More monuments? Axl Rose is just a start, Lafayette
Axl Rose(Photo: File photo)
Pressed onto the record this week about the surge in calls across the nation to take down statues of Confederate leaders, Vice President Mike Pence played it sufficiently vague in the name of more is better.
Pence, saying he was uneasy about any effort to “erase parts of our history just in the name of some contemporary political cause,” made his case Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends” that “we ought to have been building more monuments.”
The rationale, via Indiana’s former governor: “We ought to be celebrating the men and women who've helped our nation move toward a more perfect union and tell the whole story of America.”
Given the context, with Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee as the baseline of a nation moving toward a more perfect union, Pence offers some awfully broad parameters here.
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First thought, Pence-inspired: The RFRA Fix, a monument to celebrate those weeks in March 2015 when national boycotts forced the Indiana General Assembly to walk back its Religious Freedom Restoration Act over implications that it would allow discrimination of gays and lesbians. (I’m thinking “Now, George” in bronze, recalling the shape of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” sculpture, to honor Pence’s stammering defense of the bill and Hoosiers, in general, during a national TV interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.)
Come to think of it, Lafayette and West Lafayette have a ton of new roundabouts to fill.
We have statues and monuments to the Marquis de Lafayette at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse; Neil Armstrong, Amelia Earhart and John Purdue on campus; the busts of every Purdue president in the Purdue Memorial Union; the huge Boilermaker working at an anvil outside Ross-Ade Stadium; Olympic track gold medal winner Ray Ewry at Lafayette Jefferson High School; and the skywatchers at the dilapidated, Cold War-era watch tower in Cairo.
In the vice presidential spirit of more, not fewer monuments, here’s the short list in an attempt in telling the whole story of Greater Lafayette, a perfect union and all that stuff. Feel free to add your suggestions.
Axl Rose on Stage:The lead singer of Guns n’ Roses is the most reluctant of Lafayette heroes, but he’s Lafayette’s just the same. One day, the reconciliation with his boyhood home will be complete for the one-time Lafayette Jeff student and arguably the biggest, most incendiary rock star on the planet in the late-‘80s and early-90s. Bonus points: Make sure it includes Izzy Stradlin’, circa the 3:26 mark in the “Sweet Child o’ Mine” video. Born Jeff Isbell, Stradlin’ is the reclusive guitarist from the original Gn’R lineup and Lafayette Jeff classmate of Rose when the singer was known as Bill Bailey.
Helen Gougar (Photo: File photo)
Helen Gougar Trying to Vote:Gouger, a temperance and women’s rights activist of the 19th century, has a historic marker near the corner of 10th and South streets. But how about a full-scale monument to Gouger’s attempt to vote in the November 1894 elections. Tippecanoe County election officials turned her away. She sued, arguing in Tippecanoe Superior Court and then the Indiana Supreme Court that blocking women from voting was unconstitutional. She lost her case. But she provided an early statement on voting rights.
William Digby (Photo: File photo)
William Digby Playing Cards: As a city founder, Digby was a sketchy character. Digby bought land in what is now downtown in 1824, platting it as Lafayette in May 1825. History says Digby liked to drink and Digby liked to gamble. The story goes that one time Digby got into a card game called old sledge with a judge named John Pettit. Digby wound up gambling away his cash and eventually a business office and sleeping apartment he had on a lot near the Wabash River. Pettit put the house on wheels to have it moved, only to have Digby win it back with another hand. The marathon game had the house going back and forth as fortunes changed – or so the story goes. So maybe William Digby pulling a house with a rope would work.
An assistant to photographer P. W. Wolever is posed like James Moon,who invented the method of his death inside a room at the Lahr Hotel. (Photo: J&C file photo)
James Moon’s Suicide Machine:The 1876 death of James Moon, a Union Township farmer, remains one of Lafayette’s weirdest, making the former Lahr Hotel on Fifth Street in downtown Lafayette a natural stop on any history tour of the city. Moon built a contraption of 1-by-6 lumber and hardware he hauled nine miles from his home to the Lahr. In the city, he bought a broad axe, minus the handle, with a 12-inch blade. Moon situated himself on the floor and allowed the crude guillotine to do him in. Now there’s a story.
On the night of Aug. 2, 1998, someone drove this pickup truck, containing barrels of fuel and explosives, through the Fourth Street entrance of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse. No one was injured after the driver lit the fuse and ran. Police never found a suspect. (Photo: J&C file photo)
Truck Bomb in the Courthouse Rotunda: Wait, hear me out. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the Aug. 2 night when someone drove a pickup truck laden with explosives and fuel through the glass doors of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, lit a fuse and disappeared. No arrests have been made in the case. The bollard posts blocking vehicles from each entrance and the metal detectors installed after the attack serve as monuments, of sorts. But among the most harrowing accounts that night came from firefighters who risked lives to put out the fire, even as they saw the drums of fuel expanding from the heat. They saved the courthouse, a powerful architectural icon in downtown Lafayette. A monument is fitting.
Dick the Bruiser (Photo: File photo)
Dick the Bruiser in the Ring: Before changing his name and becoming a giant in the professional wrestling world, William Afflis went to school and played football at Lafayette Jeff. Actually, he moved to Lafayette because his home in Delphi didn’t have a football team. He lived at the YMCA, which was on Seventh Street in those days.
Elinor Stingley, the cone lady at the Original Frozen Custard, was a Lafayette institution. She died in 2009 at age 101. (Photo: File photo)
The Cone Lady in the Cone Line: Elinor Stingley was an institution at an institution, holding things down for 51 years in the cone line at Original Frozen Custard, a Lafayette landmark next to Columbian Park, just beyond the left field fence at Loeb Stadium. She died in 2009 at age 101, after working into her late-90s in a line dedicated to cones only. Legend has it that Axl Rose, at the height of his career, stopped in to see the Cone Lady and ordered a sundae. Stingley knew exactly who he was – she’d seen him grow up in the Columbian Park neighborhood and she knew about his fame. She told him to get in the other line unless he wanted a cone. The fact that he did is all you need to know.
Your turn:What monument would you add in Greater Lafayette? Comment by clicking on this story on jconline.com or send to dbangert@gannett.com.
Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com.
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