Hudson Valley Monuments: New Ownership, Same Commitment

Cortlandt Manor, NY – August 4, 2025 — A longstanding provider of memorials in northern Westchester County is entering a new chapter. Hillside Memorials—long known to funeral homes and cemeteries across the Hudson Valley—has rebranded as Hudson Valley Monuments following a change in ownership and the introduction of expanded support services for the profession.

Located directly across from Hillside Cemetery in Cortlandt Manor, Hudson Valley Monuments is now part of the Travis Monument Group, a multi-location memorial company with deep roots in the Tri-State area. The transition brings new investment, added technical capabilities, and consistent service backed by more than 100 years of industry heritage.

“Our team works closely with funeral directors, cemeterians, and municipal managers to deliver personalized, on-time memorials,” said Anthony Minozzi, Chief Operating Officer and fourth-generation memorialist. “We understand the operational demands of your work and see ourselves as an extension of your care to the families you serve.”

A Familiar Legacy, A Trusted Hand-Off

Originally founded in 1922 as George W. West Monuments and operating for decades under the Hanner family as Hillside Memorials, the firm has long been a resource for timely, respectful memorial design and installation. Upon her retirement in early 2025, Lorraine Hanner entrusted the business to the Minozzi family, long-time professional colleagues and leaders in regional memorial service.

Now operating as Hudson Valley Monuments, the company remains focused on supporting the operational needs of cemeteries and funeral homes while maintaining high-touch service for at-need and pre-need families.

Services That Support Funeral and Cemetery Partners

Hudson Valley Monuments has expanded its offerings to better align with the needs of deathcare professionals, municipalities, and religious institutions:

• Design-to-Approval Turnaround – Fast, collaborative memorial design using digital renderings, with family approvals coordinated when needed.
• Installation Coordination – Direct coordination with cemetery or funeral home staff to ensure placement and delivery are handled seamlessly.
• Historic and Civic Restoration – Stone cleaning, resetting, and conservation services for aging or damaged municipal and private markers.
• Custom and Oversized Memorial Solutions – Markers, headstones, columbaria, cremation memorials, and mausoleums tailored to site-specific needs.
• Showroom Experience (Coming Soon) – A new showroom for in-person design consults, reducing back-and-forth and simplifying family engagement.

Part of the Travis Monument Group

Hudson Valley Monuments is one of five companies within the Travis Monument Group, which provides regional scale and shared operational resources while retaining localized service:

• Travis Monuments – Nyack, NY
• Putnam County Monuments – Carmel, NY
• Orange County Monuments – Washingtonville, NY
• Rovelli Monuments – Danbury, CT
• Hudson Valley Monuments – Cortlandt Manor, NY

Each location is staffed by experienced artisans, project managers, and support professionals who understand the unique demands of funeral and cemetery service.

“This is more than a name change,” added Minozzi. “It’s a renewed commitment to serving as a reliable partner to funeral homes and cemeteries—delivering what’s needed, when it’s needed, with professionalism and care.”

If you have been a funeral director for any length of time you have found yourself in a cemetery on a beautiful summer day when after the formal committal service the family remains to visit and you see young children play on cemetery monuments.  However, as this archived CBS News article mentions, children have been killed when those monuments fall on them.

Powys County of Great Britain is now set to do something about that.  You can read this article from the Shropeshire Star where the county is set to begin an inspection program of county cemeteries in February.  According to the article, inspectors will give each monument one of three possible ratings:

• Category 1:  Unsafe and in need of immediate attention
• Category 2:  Unstable but unlikely to cause an immediate health and safety risk
• Catogory 3:  Stable and no action required

The article goes on to say what will happen with a Category 1 monument:  “A Category 1 memorial will be laid down or made safe by other means at the time of inspection. A red notice will be placed on the memorial/grave advising that the memorial is unsafe and providing details of how to contact the council.”

Here’s what will happen with a Category 2 monument:  “A Category 2 memorial will have an amber notice placed in a suitable position on the memorial stating that the memorial is unsafe and how to contact the council. If after the expiry of six months from the date of inspection the memorial has not been fixed it will be laid down or made safe by other methods as appropriate.”

Councillor Richard Church, Cabinet Member for a Safer Powys, made the following comment about the program, “We have to be sure that our cemeteries are a safe place to visit and any memorials that are potentially dangerous are made secure.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  This makes all the sense in the world. . . nobody wants someone to get hurt in a cemetery.  I’m also of the opinion that as insurance company loss prevention officers see this inspection program, we may be seeing more situations like this if a cemetery wants to continue to have insurance coverage.

