Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon BorglumCasey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
General
Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon Borglum
Casey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
Borglum, Gutzon, 1867-1941
The date of the Association’s election day was the same as that of the
selection of a presidential primary candidate. The political meeting was
held first. After it had adjourned the Association president went to the
Association’s annual meeting accompanied by a large number of
politicians.
Up to that point the Association hadn’t had many active members. The
dues had been five dollars. Nobody seems to have known what the total
membership was. Nobody ever counted the attendance. And most of those
present were members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Eighty-six politicians came into the hall with the re-elected
Association president. Somebody moved to reduce dues to one dollar, and
someone else slapped eighty-six dollars on the desk of the treasurer.
Eighty-six new names were added to the roster of the Association. And
these eighty-six, along with the president, dominated the meeting.
There had hitherto been five or six people on the board of directors.
The number was immediately changed to fifty. The membership of the
executive committee was increased from nine to fifteen and was to be
chosen by the board of directors. A resolution was passed to bar any
increase in the membership of the Association except with the approval
of the president and a subcommittee of three appointed by him. The
president and the executive business manager, as the result of these
arrangements, were then in absolute control of the organization. The
president forgot his promise to resign.
An executive committee of fourteen men and one woman was named. The men
were persons of big affairs--several of them bankers whose daily
routine gave them little time for benevolent causes. There was not a
member to represent the U.D.C.
* * * * *
There has been a lot of controversy over the Stone Mountain memorial.
There will, no doubt, continue to be. Nobody who ever knew Gutzon
Borglum would attempt to say he was a complacent character. Decidedly he
was not. He knew what he thought was right, and that is what he wanted.
He wanted nothing else. Calm argument could change his point of view, of
course, for he was intelligent. But he could not be browbeaten. He was
honest--so he could not be bribed. His anger could be Jovian, and in his
indignation he could be intolerant and insulting. No one will deny these
things.
There isn’t much doubt that the executive committee of the Stone
Mountain Association encountered him in many moods, for he was in and
about the premises from 1915 to 1925. When things went wrong with
Gutzon’s plans, when anybody thwarted him, the world knew about it, and
few will say that the early days of the work on the mountain were
without confusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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