GROUP SEEKS LIBERTY STATUE REPLICAS

In May 1976, vandals tore the replica of the Statue of Liberty from its perch in Capaha Park's Freedom Corner and left it scarred and broken in a ditch on Bertling Street. The statue was restored at Otto Dingeldein Silversmith Shop in time for the Bicentennial Fourth of July.

Today, the Cape Girardeau statue is one of more than 32,000 outdoor sculptures that have been identified by a Smithsonian Institution project aimed at preserving the nation's sculptures.

Save Outdoor Sculpture has located about 100 of the 200 reduced-scale Statue of Liberty replicas distributed nationally by the Boy Scouts between 1949 and 1951. The remaining sculptures are assumed to have fallen into decay or may have been moved indoors.

About half the sculptures that were found urgently need repair.

SOS provides grants to enable communities to refurbish and maintain sculptures.

Twenty-three statues were placed in Missouri. Statues of Liberty still can be found in Springfield, Columbia and Jefferson City. But Cape Girardeau's and one in Butler may be in the best shape, according to Marie Nau Hunter, who conducted the Missouri survey two years ago for SOS.

"The community has taken a real interest in it," she said.

Nau Hunter said the state has a lot to be proud of. "Overall we were really excited and pleased with the wealth of sculpture out there. Because it's not generally seen all together, you don't realize how much there is."

The SOS database now is at the Museum of American Art. The Web site is at www.heritagepreservation.org/

Other than the size, the primary difference between the replicas and Frederic Auguste Bartholdi's "Liberty Enlightening the World" is the replicas' big smile. The original's expression is more serene.

Dr. Bonnie Stepenoff, director of the Historic Preservation Program at Southeast Missouri State University, and her students helped conduct the local survey of 30 different sculptures in the region.

The other local statues that made the national inventory are the Cape La Croix Cross, Edwin Smith's "Chained and Locked into Place," an untitled Smith work, and the Civil War fountain.

The survey also inventoried 70,000 works of indoor sculpture.

SOS is a joint project of the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property.

The survey is complete but the search for Statues of Liberty continues. Anyone who spots one of the replicas can report it to the Inventory of American Sculpture, (202) 357-2941.