November, 1973 -- "Here once the embattled farmers stood; and fired the shot heard 'round the world." At approximately 10 AM, a Bedford High School student read the final lines of the inscription on the Minute Man memorial, and his eyes dropped to the brown paper bag at the statue's base.
Curious, he picked up the bag and began to walk away while his hand unfolded the top. Suddenly, he stood as still as the statue behind him. The bag was ticking! Horrified, the young man dropped it, ran to his car, and headed for the police station.
Cruisers screamed to the North Bridge, where police cordoned off the area. At the same time, others called for a state police bomb expert. As luck would have it, he was nearby, and at 10:45 he appeared on the scene. Ten minutes later he had the bag's contents scattered on the ground: a box out of which tumbled four sticks of dynamite, a detonator, and a clock. It had been set to explode at 11 AM. To this date, the crime remains unsolved.
In the early 1970s, tensions over the Vietnam War continued to increase, while faith in government eroded. As the bicentennial celebration of the events of April 19, 1775 approached, town officials worried about demonstrations and potential violence. With the 1973 bomb incident fresh in their memories, the selectmen voted to have the statue removed for minor repairs, but most importantly to make a plaster duplicate so that in the event of damage to the original, an exact replacement could be cast.
On the morning of January 16, 1975, amidst complete secrecy, Daniel Chester French's Minute Man swung off his base and came to rest in a truck before beginning the trip to Boston. For the first time in a century, visitors to North Bridge were greeted by an empty granite block. On March 29 the statue returned, greeted by fanfare. Girl Scouts placed a time capsule in the base, and a crowd applauded as the bronze statue settled back where he belonged.
April 19, 1975 did draw protestors. Approximately forty thousand people, celebrating the People's Bicentennial, camped on National Park grounds. Though they objected vocally to segments of the speeches, President Gerald Ford's in particular, their demonstrations were entirely peaceful.
The existence of a plaster duplicate of the state had unexpected consequences. The Minute Man has long been the symbol of the National Guard. In 1992, the Army National Guard's top brass wrote to the Concord selectmen seeking approval for their plan to use the plaster-of-Paris cast made in 1975 to create a duplicate statue, which they would place at their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They followed this up with a letter suggesting that the selectmen "will be pleased to know" that the Guard's lawyers advised them that "a local vote or permission of the Town" was not needed. They invited the board to make "suggestions" and "provide assistance."
Having gone through this before, Concordianss reacted with articulate outrage when, in 1984 the Air National Guard wanted to do the same thing. "Aesthetically and historically [the Minute Man statue] is a singular piece, a national treasure entrusted to Concord for safekeeping," wrote former selectman Anna Manion. "Placing a copy of the Minute man anywhere else would weaken the historic bond." "If the National Guard wishes to put up a statue of a minuteman, more power to them. But let them commission a sculptor to create one for them," insisted historian David Little.
Ultimately, law prevailed. In the 1963 cooperative agreement between the National Park Service and Concord, the town retained "ownership of historic structures, objects and grounds in the Battleground area." No duplicate of the Minute Man statue has been made, nor, as far as Concordians are concerned, will ever be!
Art Credits: Backgrounds by Word of Mouth Web Design, Minuteman Statue ©2006 Richard Stevenson, other images by clipart.com.
