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Chester's King memorial nears completion

Among the many cities on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s path to glory - Atlanta, Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Memphis - Chester never hosted his great speeches or historic marches.

Among the many cities on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s path to glory - Atlanta, Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Memphis - Chester never hosted his great speeches or historic marches.

But the fledgling civil-rights leader studied and preached as a young man in Chester six decades ago.

Now this reviving industrial city on the Delaware River is preparing to honor him in a monumental way.

Come April, hundreds of Chester's civic leaders and residents will gather on the city's west side to dedicate their new Martin Luther King Memorial Park and its centerpiece: a majestic bronze head of King.

"We still have a lot to do," said William Payne, the city's planner, as he strolled the two-acre site at Sixth and Engle Streets recently. "But we're very close."

In 1948, at age 19, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, where he spent the next three years pursuing his master of theology degree. He was elected class president and served as an assistant pastor at Calvary Baptist Church on Route 291. Crozer Seminary closed in 1970. The seminary building is now part of the Crozer-Chester Medical Center complex.

Proposed by local clergy 11 years ago, the $900,000 project still needs to raise about $40,000 to transform the bust from a clay form to bronze.

If it can raise that money, in a few weeks a stream of molten bronze, bright as the sun, will pour from the furnace of a metal foundry on Sixth Street, filling five molds.

Each piece will take days to cool and weeks more to clean and assemble, then brighten with blowtorches, color with acid, wax, and mount on a pedestal.

Brooding and somber, the strikingly realistic, five-foot bust has been taking shape since 2005 in a sculptor's studio in Glenside, where it awaits relocation to Laran Bronze Inc., Chester's renowned art foundry.

"I'm trying to create the essential, definitive Martin Luther King head," Zenos Frudakis explained last week as he studied the massive clay-on-foam bust on the second floor of his studio.

The gray-green head overpowers the space with its size and solemnity. King, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was assassinated four years later, gazes into the far distance, visibly burdened.

A native of San Francisco who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Frudakis has a lengthy list of commissions, including the large bronze of the late Mayor Frank Rizzo waving from the steps of Philadelphia's Municipal Services Building, and the Freedom tableau of four figures emerging from a bronze rectangle outside the GlaxoSmithKline building in Center City.

Frudakis, 58, said he chose not to depict King from any one decade, but sought instead to "convey time in three dimensions."

Working from about 200 photos mounted on boards around the giant clay head, Frudakis took the mouth from one period of King's life, the creases around the eyes from another; likewise with the cheeks and furrowed brow.

"It's amazing how different he can look from decade to decade," he said, pointing to the striking differences in King's weight and age and subtle changes around the mouth, the chin, and what Frudakis called King's "visionary" eyes.

"It's a biography," said Frudakis, "but a visual biography."

Some of the clay he used to create the life-size head on which he modeled this once belonged to sculptor Daniel Chester French, creator of the Abraham Lincoln seated inside the Lincoln Memorial.

He said he was charging Chester only for his costs because he admired King.

In 1988, Frudakis created the bust of King that stands outside the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, and he said last week he wished he had won the commission to create the 30-foot statue at the $120 million Martin Luther King Memorial under way in Washington.

That commission went, controversially, to Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin.

Like the Washington project, Chester's memorial, commissioned by the nonprofit Martin Luther King Memorial Committee of Chester, has taken longer and cost more than its creators had hoped.

In 2002, the City Council appropriated $237,000 for the project. Local firms and labor unions have also made financial contributions or donated services.

"To a lot of our members, Martin Luther King was a saint," said James Harper Sr., president of Laborers Local 413. "So when I said we need all hands on deck, we got total cooperation" preparing the site.

Surrounded by a low metal fence, it sits alongside Crozer Public Library in the large Veterans' Memorial Park on the city's west side.

The King bust will sit at the center of the park, but the planners have yet to decide in which direction it will face. Payne said it might face the library as a way of encouraging young visitors to do something King loved to do: read.

Whichever way it faces, the massive bronze will be accessible. "We want people to come close, to study it, even touch it," Payne said. "We want them to remember him."

King Memorial Donations

Donations to Chester's Martin Luther King Memorial may be made by purchasing paving bricks inscribed with the donor's name, which will be laid around the King statue. The cost of each brick is $40.

Checks may be mailed to the Martin Luther King Memorial Committee, 1 Fourth St., Chester, Pa. 19103, made out to the committee. Donations are tax-deductible.

Additional information about donating is available by calling the Chester planning department at 610-447-7707, or by e-mailing city communications director Emily Harris at eharris@chestercity.com.

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