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Butte Montana is the people
And I always said it only could have been done in butte, Montana
Where else in the world could people of all walks of life and all religions and some with no religions at all
All banded together to do a project and they did that for the lady the Rockies
That's why we love butte and that's why beauty is what it is today
My wife got sick and
December 29th of 1979 she went into the hospital for an emergency
operation and
so that I asked a lady
to
Pray to her son for me, and if she would make her okay, then I would build a statue. I
Love my wife
And I wanted her to be well
Next morning when I looked up on Eastridge and seen Saddle Rock and I thought why not put it up there
There are many versions of the story
Many ways it can be told but this is how those that were there remember
Remember building the lady those that turned a husband's pledge into a monument and turned the lady into an enduring
tribute to all women
Well, I heard about our Lady of the Rockies when it when it first started when they first started construction over in Robert's yard
Oh, I thought
Why not use my skills to help out?
That was a wonderful idea
very very just
It's a blessing to be up there. I heard about it like this and so I went down inquired about it
This didn't start it helped them. I thought well sure I can tribute where I can and my wife she
She insisted she said you gotta get him along when they said they was gonna build a statue under Eastridge
Didn't make no difference to me what they put up here
I didn't really think nothing of it and at the time. I sort of thought it was a
Half joke, you know, I didn't he had so many crazy ideas that I wasn't sure if this was real or not
Well, he said a little statue and I thought well that wouldn't be bad
We could go up and just set it on the outside edge
Finally said well we settled on a 90-foot statue and I said boy looking at this ridge
We've got a lot of work to do
The statue would eventually sit at the edge of the Eastridge on the Great Divide overlooking Butte but after making the promise and
Beginning to gather the people to build it Bob and the Lady of the Rockies project encountered their first major hurdle
We didn't know who owned that land
Looking into those mining claims my wife did most of that and that's a big can of worms. She never want to open
Finding the landowners of the proposed site would ultimately take months of tedious work pouring over maps mining claims and land leases
With the help of his wife and many others their work would pay off after discovering a local family owned the parcel
They wish to build on all our families had a special relationship with the Blessed Mother
So we thought that if we could do anything that was good and worthwhile in Faithfield that would be it
Our family owned the the mining claim. I didn't give an answer immediately because I had to talk with other members of our family
You can imagine
What the reaction would be to anyone who said they're going to put a statue up there that they said would be just a slight larger than the statue of liberty
My question to them is if they had taken their medication that morning because I thought maybe they
Had a little problem without their medication. His reaction
I talked to him and his father and
They told me that to call him about Wednesday. This was like on a Friday
Driving out to Whitehall. My heart was kind of broke
And
And my wife said
What's going on?
I said, well, maybe we're not going to get the land
She said
What if somebody come out here to Whitehall and said that they want to put a statue on your land and they just want to take over
She said wouldn't you have to think about it?
It was a an impossible dream that they had
Bobo Bill and Joe Roberts both wonderful people both great supporters of our city
So I called back Wednesday, and that's when Guy said, yeah, we'll give you the land
So without Guy Ocelo
It never could have happened
With the land secured from the Ocelos the project began to move forward in earnest in the winter of 1981
A key member of that group Mike Cerise
Cerise would lead the charge to build a road to the top of the mountain
A road built entirely with borrowed equipment donated fuel and volunteer labor
Took a lot of blast and a lot of push-in
A lot of work period
We would make sometimes pretty good progress the next day. We'd taken cut a little more and a little more
We got down to one spot and we hit a real bad section of swamp
And I got stuck in it
And Bob said boy now we're in he said
How are we getting out?
Building the road up the side of a mountain became increasingly costly to the project and nearly bankrupted the enterprise
At one time we were down to $14 and a fund
And uh
It didn't look very good
When when night Bobo Bill come down off the mountain
And he told me he said we're done and I said what do you mean you're done?
And he says we're out of fuel. We have no money to buy any more fuel
A couple days went by and Robert's got a hold of me and he says
Down at Gilman's down there. There's 10 100 haul trucks down there
And he says we got the contract to tear him down and ship him to Wyoming. So I walked over to the fuel tanks
And I opened them up. I couldn't believe my eyes. They were filled to the gills
We got some more diesel fuel from the trucks that were being
shipped out at the top of the mountain
And uh shipped out of town
I said I thought the lady was going to furnish the money. I didn't think she was going to furnish the fuel itself
So after that we never
We never ever thought that it wouldn't be done
Many times in our lives you're not sure about spirituality
The amount of steel that came and all of a sudden it would be provided for
Everything we asked up there of Mary that we got
You can go right from the beginning and it's just like pretty soon you get to the point where you say wait a minute
You know, we were here but somebody was saying, you know, I want my statue on the mountain
And you guys are going to do it
As the road neared completion in the summer of 1981
Plans for the construction and the placement of the lady began taking shape
Bobo Bill, Mike Cerise and Al Bevis surveyed the east ridge looking for the best place for the lady
Well, Bob told me he said before you top off the road get to the top
He said hold up. He said I want to get in the cat with you. I want to go over the top with you
So we got in and we bought one over the top and got on the level and he said okay now
Where do we put the lady?
And we looked around I said underneath lamb rock. He said what do you mean lamb rock?
