A cruise and walking tour highlight Stonington’s fabled granite industry
Tour coincides with Granite Museum's newest exhibit on JFK memorial
One of the 1,500 granite stones quarried, cut, and inscribed in Stonington for the John F. Kennedy Memorial gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery. Photo courtesy of the Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society.
Aug. 4, 2026
By John Boit
STONINGTON—One of the most famous jobs of Stonington quarry workers was the grave of John F. Kennedy, who is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. It was the last big job to be quarried in Stonington under the Deer Isle Granite Corporation before it closed in 1968.
Now the Deer Isle Granite Museum is offering two guided tours hosted by members of the Ramos family, owners of Granites of America and the Crotch Island Quarry, showing current operations at the historic Stonington quarry on Friday, August 14 and Saturday, August 15.
The tours, aboard the Isle au Haut mailboat, will include a 90-minute hike to view historical and existing quarrying operations as well as a short harbor cruise “for views and conversation on Stonington’s historic quarries on other islands,” according top a press release. The tours will benefit the nonprofit museum, and special pricing is available for students and island residents. Advance tickets are required for the tour.
“Quarrying is very different today than it was 50 or 100 years ago,” said Ann Marie Ramos, who joined the Museum’s board in 2023. “It remains an important part of Stonington’s legacy, and we are proud to support that.”
The tours coincide with the museum’s newest exhibit, “The JFK Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery,” a collection of shop drawings, inscriptions, photographs and items from family collections detailing “one of the most loved and famous granite quarrying and cutting jobs ever to leave Stonington,” the press release said.
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His original grave at Arlington National cemetery was a simple plot, 20 feet by 30 feet, surrounded by a white picket fence. But in the ensuing years, millions of mourners visited his grave, prompting the need for a larger memorial, which was completed in 1967.
Quarry workers on Crotch Island cut 1,500 blocks, each weighing more than one ton, for Kennedy’s burial site. Several stones were inscribed — in Stonington and by local workers — with selections from Kennedy’s 14-minute inaugural address in 1961, including his now famous line: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
Another inscription, seen in the photograph above in Stonington before being transported to Arlington, reads: "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”
For Stonington quarry workers, the job was deeply personal.
“We felt like we were doing something for a friend,” Deer Island Granite Corporation foreman Aldo Ciomei told a reporter when asked about the job, according to the press release.
“All of us felt the Kennedy job was a thing apart,” said John Hamilton “Bud” McGuire, President of the Deer Island Granite Corporation who oversaw the job and went on to become Stonington’s town manager.
The Granite Museum also has been compiling a list of local men who worked quarrying, cutting, and transporting the Kennedy stones. Those names include Harold Brown, Aldo Ciomei, Alton “Moon” Dunham, Charlie McHenan, “Swede” Olsen, Robert Poitras, and David Sturdee among many others. The museum invites anyone with a family history at the quarry between 1965 and 1967 to share their story with it.
The exhibit will remain up through October. Check its website for hours of operation.
A worker cuts granite blocks at Stonington’s active Crotch Island Quarry during the Deer Isle Granite Museum’s guided tour in 2025. Photo by Linda Nelson.
