San Mateo
County Times
May 03, 1999
By Rich Saskal,
Staff Writer

Civil War statue returning to duty
Vandals wrecked sculpture in 1969

REDWOOD CITY -- Thirty years after vandals destroyed him, the city's Union Soldier is being reincarnated. The seven-foot-tall statue of a Civil War soldier at the city's Union Cemetery was smashed in 1969.

On Saturday, after a four-year fund-raising effort, a replacement statue will be dedicated. This time, say the soldier's friends, he will be well-protected. A local sculptor re-created the statue from its surviving pieces, which have been floating around Redwood City since 1969. "The head used to sit in the refrigerator and scare my kids," said the sculptor, Lisa Christy. Sculpting the statue was in part a process of re-creation using the surviving pieces of the old one, plus filling in a few gaps.

"We had the front part of his face, and we re-created the back of his head," Christy said. The statue replicates the original as much as possible -- down to the Union soldier's cape, which, as it turns out, was based on a Confederate uniform. The statue was first placed on its pedestal in the city's Union Cemetery in the 1880s. It has endured a number of indignities over the years, starting with the theft of its rifle early on. Legend has it the thief was sent to San Quentin. Vandals toppled the soldier in 1957.

Community members passed the hat, and the statue was repaired and placed back on the pedestal, where it stood until Halloween 1967, when vandals struck again. The statue was repaired again, and returned to the pedestal on May 29, 1969. But four days later, vandals again knocked the soldier off the pedestal, breaking him into pieces. The statue will be better protected this time, said Donna Dimmick, a Historic Union Cemetery Association board member.

At night, the statue will be floodlit, she said. The cemetery is also fenced, which wasn't the case 30 years ago, when the vandals drove in with a truck to inflict the fatal injuries. The fencing is one of many improvements made since the Historic Union Cemetery Association was founded in 1993.

"It's such an improvement that people here are really rallying around it," Dimmick said. The association had to raise $30,000 for the new statue. "One lady left money to the association in her will," she said. "It's been a real community effort." The new statue was undergoing finishing touches last week at the Monterey Sculpture Center, the foundry where the soldier has been transformed from Christy's clay sculpture into bronze. First, a rubber mold is made from the original.

the original. The statue will be transported to Redwood City Friday, but will be shrouded until Saturday at 2 p.m., when it will be unveiled at a big ceremony featuring Eagle Scouts, a band and a 21-gun salute from Civil War re-enactors. Christy is looking forward to the day the statue gazes again over the historic cemetery, which was founded in 1859. It was named the Union Cemetery to show solidarity with the Union's cause in the Civil War.

The Union soldier statue will be dedicated Saturday, May 8, at 2 p.m. at the Historic Union Cemetery, on Woodside Road in Redwood City, west of El Camino Real.

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