The biggest issue that I see with the program and its potential expansion is the cost or repairing some of these monuments to a “safe” condition.  Once a large monument has lost its stability, it is not inexpensive to right that situation. . . . and many times a 100-year old monument will have no heirs to take care of the costs.  And, many cemeteries cannot afford the costs.

I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of permanent memorials for posterity sake.  However, the people in Powys County do show that having that mindset does incur some costs that may not be easy to fund.

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,120 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

I’m big on the concept of memorialization.  My life is better because those relatives that came before me left a history of their time on earth for me to grasp onto.  That history consists of their burial places marked with memorials at our local cemetery as well as photos and newspaper articles about who they were that has given me a greater sense of who I am?

And, as I look into the future I have tried to decide how future descendents of mine will learn about me via a memorialization process.  I’m pretty certain that I’ll be buried at the same cemetery as my ancestors so that when looking at my memorial stone these future descendents (and anybody else) will see a name of someone who “lived”.

While that may be enough “memorialization” for me, there is a whole new generation of people in this world who are being brought up in what, for them, is an almost complete “digital world”.  For those people there is no file cabinet of papers or old physical newspapers or tangible photos to go through. . . . . .this ever growing group of people live in a digital world.

It makes sense then, that their memorialization process will very likely be digital also.  The question that we have in today’s world is “What will that look like?”

Architect Alex Josephson contemplated that question as he was sitting with his hospitalized father back in 2020.  And, as this recent article from Fast Company points out, Josephson had questions about the legacy his father may leave.  Here’s a quote from Josephson in that article, “I knew my father was more than just a date of birth and a date of potential death.  And I think everybody could say the same about their loved ones.”

Josephson went on to contemplate the following according to that article, “Memorializing a person and capturing the essence of who they are should be much more than a line or two of data inscribed on a rock. (Josephson) started thinking of what else could be done, particularly in an age awash in digital media, to create a more representative memorial of a person.”

It was out of that thought process that the company Cumulus was born.  . Here is what the article says of Cumulus, “It’s evolved into a collaborative digital memorial platform where more of the depth of a person’s life—in the form of photos, videos, audio, documents, and weblinks—can be collected and shared. Josephson sees it as a place where a person like his father could have a more comprehensive life story and memorial, and one that he could work on himself before he dies.”

Josephson explains Cumulus as such, “In a sense, it started with the physical monument being a limited medium for the message.  My vision for Cumulus is it becomes the place where you curate that message, the digital assets that have become our formal existence on the earth outside of our relationships, and create a meaningful place for them.”

The company is recently coming out of Beta-mode and, according to the article, has signed up funeral home and cemetery operator Park Lawn Corporation as one of its first customers.  Here’s part of, from the article, what Park Lawn Corporation executive Jay Dodds says of the idea of Cumulus, “The funeral and cemetery business is about legacy. It’s about keeping a memory or remembrance alive forever for a family. And as the trend moves more towards cremation, it somewhat takes the cemetery out of the picture because they don’t need to bury the full remains in the cemetery. . . . . I’ve been in this business for 40 years. What people don’t understand is once you have a loved one who dies, that doesn’t mean the relationship stops. You still have a relationship.  Cumulus is a connectivity piece. And humans need that connectivity.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  What is interesting about Cumulus is that while it is about the legacy that will be left as a memorial, the people that are most interested in creating these memories are living and in the ages of between 30 and 50.  Here’s what the article says about that situation, “They’re the ones faced with mortality because their parents are either arranging their plans or they’ve had to deal with it on a surprise basis. And so the people who end up having to do the work are between that age bracket. . . . . This is also a generational group of people who have seen more and more of their lives recorded or documented in digital media, but who have few good options for collecting and curating it all.”

I’m not the most digital-savvy guy in the world, but I can see opportunity for Cumulus.  I also see this type of memorial being fine-tuned as technology changes and advances.  Reading the article gave me a much bigger perspective on differing ideas and possibilities for future memorialization that all funeral directors should be aware of.

That being said, there is a lot of people and money in “Digital Memorials” at this time.  I think that no one company has it “figured out” yet, but the opportunity for the first company that “gets it right” is big and should provide a very big upside over the next two to three decades. . . . In my opinion, the idea of the “correct” style of digital memorials is a play for the long-haul of Death Care, not simply for next week.

Here is the website for Cumulus

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,145 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”