A LEGACY CARVED IN STONE; BOSTON-BORN SCULPTOR DEPICTS CRAZY HORSE

The Boston Globe

BEVERLY BECKHAM

BLACK HILLS, S.D. - You'd think that we'd know his name. You'd think if a man from Boston, born on Harrison Avenue, orphaned at the age of 1, beaten and abused his whole childhood, grew up and did something great something no one else has ever done we'd have at least heard of him.

You'd think that conceiving and working for 35 years on the biggest sculpture in the world, bigger than the pyramids in Egypt, would be a shoo-in to fame.

We know the bad guy, s the Albert DeSalvos, the Whitey Bulgers, the Father John Geoghans. Our culture makes celebrities of them. But the good guys? They're ignored. The reason we don't have heroes anymore is not because they don't exist. It's because no one is telling us about them.

Boston-born Korczak (core-chalk) Ziolkowski (jewel-cuff-ski) is one of these heroes. His account of his early life is chilling: Beaten in the orphanage where he lived until he was 4, beaten by the prizefighter who took him in and used him for slave labor until he was 16, tortured by his foster mother who beat him if she caught him reading, who threw knives at him for fun, and who made him sleep in an attic without heat or blankets on crates he found on the streets, beaten and abused, he didn't break.

"It would have been child abuse today," his widow, Ruth, says. But back in the early 1900s this was the way things were.

Boston Juvenile Judge Frederick Pickering Cabot showed the boy the only kindness he knew. He brought him to museums and symphonies and to his sister's house, where Korczak learned there existed a different and better life.

It was this life of culture and civility that he held in his hands in 1939. Though he never took a lesson, though he learned how to carve wood and stone while working in the shipyards in East Boston, though his only diploma was from Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Korczak won first prize by popular vote at the 1939 New York World's Fair for his marble sculpture "Paderewski: Study of an Immortal."

Suddenly the world was his.

He was living in Connecticut then and had a little bit of fame and fortune. But with the prize came the opportunity for more.

And then he got a letter from a Sioux Indian chief. Mount Rushmore was being built in the hills of South Dakota a tribute to American presidents. And the chief wrote, "My fellow Chiefs and I would like the White Man to know the Red Man had great heroes, too." He asked Korczak to come to the Black Hills and build a monument to Crazy Horse.

Korczak met with the chiefs and learned that Crazy Horse was a great hero. So he made a clay model. Then World War II came along. Korczak enlisted. And fought. And survived Omaha Beach.

After the war, the government offered him a job sculpting war memorials in Europe. But he returned to South Dakota and from 1947 to his death in 1982 worked nonstop on a monument that when it is finished will be the biggest in the world.

He was 40 when he finally began work on the mountain. He'd spent two years building a cabin and a 741-foot staircase to the top before he could start. Then, until the mid 1950s, he worked alone with just a small jackhammer. Over the years he broke bones, hurt his back, had four spinal operations to remove shattered discs, had two heart attacks, and heart surgery.

He died in 1982 at age 74, having removed 7 billion tons of rock from the mountain but never seeing the face of Crazy Horse that he saw in his mind.

But he left three books of blueprints and a wife and 10 children who'd worked with him. His wife and seven of the children continue the work where he left off.

Now the face is there for all to see. It was completed in 1998. But the entire project - three-dimensional, 563 feet high and 641 feet long, with Crazy Horse seated on his horse - will take decades to finish.

Korczak raised and spent more than $5 million on the carving. He never took a salary or had an expense account. Twice he turned down $10 million from the government because he didn't trust the government to finish the job or to honor its humanitarian goals.

Crazy Horse Memorial is more than a sculpture. It is a living center, which exists to honor all American Indians and to tell their story.

Ruth, now 80, still lives on the mountain in the log cabin her husband built. He's buried in a tomb near the base of the mountain. More than a million people a year visit Crazy Horse Memorial. Ruth greets many of them. She greeted me last week.

"It will take many, many lifetimes" to complete Crazy Horse, Korczak told author Robb DeWall. This didn't bother him. "If I can give back to the Indian some of his pride and create the means to keep alive his culture and heritage, my life will have been worthwhile."

Worthwhile and worth, don’t you think, remembering?