CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

St. Peter City Council selects veterans memorial sculpture

Free Press - 6/13/2017

June 13--ST. PETER -- A 10-foot-tall swooping bronze eagle rising to the sky from a spray of water will be the centerpiece of the long-awaited St. Peter Area Veterans Memorial on the corner of College and South Minnesota avenues.

The St. Peter City Council approved the sculpture design Monday night after narrowing down artist submissions over the course of the last month.

Sculptor James Shoop came and spoke at the council's workshop last week about his artwork, saying he felt the eagle and the water represented St. Peter and the city's veterans.

The council meeting room was filled with veterans and supporters of the project who applauded when the council approved the sculpture design for the memorial.

This is the last step for the unfinished memorial, which took six years of planning and more than 18 months of fundraising.

The memorial will cost an estimated $700,000. It will feature dark granite walls with more than 1,200 names of service members and a circular honor wall in the center with the names and photos of about 90 service members from the St. Peter area who lost their lives while in the military, said Dave Johnson, a member of the St. Peter Veterans Memorial Association board.

Shoop has been a professional artist since the 1980's and specializes in bronze sculptures. He teaches sculpting classes at the Atelier in Minneapolis and will be paid a $100,000 commission for the work.

Ron Haugen, the commander of American Legion Post 37 and association board member, said the St. Peter and Mankato area veteran community largely supported the eagle statue.

He said the original plan for the memorial was much larger, but it has changed over time. They are looking forward to finishing the memorial project next year.

"It's been six years," Haugen said. "This is the first step to the final completion."

The sculpture was required to represent peace and freedom without being abstract or using military symbols or flags, said Bob Lambert, the association board chairman.

Some council members were concerned at prior meetings that Shoop's eagle was maybe too common of a design; the final approval was not without reservations even though it was supported by area veterans.

Council member John Kvamme expressed concerns the memorial in its final form wasn't what was originally intended.

"The council, when they agreed to this, and the committee when they talked about this, said that this would be a memorial for everyone in the community, an opportunity for everyone to be educated and reflect on what the veterans fought for," Kvamme said. "It has become more of a memorial for veterans, about veterans and this was supposed to be more than that."

All of the names that will be inscribed on the memorial helped pay for the project. It costs $250 to place a service member's name on the wall of the veterans memorial, but the people honored didn't have to be from the area or have served during wartime.

The inner honor wall of the memorial was free for families living near St. Peter who want to add a family member who died in service to the wall, but costs $500 for families outside the St. Peter area.

___

(c)2017 The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.)

Visit The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.) at www.mankatofreepress.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.