Nearly 110 years after founding the City of Arcadia, the town’s first Mayor, Elisa Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, can still draw a big crowd as was proved Tuesday when a nine-foot statue was unveiled befitting his larger-than life stature.
The statute created by artist Alfred Paredes called “A Dawn in the West” was commissioned and donated by Baldwin’s sibling great-great-great granddaughters Margaux Gibson-Viera and Heather Gibson. Both of them, who live out of town, along with their mother and other Baldwin relatives, many of whom were meeting for the first time Tuesday, were in attendance.
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The ceremony, presided over by Mayor Bob Harbicht, drew a couple hundred people, including most City leaders and many staff.
During the ceremony, Arcadia Historical Society President and City Clerk Gene Glasco introduced the group’s 10th History Lives Here marker featuring a written profile of Baldwin along with rare photos. The marker stands just a few feet away from the statue near a new pathway into the Rev. Monsignor Gerald M. O’Keefe Rose Garden, where the statue stands on a pedestal rising a combined total of 13-feet in the air. From the garden beyond the west end of the Community Center parking lot between Huntington and Campus Drives where they intersect with Holly Avenue, Baldwin’s bronze likeness faces his beloved longtime and final homeplace at what is now the Arboretum.
Two bolts extending below the feet of the statue that are each two-feet long and 1 1/2″ thick hold the statue solidly to its base, which is made of concrete but painted to appear as wood. The pedestal was contributed by the City, which used the $25,000 Westfield Santa Anita contributed to the City’s public art fund as part of its agreement to be allowed to expand the mall.
— By Scott Hettrick
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