Sculptor replacing Civil War statue

The Union soldier that looked over Cape Girardeau for 92 years will make another stand.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission this week awarded a contract to Dexter sculptor Alan Gibson to repair the Civil War memorial fountain statue, which was erected on the Common Pleas Courthouse lawn in 1911 and then was knocked over by a fallen tree limb on May 12 of this year.

The soldier broke into about 200 pieces and at first, county officials didn't know if it could be repaired or not.

"I saw it on KFVS and they mentioned it was unrepairable and I said, 'I don't think so,'" said Gibson, who has been a sculptor for 25 years. "So I made an appointment with the commissioners to take a look at it."

Gibson, whose most notable artwork is of a jockey on a horse in front of the Hot Springs, Ark., race track, took the pieces and put the statue back together like a jigsaw puzzle, he said.

He'll make a mold of the stature and recast it. He said the new version will be an identical match.

It will cost the county $13,200 to fix.

"I have the statue almost all together right now," Gibson said. "It took some time, but the most time-consuming part will be making the mold."

County commissioner Joe Gambill said the Federal Emergency Management Agency might subsidize the restoration.

The statue depicted a Union infantry soldier standing guard with his musket. It was erected by the Women's Relief Corps, an auxiliary to a Civil War veterans group. It was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1911, 50 years after the start of the Civil War.

"I think we have an obligation to the people who put it up originally to restore it," Gambill said.

The statue has been repaired and restored before.

In 1971, the statue was vandalized and the soldier's musket was stolen. The gun was later found and the statue was fixed. In 1982, the statue was in such disrepair that the employees of the Cape Giardeau Fire Department restored the statue.

bmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127