Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

Mrs. C. Helen Plane was made president-emeritus. W. W. Fuller was made nonresident honorary president and vice-chairman of the executive committee. Four members of the U.D.C. were made vice-presidents, and four others served on the board in different capacities.

Hollins N. Randolph of Atlanta was made president of the association. R. Rivers, familiarly known as “Petie” (not to be confused with a later governor of Georgia named Rivers), was head of the executive committee. Rogers Winter was made publicity director. These three with their lawyer, Reuben Arnold, were the most active in controlling the policy of the memorial association. David Webb became executive secretary and furnished many constructive ideas for raising the necessary cash. So did the sculptor. The remaining members of the executive committee were Sam H. Venable, Robert Harvey, Eugene Black, W. A. Sutton, Thomas W. Connally and Mrs. Sam Inman, a woman of wealth and social prominence.

In March of 1923 the real financing of the memorial began. A working organization was perfected, and Atlanta was asked to set a precedent for the United States as a whole. The city responded and tentatively pledged $100,000, payable in five years. Fulton County pledged a like amount. Individual subscriptions totaled approximately $40,000.

Dave Webb suggested the idea of memorial tablets to be placed in the U.D.C. Hall, at the base of the mountain, to carry the names of relatives who had served in the Confederate Army. Each contributor of $1,000 or more to this fund for carving the memorial was to have the privilege of designating a name for one of the tablets. A family or group contributing a thousand dollars could designate the name of one man for a tablet. Each bronze tablet was to show the name, rank, company and regiment of the soldier or officer so immortalized. This was known as the Founders’ Roll and became very popular and lucrative. In setting forth the purpose of the tablets an announcement was published with the following eloquent preamble by Rogers Winter:

As old as human nature is the yearning to memorialize the buried dead, to perpetuate the tradition of illustrious heroes, but never has mankind in all the centuries succeeded in erecting an imperishable monument. Stonehenge is a jumble of granite slabs. The Colossus of Rhodes collapsed two hundred years before Christ and lay in ruins for a thousand years. The Parthenon of Greece, whose marble figures were the most perfect sculpture ever produced, has been virtually dismantled by vandals and art collectors. The pyramids of Egypt are slowly crumbling. Those marvelous temples which adorned the Nile when Egyptian civilization was in its glory are but mounds of debris. The Roman Colosseum is a skeleton of pagan grandeur.

But now, in the Providence of God, it becomes our privilege to create here in the heart of the South, in memory of Southern heroes, the one supreme imperishable monument of human history.

The sculptor made all the designs for this hall, working on them for weeks and delivering the blueprints of them to the committee in July 1923. It was to be cut in solid rock to a depth of sixty-seven feet; in width it was to be 265 feet. It was divided into three rooms: Georgia Hall in the center, with Venable Hall on the right and U.D.C. Hall on the left. There was to be room for 2,890 memorial tablets.

The first work of carving anything at all on Stone Mountain was started on June 18, 1923. The first figure to be carved was, of course, that of Robert E. Lee. The sculptor had made a heroic-size model of the head, seven feet high, in his Stamford studio, and a plaster model of this was brought to the mountain. Much blocking out and roughing off of the surface had to be done before the actual surface of the final figure was reached. The whole area had been gone over carefully and marked out with the aid of the projection lamp.

The sculptor appointed Mr. Tucker superintendent, giving him complete charge of the work. He was assisted by Hugo Villa, an Italian sculptor from Milan, who had crossed the Atlantic years before with a commission to erect a monument in Mexico. A revolution had put an end to the project. Villa had worked his way up to New York and went to Gutzon’s studio, where he soon became a permanent fixture as sculptor’s assistant. The best in the world, Gutzon called him.

With these two men in charge and on the spot, the “Master,” as Villa called his chief, felt that he could safely go back and forth to Stamford or wherever else the business of the Southern memorial called him. He was greatly in demand to speak at U.D.C. gatherings and women’s clubs all over the United States, and the Memorial Association expected him to attend such meetings. It also expected him to be on hand to show off the work on the mountain whenever there was a convention of Elks or Rotarians or Sunday-school workers, and there was a continual procession of such events in Atlanta.