THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607060034
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 78 lines
Engineering inspector Fred Glover was nonchalant last week as he stood amidst an array of trucks, earth mounds and workers marking the construction site for this city's soon-to-be newest statue.
``I don't take any favoritism one way or another,'' said Glover, whose memorial work includes the relighting of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the refurbishing of Gen. Stonewall Jackson and the sandblasting of several other heroes of the Late Unpleasantness.
Glover was a boyhood playmate of the man who will join Richmond's Civil War pantheon on Wednesday, 20th-century humanitarian and tennis great Arthur Ashe. But Glover remains unbiased in his affections.
``To me, it's just another erection of a statue to another hero,'' he said.
That attitude may make Glover a minority of one in the capital city.
For many, the placement of Ashe on a leafy boulevard long dedicated to white southerners who championed the lost causes of slavery and disunion is a seismic event.
Three-and-a-half years after Ashe's death, on what would be his 53rd birthday, a city that once barred him from public tennis courts will elevate him to the pedestal that he deserves.
It will be Richmond's, and perhaps Virginia's, most visual confirmation that the era by which many outsiders identify the city and state is dead.
Those who live here know that the Richmond of 1996 is not the Richmond of yore. Vestiges of the old way remain, in a too-segregated public-school system, in periodic brouhahas over events such as last winter's Museum of the Confederacy ball, and in a morning newspaper editorial page whose rock-ribbed conservatism is viewed by more-liberal forces as a sledgehammer to progress.
But biracial committees, coalitions and friendships abound. An African-American mayor, elected by City Council last week, has broken with earlier generations of black and white leaders to champion regionalism. And even the polyglot nature of the debate over whether and where to raise the Ashe statue counters stereotype.
During last year's clash, national and international press largely focused on whether a black man would be allowed alongside the heroes of the Old South. But in fact, the racial question was part of the debate, and blacks and whites were equally divided in response.
When measured by history, the time lapse between Ashe's death and erection of a statue is remarkably brief. It took about two decades to conceive, finance, produce and dedicate the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee that is the first of five Confederate memorials as one heads west from downtown.
The speed of the current venture is largely due to the vision of Paul DiPasquale, a Richmond sculptor who heard Ashe speak about six months before his death from AIDS. Ashe's illness, the product of a tainted blood transfusion, had just been disclosed, and DiPasquale was arrested by the sense of inner tranquility and outward purpose that he saw.
DiPasquale embarked on a statue. Eventually he won support from members of the Ashe family and from Virginia Heroes Inc., an organization founded by Ashe to acquaint schoolchildren with modern heroes.
Two major tides have propelled the promoters of the project: a wish to free Richmond from the barnacles of the past, and a desire to glorify the principles that Ashe embodied.
``This is a person who never became a victim of any of life's negative circumstances, never quit pursuing a dream, never stopped listening to his fellow man, never became bitter,'' summarizes Tom Chewning, a white businessman and Ashe friend who raised money for the statue. ``This is a dignified, gracious human being who lived by the golden rule.''
Ashe's statue and others yet to come (perhaps a memorial to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell or to L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected African-American governor) hold hope that Monument Avenue at last can be identified with the internal strengths of the individuals honored there, not merely the times in which they lived.
Then, Fred Glover will have it right.
Another statue.
Another hero.
* * *
A recent column, focusing on the kingly popularity of U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, misidentified Warner's 1990 opponent as Maurice Dawkins. Dawkins was the 1988 GOP nominee defeated by U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb. Warner enjoyed a more-regal stance in 1990. He had no major-party opposition. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB