Salute to the Brave Monument

Overview

The original artist of this 1922 piece commemorating veterans of the Civil War and WWI is unknown. When a tornado hit Tekamah, Nebraska in 1930, the statue was seriously damaged. The sculpture was toppled, and the Doughboy was decapitated. While the head was repaired and reattached the same year, it was misaligned when replaced. In 1962, the hand suspiciously came up missing.

Composition

Granite and limestone

Scope of Project

In 1998, Jensen was called in to remove and realign the head. During the course of the restoration, an anonymous confession was made to the newspaper (via a local bartender) regarding the missing hand.

Apparently, a young boy in 1962 accidently broke the hand while playing with friends in the cemetery. When the sexton appeared to find the source of the ruckus, the boys ran off, discarding the hand in a ground-level chimney.

Several years later, the young man returned to see if he could retrieve the hand, but the home was no longer there. In the end, his timely, although anonymous confession, did prove to be a helpful contribution to the restoration and the small town's history.

After tornado, before reconstruction

After treatment