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December 4, 2004 Record-Eagle/Lara Neel Larry Erway ties the soldier on top of the county’s Civil War monument to a crane. The monument was dismantled and sent off to Ohio, where Karkadoulias Bronze Art will restore it. The monument, made in 1890, will be preserved by the addition of a stainless steel "skeleton-like" structure, said Mercene Karkadoulias.
Civil War soldier set to get $60K makeoverStatue will be rededicated on May 30, 2005ByRecord-Eagle staff writer TRAVERSE CITY - The county's Civil War soldier has been ordered "at ease," after a 114-year vigil. A crew from Karkadoulias Bronze Art was set to dismantle the cracked, stained and listing civil war monument at 11 a.m. today in front of the Grand Traverse County Courthouse. The 18-foot-tall, bluish-gray monument was to be broken down into pieces and packed off to Cincinnati where the $60,000 restoration process will begin. The monument will be cleaned, patched, structurally fortified with a stainless steel skeleton and coated in a bluish-gray color. "Some hours of the day it will look gray and sometimes blue, but it represents all our boys," said Mercene Karkadoulias, one of the nation's foremost conservators and a specialist in white bronze, or zinc. When finished, Karkadoulias said the zinc statue, which is not as strong as bronze, will last another couple hundred years. "It was not the most expensive statue to begin with and the soldier was copied quite often, but the fact that its been there for 114 years is quite something," said Neal Breaugh, director for the restoration effort. "It's certainly the first piece of art of its kind in our area." The statue took up its vigil at the original Cass Street courthouse on Memorial Day in 1890. It was moved to its current location on the corner of Washington and Boardman streets around 1900. It honors 171 men who joined the Union cause and the 30 who lost their lives. "The unique thing about the monument is we no longer have the sculptures, we no longer have the forges ... that have recorded our history through art," Karkadoulias said. "It shows the great sacrifice our men and people have gone through." Breaugh said Robert Finch Camp No. 14, Michigan Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and the county veterans affairs office hope to raise $80,000 to pay for restoration and create an endowment for ongoing maintenance. The county board appropriated $10,000 so the restoration work could begin on schedule. The group has raised another $32,000 and continues to raise funds. The monument will be rededicated on its 115th anniversary, Memorial Day, May 30, 2005. "We hope to make it one of the biggest events of the year, if not the biggest," Breaugh said. "We hope to try to do something very similar to the way it was done in 1890."
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