The plane
crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. in
1999 cut sharp into Cape Cod sculptor David
Lewis, like the sudden death of Kennedy's
father in 1963."It brought
up memories of when I was in my twenties and
the president was assassinated," said Lewis,
a 65-year-old Cape Cod native who recalls
the roar of helicopters landing when
President John F. Kennedy came to visit
Hyannisport.
"The whole country was full of hope for
changes for the good and all that and it was
taken away from us by (Lee Harvey) Oswald."Lewis began
sketching a
proposal for a statue of the late president
and his young son and asked a friend to show
it to the Kennedy family. The family liked
the idea, but wanted to preserve the memory
of the younger Kennedy as a grown man, Lewis
said, so he sketched a new statue featuring a
grown President Kennedy walking barefoot
across the sand, with his arm around the
38-year-old John Jr.
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When the
Barnstable Town Council approved use of town
land for the statue on Aug. 17, 2000, Lewis found himself
instantly flooded with reporters' phone
calls and television interviews, even
landing an appearance
on NBC's Today Show.
Then the
media attention turned negative with a
Cape Cod Times
editorial denouncing the statue proposal for
not staying true to history, calling it
"rather tacky and odd." President Kennedy,
after all, had never seen his son grow up to
be a magazine publisher and America's last
image of the pair was in 1963, when a
3-year-old John-John saluted his father's
casket in a blue suit.But Lewis'
desire for a statue only grew and he began
sketching anew, working with the Hyannis
Area Chamber of Commerce and a new committee led
by an old friend, Barnstable resident Louis Cataldo. Lewis and Cataldo had teamed up
before, when Cataldo commissioned the
sculptor to create three other well-known
Cape Cod statues: the James Otis and Mercy
Otis Warren statues outside the Barnstable
County Superior Courthouse and the Indian
sachem Iyanough on the Hyannis Green. The
Kennedy statue committee worked together for
more than three years and raised $140,000 in
private donations and government grants,
overcoming delays forced by funding
shortfalls. The statue was finally unveiled
in May in front of the John F. Kennedy Hyannis
Museum on Main Street."There's
that core group that stays through the whole
thing," Lewis said. "I marvel at people who
volunteer to do this kind of thing."But Cataldo
credits Lewis' perseverance. "This was his
baby."The statue
is a six-foot tall bronze sculpture similar
to the President Kennedy part of the
father-son memorial first proposed back in
2000. The president is shown dressed casual
for the beach in a short-sleeve shirt, chino
pants and walking barefoot across sand taken
from his Hyannisport property. This Kennedy
quote is featured at the bottom of the
statue: "I always go to Hyannisport to be
revived, to know again the power of the sea,
and the Master who rules over it and all of
us."Lewis is
thrilled with the final product and its
location. "The
setting is almost as important as the statue
itself," he said. "The whole thing is to
tell a story. It's a man, a very special
man, walking the beaches of Cape Cod, a
place he loved to be... Because he is such a
special man and all that is known about
President Kennedy, that speaks for itself
and comes into play when you're looking at
it."
