Stone monument deck shows wear

The William Joel Stone monument watches over the Square. At right, dark creases between tiles show that somoe of the mortar around stones tiles in the William Joel Stone monument on the Vernon County Courthouse lawn, Nevada, has fallen away, with some of the sand beneath having been weathered away. The monument was refurbished and rededicated just a few years ago with a great amount of fanfare.--file photo

Four years ago the late Franklin Norman capped a lifetime of civic activities by bringing the city, county and state together to refurbish the William Joel Stone monument that sits on the courthouse lawn. Today the monument needs to have more work done.

At the time the bronze of the statue was cleaned and a patina was applied and covered with a lacquer coating to protect it. The granite was cleaned and the plaques were gilded and new rosettes applied. Damaged and broken slates were replaced and the grout redone.

Now the grout between the slate tiles is cracked and missing in many places. The statue itself, which was supposed to have been maintained by local officials, hasn't had any work done since the refurbishing was completed.

Local businessman John Flynn, a friend of the late Norman, said he was disappointed nothing had been done to maintain the monument. He said that he hoped the city and county could work together to come up with a way to get the monument back into shape quickly and with a minimum of friction.

"Franklin Norman did the heavy lifting on this and the city and the county need to do what they agreed to," Flynn said. "I noticed the discoloration on the granite and went over to the monument and I was shocked by the condition of the deck. The mortar was broken and missing from much of it and with the hard winters we've been having it's critical we get this done before winter sets in."

Norman tried for a decade to get the monument fixed but was stymied by a bureaucratic mystery -- which governmental body had jurisdiction over the statue? Although the statue sits on the grounds of the courthouse it was dedicated by the state and still belonged to it.

At the time Norman was quoted in the Daily Mail as having an epiphany about the statue's ownership.

"It occurred to me that the statue doesn't belong to the county. It's a state monument," Norman said. "I remembered reading that the governor had accepted the statue on behalf of the state of Missouri."

With that revelation Norman was able to find the right state agency to get the work done but the agreement called on local officials to keep the monument maintained.

Vernon County Presiding Commissioner Bonnie McCord said that Mid-continent Restoration had been asked to look at the deck of the monument and give it a bid for the work but the county hadn't yet received the bid.

Stone, who is buried in Deepwood Cemetery in Nevada, was a political giant in his day ---- not simply in Nevada, but across the state and into Washington.

Several years ago Kansas City Star columnist Jim Fisher wrote: "In his era ---- from the early 1890s until his death at 69 in 1918 ---- Stone made many of the current crop of politicians look like pygmies."

Vernon County prosecuting attorney, congressman, two-term governor for the state of Missouri, U.S. senator ---- by most standards, a pretty impressive résumé.

As governor ---- the only Missouri governor in the late 1800s to serve two terms ---- Stone saved the University of Missouri after a fire that wiped out most of the campus. As a senator, he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, even taking positions against Woodrow Wilson and his own Democratic Party over the United States' entry into World War I.