Larger than life
7-foot infantrymen for terrorism memorial shaped by Zanesville
Come Monday morning, the cargo loaded on a large flatbed trailer attached to a truck headed for Georgia will undoubtedly draw the attention of those sharing the interstates.
The impressive statues, after all, made even their creator’s jaw drop the first time he was able to take in the finished product.
“Man, I like these guys,” sculptor Alan Cottrill said recently of the bronze soldiers, pieces he was commissioned to create for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial, whose dedication is planned
for Oct. 16 at the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
“After 13 months, I’m jazzed up.”
The pieces Cottrill crafted — an Army squad made up of nine infantrymen — won’t go unnoticed during the trip south. Each figure stands 7 feet, weighs 750 pounds and represents in detail what a post-9/11 combat soldier might look like, down to the size of his belt loops and the position of his weapon’s scope.
The ambitious project took Cottrill, a Zanesville resident, and a team of 15 artists and artisans more than a year to complete.
“I stopped counting at 10,000 man-hours,” said Cottrill, 65. “It’s one of two or three of the largest projects I’ve done.”
But as an U.S. Army veteran and the father of a daughter who is a Navy judge advocate general, the sculptor was thrilled to take on the work.
He will deliver the sculptures to the museum Monday and install them Tuesday.
“I can feel the emotion, and I hope viewers can, too,” said Cottrill, who has been sculpting for 27 years. “There’s an intensity but a vulnerability. A toughness but an ‘afraid-ness.’ That all has to be there.”
The statues will serve as the focal point of the jointservice memorial, which will also feature granite panels with etchings of the names of every man and woman who has died in the war on terrorism (all 6,913 of them) and illustrations of the role of each service in the nation’s longest war. In addition, the memorial space — to span 150 feet by 50 feet — will house a steel beam from the World Trade Center sitting atop concrete columns representing the twin towers.
Officials from the museum — located just outside the gates of Fort Benning, a U.S. Army base straddling the Georgia-Alabama border — planned the memorial to serve as “this generation’s Vietnam Wall,” said retired Col. Greg Camp, president of the National Infantry Museum Foundation.
The museum foundation privately raised the $2 million for the project, allocating $500,000 for the portion spearheaded by Cottrill.
Cottrill was chosen for the sculpting, Camp said, because of his experience working with the military — both as a veteran and an artist — coupled with his passion for such work and his ability to meet the deadline.
“His skill was exactly what we needed, but, even more so, it was his commitment,” Camp said. “It’s not just a job for him but a calling.”
To date, Cottrill has created roughly two dozen military-themed sculptures for sites throughout the country. (He’s also known for, among other statues, the Thomas Edison piece that stands at the U.S. Capitol in Washington; statues of Woody Hayes and Jesse Owens on the Ohio State University campus; and the Maj. Gen. William Starke Rosecrans in Sunbury.)
Cottrill has his own foundry (Coopermill Bronzeworks), which allowed him to oversee the efficiency and accuracy of every aspect of the project. Most artists have to send their clay molds to an independent foundry to be cast in bronze.
The museum wanted the statues to be as real-life as possible, Camp said, including the demographics (race and rank), uniforms and equipment — details that will matter to the soldiers visiting the memorial, he said.
“They’ll be able to say to their family, ‘This is what I wore — I had this scope, this body armor. You’ll never guess how heavy it is.’ These represent the embodiment of them. The statues bring the memorial to life.”
To guide them in their work, Cottrill and his team received from the museum samples of the uniforms, a lengthy checklist of items an infantryman might have and photographs of current soldiers from varying ethnic groups.
Technical experts from Fort Benning visited the foundry several times to critique the progress.
The strict adherence to detail posed something of a challenge, Cottrill acknowledged. His love of sculpting stems from the freedom it gives him to “explore the gamut of human emotion” and be spontaneous with his creations.
He and his team, he said, tried to invoke energy and life into the statues without sacrificing detail.
Although he did have to follow a protocol, he also was able to incorporate some artistic feeling, especially with the face of the soldier modeled on Spc. Ross McGinnis, a 19-year-old who died after jumping on a grenade in Iraq to save his fellow soldiers. (One other statue is based off a living soldier; the other seven are not.)
“His parents came when I sculpted his bust to give their approval of my interpretation of their son,” Cottrill said. “It was very emotional. I think we all had tears in our eyes.”
The keeper of the details was Sarah Hahn, a Columbus sculptor enlisted by Cottrill to help.
Hahn said the process involved a lot of back and forth between her and the museum officials — and some compromise.
“With the pouches on the belts, they might be off an eighth of an inch,” she said. “For me, that was in the realm; but for them, they wanted it perfect. They loved all the little detail.”
Still, she said, she enjoyed finding ways to make each soldier a little different — through, say, the gesture of a hand or the position of a weapon.
“They’re not all cookie-cutter.”
Some of the soldiers have wedding bands, for example; others wear gloves, said Josh Becker, the foundry manager.
Another wears goggles, and some carry a canteen instead of a hydration pack.
Even with the challenges, Becker said, the team was able to create art that made all of the members proud.
“Once I’m there on the base, I think it will really set in what’s been accomplished here,” he said. “The finished pieces are incredible and will be quite a tribute to those who served.”