This story has been popping up all over my Facebook feed from my friends and family back home. I grew up about 20 miles south of Jamestown, New York, which is known as Lucille Ball's hometown. Well, it is her birthplace, and the city is home to the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum and Center for Comedy. But she was actually raised in Celoron, a small village just west of Jamestown. You can still go see her childhood home today, which appropriately sits on Lucy Lane. Lucille Ball is a pretty big deal around these parts.
In 2009, a privately commissioned statue was erected in Celoron's Lucille Ball Memorial Park to commemorate the village's most famous resident. Okay, good enough idea. It seems like an appropriate honor for somebody who left the kind of legacy Lucille Ball left. The village commissioned artist Dave Poulin to design and erect the 400-pound bronze statue, which was apparently a donation.
Just one problem. From the Buffalo News:
No one here much likes the statue, and one look tells you why. It looks more like an extra from “The Walking Dead” than arguably the most famous comic actress of all time. Many village residents, including the mayor, the village trustees and even Jetta and Mark Wilson, the couple who engaged Jamestown-based artist Dave Poulin to create it and donated it to Celoron more than five years ago, will tell you they don’t care for it.
Despite the fact that the statue bears almost no resemblance to its subject – despite the fact that its deranged grimace and jagged teeth inspire more dread than reverence – tour buses still stop at the park. People still pose for pictures with their arm around Lucy. And Celoron residents are still proud of their village’s role in the life of the First Lady of Comedy, even if some of them privately wish that the statue commemorating her would be struck by lightning.
The statue Poulin eventually came up with is, well, terrifying. I mean, the stuff of which nightmares are made. For comparison's sake, even though I know you know what Lucy looked like, take this image from the scene Poulin tried to recreate in statue form:
This is the statue:
Seriously. It's FrankenLucy. Imagine seeing this thing at night. Oh wait, you don't
have to imagine:
It's a monstrosity. And it won't stand much longer if some concerned Celoron citizens have anything to do with it. One (anonymous) citizen created a Facebook page earlier in the week called
We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue aimed at ridding the town of Poulin's version of Lucy. From the page's description:
We want the people of Celoron to take this statue down!
Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown NY. She was raised and grew up in a town about a mile from Jamestown named Celoron. The people of Celoron have erected this horrible statue of Lucy in her hometown. It is a nightmare. We want them to replace it. Write to the Jamestown Post-Journal to let them know you are unhappy with this horrible tribute to our beloved Lucy.
Since the story blew up, the page currently boasts over 5,000 "likes," over five times the village's population.
According to the Buffalo News, village officials have been working quietly for years to get the statue's head replaced. Attempts to get Poulin to fix the statue at no cost have not been successful, and the village cites a figure of around $8,000 to $10,000 to make the Lucy statue look more like, well, Lucy. Shirley SanFilippo, the village clerk and treasurer, speaks on behalf of the village:
Obviously the village very much appreciated the donation of the statue, and it was done to commemorate Lucille Ball’s presence in the village. We have a lot of visitors that come just to see the statue and get their picture taken with it. This really isn’t something that the administration feels comfortable expending taxpayer dollars for. We have a lot of other issues that are more pressing.
Some Celoron residents aren't quite so outraged, even if they don't care for the statue:
I don’t like that statue. But that person worked hard on that statue. He worked very hard. And I’m sorry that it didn’t turn out a little bit better than it did.
If they’re going to take it down, they need to replace it with a better one, but I wouldn’t take it down just to take it down. That’s what Celoron’s all about.
Mayor Scott Schrecengost, on the other hand, isn't so forgiving:
If he’s the artist and the sculptor, you would think he would take some pride in his work and say, "Yeah, that’s probably not up to par and I should make it right." But his last statement to me was, "If nobody likes it and we don’t like it, just take it down and put it in storage."
Taking the statue down completely and replacing it with something new is exactly what the creator of the Facebook page has in mind. Without an influx of funds, however, that seems unlikely at this juncture.
For at least the immediate future, it looks like the hated Lucy statue will stand, grimace and all, ominously watching over the village...and likely scaring small children in the process.
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