By Lee Roderick
In 2014––exactly 100 years from when the U.S. entered that war––Congress passed a law to redress the oversight, including a commission to create a setting and monument for Pershing Park, a block southeast of the White House.
Three hundred and fifty teams submitted proposals for the site. Two years later sculptor Sabin Howard and his architect partner Joseph Weishaar won the award. The commission wanted to complete the site and sculpture for the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day in November 2018. What Howard had in mind would require an additional six years.
Howard, whose studio is in New Jersey, had sculpted for 25 years before this award. “I’m doing something sacred,” he said, “making a sculpture that, when you are in its presence, you are translated to a higher state of being.” A studio assistant wore a shirt that said “All the gods, all the heavens, are all within you.”
Thus began a nine-year odyssey, stretching from London to New Zealand, to create an enormous 25-ton bronze tableau, 58 feet long with 38 figures sculpted from life. The masterpiece would confirm Howard’s reputation as the nation’s foremost modern classical sculptor.
That’s the simple part of his story. Behind it lay numerous stumbling blocks, including reluctant commissioners, a string of assistants he fired, and the sheer enormity of the job to create the largest free-standing high-relief bronze in the Western Hemisphere.
This inspiring documentary might remind fans of Charlton Heston’s Michelangelo in 1965’s Agony and the Ecstasy and may appreciate Howard’s enormous task. If they liked that film they should like Heroic, the 100-minute filmed story of Howard creating the monument. Heroic is directed by Traci L. Slatton, who had unusual access to Howard. It recently premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and no doubt is headed for others.
The monument is dedicated to America’s veterans, who today are suffering a pandemic of suicide or addictions of all ilks. It comes too late to help World War I soldiers, all of whom have passed, but it may help those of later wars find closure.
“It is for all veterans who never returned home and all the veterans who returned home and were never the same,” said Howard.
