Observations: Building a memorial quite the undertaking

I never met John J. Kelley, but in reading and writing stories about him after his death, I’ve begun to develop a sense of just how much he meant to certain members of the local community.
For that reason, it didn’t surprise me in the least when James Roy told the Groton Town Council during the public comment portion of its Sept. 6 meeting that he and a group of friends and admirers of the late runner would like to build a statue of him in town.
At the meeting, I thought it sounded like a great idea, and I still think it’s worth doing if there’s a real groundswell of support for it. But in the time between hearing Roy’s comments and sitting down to write this column, I’ve been thinking a lot about statues and who and what we choose to memorialize with them.
In the abstract, constructing a life-sized replica of a person out of stone or metal seems like a strange thing to do. There’s certainly no practical purpose for it. And yet, since ancient times, statues have been a major component of humanity’s monumental art.
Ancient cultures tended to build as many statues of gods and goddesses as they did of actual people.
Today, we seem to have largely abandoned this practice, though sculptures of saints still abound in certain churches.
That’s not to say that all of our statues depict people who actually lived. Two of the most iconic statues in the country – the Statue of Liberty and the bull on Wall Street in Manhattan – depict fictional characters (I’m considering the bull fictional because I highly doubt one ever walked down modern Wall Street).
Closer to home, there is the statue of an unnamed Union soldier that stands atop the Civil War memorial in the rotary at the intersection of East Main Street and Broadway in Mystic. While the Union soldier isn’t a fictional character, in this case it’s a generic symbol of something larger. Some of the nonspecific statues we make are less poignant in their symbolism. The whale statue outside of Bank Square Books comes to mind, as do the larger-than-life sculptures of Mr. Potato Head on display in several towns in my home state of Rhode Island.
When we build statues of real people, it seems to be for one of two main reasons: Either A) they founded something, or B) they were great athletes.
Any liberal arts college worth its degree has a statue – or at least a bust – of its founder somewhere on campus. Towns and cities build statues to their founders as well.
In Mystic, we had the John Mason statue, though what he did could hardly be described as “founding” the village.
There are exceptions, of course, to the “founders” rule, but for the most part, everyone who gets a statue for a social or political achievement is long dead. If you want to see your likeness cast in bronze in your lifetime, your best bet is to become an athlete.
In Boston, there are statues of Ted Williams, Bobby Orr, Larry Bird’s shoes, and soon – though for many not soon enough – Bill Russell. The latter three are all still alive.
The former got his statue shortly after his death in 2002. He also has a tunnel named after him.
In that tradition, John Kelley is certainly deserving of a statue as a monument to his athletic prowess.
But Groton is not Boston, and Kelley’s legacy, while significant, is much less well known than those of Boston’s sports legends.
Surely, the town has other heroes whose political or athletic achievements merit the construction of a statue, but there doesn’t seem to be a movement afoot to cast any of them in bronze.
That brings us to perhaps the most important deciding factor in who gets a statue: money. When he spoke at the Town Council meeting, Roy said people he had spoken to about the idea of a Kelley statue had been enthusiastic about it and willing to donate funds to see it constructed.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s as good a reason as any to build a statue. Though I can’t help but see the irony in memorializing someone known for running with a bronze likeness that will, by definition, never move.