Characteristically, there seems to have been no discussion of price or of compensation to the sculptor until the first model was completed. At that time he wrote that the cost would be $12,000, owing to the increased cost of bronze. Then he moved on to some work in Cuba. There was delay in getting the marble from Tennessee in time for the unveiling. Because of this the braces and rivets attaching the figure to its round base were not in place when the draperies were lifted. Dr. Alderman went through his speech in grave apprehension that the whole exhibit would fall on his head. But it all came right in the end—through sheer luck, perhaps.
Mr. Fuller wrote that a friend of his, “a learned physician and a just and judicious man,” had looked at the memorial from an unusual point of view.
This friend reported:
I am sure it is a great work of art, but I studied it mostly from the position of the anatomist. The lines are perfect. What a grand specimen of the human architecture, as if just from the hands of his Maker! A model of human architecture! I noticed particularly the different prominent muscles, tense and drawn in preparation for flight—how anatomically correct they were in location and function.... I shall never forget....
The aviator’s father was deeply touched by the figure. He wrote to Gutzon:
I attended the unveiling of the memorial to my son at the University of Virginia. I want to congratulate you on this wonderful reproduction. It is magnificently beautiful ... expressive and highly inspiring. I know of nothing in America that equals this splendid work. I believe that not only the University of Virginia but all America will regard this aviator as a triumph of art and will cherish it as a priceless possession.
Then there came a committee which had thought about building a memorial to a former governor, Charles Brantley Aycock, in Raleigh, North Carolina. From Josephus Daniels came a letter enthusiastically outlining this project. Gutzon read it without much interest. The committee had decided to hold a competition but wished Borglum to submit a model before they made a decision.
Gutzon replied that because Daniels asked it, he would be glad to lay aside his ideas about competitions, but that he simply did not have the time to put in the work of several days on a model that might or might not be satisfactory. “Committees do not realize,” he said, “that the making of a model is about one third of the entire work. Neither do they realize that in at least nine cases out of ten, no model is carried out as first presented. Not only the committee but the artist himself develops it.”
So the committee abandoned the competition, invited the sculptor to come to Raleigh for a conference and gave him the commission the day after his arrival. He telegraphed home, “Returning this afternoon. Have contract eighteen thousand.” The family received the news with decent restraint. They knew Gutzon. He was always sanguine. A contract was always the same to him as money in the bank.
The Aycock memorial was conceived by its promoters as the monument to an ideal rather than to a man. Aycock, governor of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905, had established two reforms of importance. The first was to make suffrage dependent on education. The second placed education within the reach of all, rich or poor, black or white. And the sculptor soon realized that he was going to have some trouble telling about this in a statue.