Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Everything ready for King's memorial - except King himself
Shanna Flowers
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Roanoke's Martin Luther King Jr. courtyard is peaceful -- a small, concrete peninsula at the edge of downtown.
Above the fray of railroad cars and train tracks dissecting downtown, the plaza juts off the north end of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge. Four strategically placed wooden benches girded with concrete dot the plaza.
They are not ordinary park benches. Take a seat, press a little silver button and the speeches of King emanate from concrete-encased speakers.
The words are the audio track of the civil rights movement: King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech; his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech; his eulogy of the young victims of the Alabama church bombing; and his "Mountaintop" speech, delivered the night before he was killed.
Everything is in place -- except King himself.
The 7-foot bronze statue of the slain civil rights leader is supposed to stand in the center of the plaza encircled by the benches. The artists, Jeffrey Varilla and Anna Koh Varilla of Chicago, promised it would be here in time for the Jan. 15 unveiling, but it wasn't finished as of Friday.
So the city decided to postpone the celebration until next month. At this point, it was the right decision. Who wants to risk the possibility that state and federal dignitaries and members of the King family fly in, and the statue not be in place? No one.
But what happened?
My gut reaction is that the city should have been more aggressive in making sure the statue was here -- a month ago.
Assistant City Manager Jim Grigsby said Monday that the city "constantly" asked for a longer lead time, but added that because of the nature of the job, that was "all in the artists' hands."
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
From left, Daniel Vaughan, Wayne Floyd and Geronimo Ayal install a piece of granite at the plaza on the King bridge Monday.
He assured me that the tribute to King has been a priority. Roanoke officials have done all of the work to get the site ready for the $200,000 statue.
That's true because the bridge has been completed, and the King plaza is quaint and provides the serene setting officials and a citizen panel set out to achieve. On Monday, the slab on which statue itself will stand was put in place.
The problem is that the statue isn't there. The citizen committee signed off on the sculpture last fall.
The Varillas are having it cast in bronze in a foundry in upstate New York. Grigsby said the artists promise delivery by Sunday. By anybody's standards, that's too close for comfort for a Jan. 15 unveiling.
The city needs to hold the artists to the promised date. That way, as the city plans for the unveiling next month, it won't have to worry whether the guest of honor will be a no-show.
