Rove Gratz Died Yesterday

Ricky Jackson · Post by **Ricky Jackson** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 12:46 pm

My very good friend and mentor, Rove Gratz, died yesterday after his bout with cancer. The funeral will be Monday and his widow, Linda, asked to be a pall bearer.

Rove served in the US Air Force where I believe he was in the intel community (I never asked but I did pick up on some familiar things). He had a sign shop here in Warner Robins when I was just a pup learning everything that I could about signs. I would sit and watch perfectly formed lettering seem to fall off the end of his brush. I remember him screenprinting some bumper stickers that said "The Ayotollah is an Assaholla". He had a very good but dry sence of humor and was always smiling. It was around 1976 when I had the opportunity to do my first gold leaf glass job. I told Rove about it and he told me how to price it and said he would show me how to do it. I got the job and Rove showed me step by step, assuring me that "It's no big deal". I did the job and the customer was very happy. Rove was just that kinda guy.

He later took a job as an illustrator with the base here. After a few years he transferred to Ft Walton Beach where he worked at the base there as an illustrator. We went and visited them there. He lived there for about 5 years and moved back here, going back to and retiring from the base. He got into carving birds and was one of the best at it. His specialty was carving birds from old golf club heads; I have a beautiful duck that he made. He used to come by the shop every few months until he got sick.

I had asked about making ttf fonts awhile back. "Rover" is what I had named the casual style that I meticulously traced and scanned from Rove's hand lettering on a window job.

I'm sure some of you will remember him. He was one heck of a sign guy.

http://rove-342.tripod.com/index.html

Roderick Treece · Post by **Roderick Treece** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 2:23 pm

Ricky,
Sorry to hear about your friend.Thanks for posting the link to his portfolio.Very nice work.
I have a web site I made to honour sign artists like Rove.If you want to wright some thing and send it with some photos I will post it.

Roderick

http://www.ghosttownsigns.com/ghosttown ... tTown.html

e-mail to me at roderick@customglasssigns.com