college to get a degree to be able to have a job.

“The other thing about it I think now, for whatever reason, we think that our kids have to go to high school and then the next logical step is to go to college,” Kirkpatrick said. “I think the trades are largely overlooked.”

The main problem is that with no younger generations going into trades like masonry, the need will skyrocket after masons like  Kirkpatrick retire.

“When I first got into it, the average age of a bricklayer was 55,” he said. Kirkpatrick was 20 when he started. 

Kirkpatrick has recently recruited his nephew from Kansas to work with him.

“We’ll see how he likes it,” Kirkpatrick said. “I’m not going to keep him captured here. I told him, ‘I want you to give it a month, two months. If you hate it. You hate it. But if it’s something that you like, you can make pretty decent money at it.

“I’m not going do this forever,” he added. “All this equipment and everything is your family’s,” Kirkpatrick told his nephew. “Take pride in that. Think about maybe carrying on the family legacy.”

Kirkpatrick history

Kirkpatrick recently thought he was only a third generation stonemason.

It actually started with Kirkpatrick’s great-great grandfather.

When his great-great grandfather was 13, his father moved them from Missouri to just outside of Grant. They started laying brick and block in the area. 

Later, Kirkpatrick’s grandfather ran a crane in Germany during WWII. He came back to Grant and then learned to lay brick and mortar. He and his brother partnered for a while, “but partnerships are difficult especially with family,” Kirkpatrick said.

But Kirkpatrick’s father was the one who started it as a serious profession. 

“They were all plasterers back then,” he said. “Then plastering went out of style and they moved on to masonry.”

Kirkpatrick and his brothers were taught to lay brick by their father.

“My uncle lays brick, too,” he said. “I guess we couldn’t find anything better to do,” he laughed.