Moving the Memorial, part 2

Dumay Gorham worked to clean the Memorial's brass bas-relief.

After the cleaning, October 28, 2014 

Then the bas-relief took another journey -- from Acme Art Studios on North Fifth Avenue to the Wilmington Riverfront.

The bas-relief is lifted out of Dumay's studio

Liberty is strapped into the truck for the ride to her new home near the Cape Fear River

 

The bas-relief was then reunited with its marble base. 

 

MARBLE BASE

 

The marble base was cleaned before it was installed in the new location, and the words that were inscribed into the marble seemed easier to read in the October sunlight.

 

The front reads "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" which is a line from Roman poet Horace's odes, and roughly translates to "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country." 

 

 

These words are, today, more often remembered as the title of one of anti-war poet Wilfred Owen's poem.  In that poem, he calls Horaces's ode sentiment a "great lie."  Owen died in France in 1918, so he'd written the poem before New Hanover County's memorial was erected.  Still, it seems highly unlikely that the local memorial committee would have read the poem when they commissioned the monument. And even if they had, they probably wouldn't have imagined that Owen's poetry would stand the test of time.  

 



 

 

The back of the monument is inscribed with text that, in 1922, the Wilmington Morning Star attributed to the pen of local man, Dr. James Sprunt. 

 

The monument states "These New Hanover County men who names we perpetuate by this monument were numbered among those choice spirits who at the country's call in the Great World War left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice in prison, in hospital, on the battle field, on hostile seas, in uncharted realms of air.  They found support and consolation in the belief that they would not be forgotten."

 

The inscriptions ends with lines from Theodore O'Hara's elegaic poem, the Bivouac of the Dead. 

And it ties the United States' war dead into the the bigger picture of the war, by including the dates 1914-1918, not simply using the 1917-1918 dates when Americans were combatants.

BAS-RELIEF

 

The North Carolina Marble and Granite Company team worked to attach the bas-relief to the marble.  It was rather like hanging a shelf, except the bas-relief needed a crane to lift it into place.

 

 

Workers lined up the bas-relief.

 

Making sure everything lines up

They marked where the new holes needed to be drilled.

Then they removed the bas-relief so they could safely re-drill the holes.

The contractors fabricated new bolts to attach the bas-relief to the base.  The one on the left is the 21st century version.

Then they swung the bas-relief back into place and attached it to the memorial once more.