I was inordinately pleased to read that even after a $66 million cosmetic surgery job by skilled restorers, our 100-year-old ”First Lady of the Land,” the Statue of Liberty, will still have blemished skin.
That means that on the evening of July 3, when the awesome unveiling of the ”new” Liberty takes place, we television viewers will see dark streaks along her torch-bearing arm and black marks on her left cheek.
How fitting it is that the magnificent Lady with the Torch will always have upon her the irreparable marks of nature`s elements. I had been worried that some one would find a way to transform her into a 300-foot-high figure of beauty-queen perfection, which would have made a mockery of everything she symbolizes.
When I saw her for the first time more than 50 years ago (on my honeymoon), I was mesmerized by the haunting serenity of the sculptured face, the book she held, the broken chain of bondage at her foot and the torch held high to welcome weary immigrants.
I was seeing what my own parents saw as pre-teenagers when they landed on Ellis Island. I was pleased when I found that I could still recall the 14 poignant, passionate lines of Emma Lazarus` sonnet ”The New Colossus,”
which is inscribed on a bronze tablet hanging on an interior wall of Liberty`s pedestal, and which became the credo of thousands of immigrants.
History tells us about the tremendous excitement of Oct. 28, 1886, the day of dedication, but now, when I read about the razzmatazz scheduled for the four-day centennial celebration on the Fourth of July weekend, it makes the original event seem like a Sunday school picnic. This rededication promises to be a script that could be titled ”Sheer Madness,” starring Ronald Reagan, Lee Iacocca, Frank Sinatra, Ed Koch and Francois Mitterrand, with bit parts played by hundreds of others, including Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger.
The 10-ring circus of excesses is the brainchild of ringmaster David Wolper, the famous producer Newsweek calls the ”Svengali of Spectacle.” He was recruited by Iacocca, head of the Liberty Foundation, to make this the biggest show of all.
So we will have our pomp and ceremony, an orgy of bloated speeches, an endless succession of patriotic spectaculars (many of them tear-jerkers) and, of course, fabulous fireworks. One miracle even Wolper can`t perform–Liberty cannot blow out 100 candles on her birthday cake!
What will be left in the memories of all who watch is the vision of our majestic Lady of the Harbor holding high the newly lighted Torch of Liberty, the dark streaks of time`s atmospheric erosion on her arm and cheek, which add an appropriate look of age and imperfection to Frederic Auguste Bartholdi`s greatest sculpture.
