McGee Wins NCMCA Sigmon Award

Words: Dan Kamys McGee Wins NCMCA Sigmon Award

Seventeen-year-old Wristen McGee, an apprentice with McGee Brothers Co. in Monroe, N.C., has won the David R. Sigmon Award and is the champion of the 2011 North Carolina Masonry Contractors Association Masonry (NCMCA) Apprentice Skills Contest. Wristen, the son of Chris and Lori McGee of Monroe, joined 15 other NCMCA working apprentices in the May 21 competition at Custom Brick and Supply Co. in Raleigh. Wristen is enjoying a good run as a competitive apprentice and won the championship at the 57th Annual N.C. Department of Labor State Fair Masonry Apprentice Skills Completion in October. NCMCA member firms provided some $10,000 in cash, materials, equipment and tools for the event held annually the third Saturday of May.

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July 2026

When I first set out to become a historic preservation and restoration mason, I imagined that most of my trade would involve repairing the effects of old age. Instead, 99 percent of my work is attempting to stabilize and reverse damage caused by recent an

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For generations, masonry has been built on a simple but powerful principle: knowledge passed from one set of hands to the next. In Arizona, the Arizona Masonry Council (AMC) is working to ensure that tradition continues by investing in one of the industr

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Most mason contractors can tell you exactly what a job should cost before it starts. Bid labor hours, material takeoffs, and crew rates per square foot. The numbers are on paper, and they look right. What most can't tell you is whether those numbers held

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July 2026

Masonry has long been valued for its ability to create buildings with character, permanence, and visual appeal. Features such as arches, deep reveals, corbelling, and decorative brickwork continue to be popular design elements in modern architecture. Howe