Alumni up in arms over statue of Jamestown founder

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America's first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades earlier -- but you wouldn't know it to look at the two-armed statue on the campus of the university named for him.

Some annoyed and angry alumni and history buffs want the monument to get the hook -- the prosthetic that Christopher Newport is believed to have used 400 years ago.

The pair of arms on the 24-foot bronze statue shows a lack of respect for history, said Andy Kiser of Winchester, a 1995 graduate of Christopher Newport University who studied colonial Virginia.

That's especially galling, Kiser said, in a part of Virginia filled with historic attractions, such as Colonial Williamsburg, and at a time when Jamestown is commemorating its 400th anniversary.

"In the middle of a community that tries so hard to get it right, here's a 4-ton 'Oops, we got it wrong,'" he said.

CNU, a public university with about 4,800 students, is a few blocks from where the James River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Upriver is Jamestown, the swampy peninsula where the settlers landed in May 1607.

Newport was captain of the Susan Constant, largest of the settlers' three ships. He lost his arm in about 1590, when he was working in the West Indies as a privateer hired by London merchants to raid Spanish and Portuguese ships, said Mike Lund, ships interpretive supervisor at Jamestown Settlement, a state-run living history museum.

It's unclear how he was hurt, or how much of the arm he lost, Lund said. Historical accounts say Newport's arm was "stricken off" during a fight.

The two-armed, 7,500-pound statue, donated to CNU by a benefactor, was installed in June.

Newport is shown in floppy hat and cape, standing with his left hand on his hip and his right arm stretched in front of him, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

The inclusion of the right arm -- as well as sculptor Jon Hair's comment to the local newspaper that "We don't show our heroes maimed" -- touched off a spate of letters to the editor.

Ted Crossland of Yorktown wrote a letter to the Daily Press calling the statue a "monstrosity that recreates history and presents another lie to the public about our past."

"He accomplished more in his short life span with one arm than normal people do with two arms, and the university is not recognizing that fact," wrote Crossland, a retired naval officer with an interest in history.

Hair, who has a studio in Cornelius, N.C., did not return repeated messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.

He told the Daily Press that the university decided to portray the captain with two arms and he agreed.

"I wouldn't show an important historical figure like this with his arm cut off," Hair said.

CNU President Paul Trible did not recall having any conversation with the artist about how many arms the statue should have, university spokeswoman Emily Lucier said in an e-mail response to questions.

Trible approved a model of the statue "and he is very pleased with the statue," Lucier wrote. She said the university would have no other comment.

Jack Marshall was intrigued by the statue flap and wrote about it on EthicsScoreboard.com, a project of ProEthics Ltd., the ethics training and consulting firm he founded in Alexandria.

"It's like doing a statue of Babe Ruth and showing him thin," Marshall said, referring to the rotund slugger, "or doing a statue of Willie Shoemaker, a jockey, and showing him 6 feet tall."

The debate raised some familiar issues for Michael Deland, president of the National Organization on Disability. He spearheaded a six-year effort that led to the addition, in 2001, of a statue of showing President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair to the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Advocates for the disabled had objected when the memorial opened with its centerpiece FDR statue only hinting at Roosevelt's polio. It showed a cape-covered Roosevelt in a straight chair with two small wheels on the back.

"It would be a far greater inspiration for the students at that university, for everybody who sees that statue, to see that captain shown as he was," he said recently by phone from Washington.

---

On the Net:

Newport University: http://www.cnu.edu/

Jon Hair: http://www.jonhair.com/