A close-up of Ernie Pyle’s eyes shows the precise details of Bill Wolfe’s artistry. Mike Lunsford/Special to the Tribune-Star
Bill Wolfe and Ernie Pyle have spent countless hours together in Bill’s Clinton studio. Mike Lunsford/ Special to the Tribune-Star
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It will be a few months yet, but when you see Bill Wolfe’s newest sculpture, that of Hoosier favorite son, Ernie Pyle, you will undoubtedly be taken by its military bend: a grinning but war-weary Ernie in uniform and GI boots, sitting atop dugout sandbags, his trusty Underwood portable nearby.
But I’m convinced that it is a different Pyle altogether that Wolfe has come to know from their time together in Wolfe’s Clinton studio: a man who grew up on a tabletop-flat Vermillion County farm, a country kid with simple beginnings who became something great; a skinny, nervous, often shy soul who was a bit confounded by, but also proud of his own fame and unexpected success. That Ernie Pyle is in Bill’s sculpture too.
Unabashedly, Wolfe, now 69 years old, says this sculpture — his 30th — has become his favorite project to date, for in many ways, it was an idea about Pyle, planted in his mind years ago by a friend, that got him started on a remarkable string of artistic successes, one that began with his first statue, that of local Marine Corps hero, Corporal Charles Abrell.
“Ernie’s story is one of a small town country boy who had dreams of traveling the world,” Wolfe says. “He was one of us, the soldiers’ friend, and his ability to write about it in human terms brought his name into prominence… The sad part is that just as he was realizing the terrible toll that the war was taking on him, and he was ready to come home for good, that’s when his life ended. But not his story.
That’s why there is a statue and museum dedicated to his life.”
Wolfe’s clay sculpture, currently dismembered (it’s now in 10 pieces), is being expertly cast at Sincerus Art Casting in Indianapolis.
The process will take about three months, so the statue won’t be re-assembled, buffed, mounted, and ready to display at the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Pyle’s hometown of Dana anytime soon. But the idea of immortalizing Pyle in bronze has been a dream of those associated with the museum and the writer’s immaculately-kept childhood home in that small western Vermillion County town for years.
Becky Holbert, volunteer board member for the “Friends of Ernie Pyle World War II Museum” for the past five years, says Wolfe’s statue will highlight the new Ernie Pyle Memorial and Veterans Park on the grounds. There is no set date for its unveiling, but Holbert says it will come this year.
Holbert added, “Versions of this effort have been talked about for many years by different people, but the stars aligned a couple of years ago, and the planning has moved quickly.”
When asked why Wolfe was considered most of all for the project, she added, “Bill’s skill and reputation as a sculptor is well known nationwide. The fact that he’s originally from Clinton, a local boy, made it a no-brainer that we’d invite him to do the sculpture of Ernie Pyle.”
Holbert says that those who visit the museum will come to understand that Pyle was much more than solely a war correspondent.
“The incredible impact that Ernie Pyle had, though he was killed in 1945, continues for our nation’s military men, women, and their families.” For instance, she points out that it was Pyle who first advocated for “combat pay” for soldiers who fought on the front lines, and added, “The project will highlight Ernie as the keystone piece, but it will also honor the veterans of all military branches. Our nation’s soldiers were his heroes. During the war, Pyle saw, first-hand, what troops endured as he spent much of his time embedded with the infantry.”
The idea of sculpting Pyle has been with Wolfe for over two decades. Well before he was making his living as a sculptor, he developed a friendship with Pete Johnson, WTHI-TV’s talented graphic artist. Wolfe was working at Ideas, Inc. at the time, and Johnson, a veteran and commandant of the Marine Corps League in North Terre Haute, helped him procure the contract for the statue of Abrell, who was killed in Korea in 1951 and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Just after the dedication ceremony was over, Johnson told Wolfe, “You might as well start on Ernie Pyle, because someday you’ll be doing him too.”
“So, I made a maquette [a sculptor’s preliminary model] of Pyle,” Wolfe says.
“It was seated similarly to the one I’ve just finished, and I took it to Pete, knowing he’d tell me the truth.
He told me he didn’t think I had Pyle’s boots quite right, so he went to his closet and brought me a pair of his own to work from. Later he told me, ‘You’ve got it.’” “This has been 24 years in the making,” Wolfe added. “It’s hard to describe, but this brings things full circle for me. Pete was right; here I am working on Ernie. It’s funny how things often work out, and I can now look up to the sky and say, ‘You were right, Pete.’” Wolfe relates that after completing that first maquette, he took it to Dana and asked if they were interested. The “Friends” very much were, but there wasn’t enough money to get it done in those days, so the maquette sat on a garage shelf and deteriorated. The dream, however, never faded.
Born in Parke County and raised in Vermillion, fewer than ten miles from Pyle’s home, Wolfe spent considerable time as a boy playing with the clay he found along Big Raccoon Creek near Mecca and Coxville; he can easily identify with a man like Pyle who spent his childhood a half-century before wading and fishing and wandering woods and dusty farm lanes. “I think I’ve had awareness of Ernie Pyle since I was young,” Wolfe says. “A massive amount of information and research goes into the making of a statue, and I’ve studied subtle nuances of how Pyle positioned his head and his hands, his slightly tilted and mischievous grin. Those things reflect his character and Hoosier roots.”
In June 1936, Pyle, a few years away from seeing Europe erupt in the flames of the Second World War, returned to his Vermillion County home as a sort of wandering correspondent for the Scripps-Howard News Service; he had already established himself as a talented and extremely popular writer.
In a column where he described driving to a favored fishing and swimming spot with the young stepson of his aunt, a boy who wasn’t even born when Pyle played there with friends, he wrote about “Mr.
Webster’s pasture” as if the place had never left his Hoosier heart; it had been at least two decades since he’d last been there.
“The fish were biting pretty good. Better than I ever remember them biting in the old days,” Pyle wrote.
“The old creek down in Mr. Webster’s pasture didn’t even know the great fisherman had been away for 20 years, I suppose. And for that matter, I don’t suppose it knew he ever came back.”
That Ernie Pyle, the Indiana farm boy, thanks to Bill Wolfe and a group of his friends, is coming back home to Dana again.
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