Here Comes Lentil

By Richard O Jones
Reprinted with permission of the Journal-News

When the newest addition to the City of Sculpture receives its unveiling on Friday, Hamilton’s population of bronze people will officially grow by one six-foot little boy.

And a dog.

A gift of the Hamilton Community Foundation in celebration of its 50th anniversary, “Lentil” is based on drawings from the book of the same title by Robert McCloskey. It will be located in the park at the corner of High Street and Riverfront Plaza.

McCloskey, an award-winning author of children’s books including “Make Way For Ducklings” and “Homer Price,” is a native of Hamilton. The foundation board decided that a sculpture based on his work would be an appropriate way to honor him and the foundation, according to board member Mary Pat Essman, director of the Lane Public Library.

Part of the inspiration, too, was a sculpture in Boston based on “Make Way for Ducklings.”

“Our first idea was to see if we could get an edition of ‘Make Way for Ducklings,’ so we contacted the sculptor,” Essman said.

Make Way for McCloskey

Massachusetts artist Nancy Schön created bronze renditions of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings for the Boston Public Garden, where the McCloskey story takes place.

The only other version of the sculpture resides in Novodevichy Park in Moscow, but that was a one-time only deal, Schön said, a 1991 gift from former First Lady Barbara Bush to Raisa Gorbachev and the children of Moscow in celebration of the historic START Treaty ceremony. The gift was a suggestion from Schön and her partner, inspired by a photo op at the Boston Public Garden when Mrs. Gorbachev visited a year earlier.

“I’ve been asked by a number of people to have the ducks and he always said no, except for the Moscow ones,” she said. “He calls the shots on everything I do, and he said, ‘These ducks belong in Boston.’”

So Schön suggested “Lentil,” thinking it would be a better sculpture for Hamilton.

Schön said she first got to know McCloskey shortly after receiving the commission to create “Make Way for Ducklings” in 1985.

“I have a friend who has a summer place on Little Deer Island,” she said, where McCloskey now resides in Maine. “She told him about me and must have said something nice because he told her he wanted to meet ‘this wonderful woman.’”

Through her friend, she invited McCloskey to her studio in Newton, near Boston, see a small model of the ducks.

“He came down, I guess, to see if I’m qualified,” Schön said. “I wanted some credibility and I didn’t want to do this project without his approval.”

She showed him a prototype of Mrs. Mallard and some of the other ducks that she’d done in clay.

“He seemed to like them, but he wasn’t quite sure, so we  hauled them outside to see what they looked like,” Schön recalled. “God must have been looking down on me because children from a day care center nearby come over with their parents and started patting these ducks.

“He said, ‘Okay. They’re perfect.’”

She has kept in touch with McCloskey since, calling him “a shy, quiet and humble man — with an emphasis on humble.”

McCloskey, who turned 87 on Sept. 15, has Parkinson’s Disease, she said, who doesn’t like a lot of publicity or attention, so when the chance came to do “Lentil,” he “hemmed and hawed.”

“To convince him, I made a little wax model and went up to see him,” she said. “I showed him Lentil and the dog and his long face went from ear to ear with a smile.”

Since then, McCloskey has also seen the finished sculpture and gave his approval for that, too.

“I suggested to Mr. McCloskey that it was important for him to approve my work at this time as in the future he might not have the chance to do so,” Schön said. “Our friendship and history have proven to him that I can be trusted, and that I have never and would never betray that trust. I think that's why he gave his approval.”

Lentil’s Alley

“Lentil” takes place in the fictional town of Alto, Ohio, but it looks a lot like Hamilton, Essman said.

In the story, Lentil can’t sing or whistle, so he buys a harmonica and marches through town, his small dog in tow. He unwittingly saves Alto's homecoming parade in honor of Colonel Carter.

McCloskey wrote “Lentil” in Hamilton after leaving New York’s National Academy of Design in 1938 and before returning to New York.

“The buildings look like Hamilton and the library looks like our library,” Essman said.

Schön makes a further conjecture: “I believe that Lentil is Mr. McCloskey 75 years ago. He does play the harmonica and being his first book, it’s not unusual that it would be autobiographical.”

The Hamilton Community Foundation gave the job of designing the site to Warren Klink of Urban Thickets Landscape.

“I saw the model and I knew he was walking down an alley, like one of the back alleys in Hamilton, so I gave it an old-timey, weedy setting,” Klink said. “But it’s pretty elegant and it’s been more than a year, so the park has matured nicely.”

The 40-foot by 70-foot site once accommodated the city's historic bus station, and later the Court Theater, but the building was demolished to make room for the downtown streetscape project.

“Lentil” will be unveiled to the public 11:30 a.m. Friday.

To involve the children of the community in this project, the Lane Public Library and Hamilton City Schools held a contest to name the dog, who remained nameless in the book. English classes in grades 5-7 were given a chance to enter the contest, which was continued through the summer as part of the library’s programming. Tasha Robins from Cleveland Elementary won the contest and the name will be revealed on Friday.

Schön will be present for the celebration for “Lentil,” and will be guest speaker at a reception in her honor, 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lane Public Library, 300 N. Third St., Hamilton.

The Hamilton Community Foundation, with offices on North Third Street, operates as a philanthropic pool, accepting private donations from trust funds, memorials, bequests and wills, as well as cash gifts from citizens, companies and organizations.