And I looked up and he looked up. He's oh my god
Under Al Bevis's guidance the crew began painstakingly blasting away a section of the east ridge
Carving out only four or five feet of material with each blast
and to look up to that mountain and figured to literally take the
A section of that out to place a statue up there was more or less a it was a goal
It became a goal then the drilling and blasting would take nearly four years to complete
in the summer of 1984
The blast area was now large enough for the rebar and concrete foundation
I was pitching horseshoes with Bill Barth
and
Bill said what are you doing tomorrow cast? I said oh, I don't know why
He said how about going on the mountain with me? He said I got a survey where they're going to put the
legs for the statue
I thought I hadn't been on the mountain for about
10 years. I think I thought yeah, I'm going to come up with them
The circular formation of the base would require 200 yards of concrete and four legs that would anchor the steel skeleton to the mountain
plans called for placing these bolts 20 foot long
So we decided the best way to do it is to drill four small shafts
There were about four by seven and a call for circular rebar in
concentric circles every six inches in a radius of
25 feet every six inches
and I thought man, that's
That's great. So I contacted a few of the iron workers on the hill and
Marty Harris says well, why don't you use that?
Rolled us outside and all we had to do is cut them to length and it was remarkable how that happened
Well from then on come putting
Building forms for the base and then we had a rebar all around where the cement was going to go
And then they poured the cement
Two cement trucks and 100 men poured the foundation
There was a bunch of us around because we wanted to see it done in 1983
The situation in Butte had become dire
The town's largest employer the anaconda company had shut down its mining operation
The unemployment rate skyrocketed over 15 percent
Over four years the community lost 4 000 members of their workforce
People were out of work and uh, it was tough times
The lady of the Rockies project gave meaning to a community suffering
Jesus and Mary took a handful of men that were out of work
And they went up on that mountain and they built a road
That was out of solid rock and then with a hundred men they took and they built a base
I often asked myself
You know, why was I picked or chosen? Why was it Joyce and I that were picked to do this because
Once we got on the mountain the guys decided that
That it was always meant to be maybe and um
So I asked myself why me the answer to that was I knew the right people
It's pretty easy for a guy to have an idea
But how many people have got the great friends
that never
That never faltered and stayed with it
After much discussion and design changes
Joe Roberts brought the idea to one of the welders at his equipment repair shop Leroy Lee
I was uh
A welder for Robert Schrocky Mountain
They got this this uh, uh, Missola to build this model. It was a nine foot model
Aaron Roberts took me up and showed it to him and he said do you think you could build a 90 foot statue from this?
And I looked at it and I said well, where's the prints in the grids? And he said well, there is none
And I said could you build a 90 foot statue looking at me? And Joe said no, and I said well, that's what you're asking me
I never built a statue before a couple weeks went by and bobble built him in the the welding shop
He had just a little 10-inch statue
It's a ceramic statue
I said well, what do you do with that? And he said well, some lady gave it to me and I thought maybe he'd like to see it
And I said well, I've seen statues before
He started to leave and I said you better take this with you and get broken here
And he said
I'll pick it up in a couple weeks. Well a couple weeks went by and
One day Joe walked in and I said you know Joe this should be the Lady of the Rockies with the tans out
And Joe said well who we get to build it and for the life of me. I can't believe I said it
I said I'll do it Joe just stared at me and he just walked out and I thought thank god
He didn't believe me so then he come back in again and he in the next day and he says well when you're going to start
And I wasn't doing much good out there because I was walking around thinking about how I'm going to tell him
I can't build a statue
So anyway, we went to the 430 mass
And I looked up at the figure of Mary on the wall and I and I said
If you want me to build you better tell your son to show me how
And that night I come home and I tossed and I turned and I thought how in the world am I going to tell him
I can't build that statue and all of a sudden it was like I watched a movie
How to draw the lines in the floor into squares how to bend the iron I couldn't believe it
That's that's what how it come about
The statue would be divided and built in six sections totaling more than 60 tons
Construction of the statue would take three years
I would say I gave half my life to the lady my poor wife. She calls her the other woman
She's been a big part
you know
From right from the beginning to when I when I when I did the prints for the lady. I mean she worked with me on it
she was
Like standing behind me the whole time I was building that statue just like Joyce was behind Bill
When you looked at them coming up and doing what they did and the people that volunteered and
The ladies and all that helped us and the people that donated stuff
He just couldn't let the project go and it just know it it was going to go. We just decided and everybody just pitched in and that's where we kept doing
It was decided that the best way to bring the lady to the mountain would require airlift by helicopter
On a typically cold day in december 1985
A flight crew from the Nevada National Guard arrived in butte to assess the feasibility of the airlift
And determine whether the Sikorsky sky crane helicopter could meet the demands of the project as the operations also
I knew about the mission and I selected the crew and then I got busy and kind of forgot about the whole mission
until I got a phone call from my pilot that I put on that that he had
Not properly gotten his physical
I completed and was grounded. I got to bed that night about 10 30
Before I left I tried to get all my clothing and uniforms and everything together
And then I remembered I needed money in order to be able to go. I had six dollars
I asked my wife. She had 10
So with 16 dollars
Next morning I got up at six and with very little preparation
Very little information
We flew to butte
In the dark in a snowstorm
The pilot comstock asked me. He says how much is the heaviest piece and I said nine ton
And he said oh boy, that's right at the limit. He said you don't think he could take some of that iron out of there
And I said well, I'll take out what I can and I'm thinking to myself. We can't pick these pieces up. This is
This is too heavy
But maybe we'll get lucky and we won't have to take it very far
And maybe we won't have to take it very high because altitude is really tough on a helicopter
And they pointed up
To that spot where she is now
How do I show them this this can't be done the challenge is facing this
project were weight
and altitude
Both of which the sky crane excels at but it's not superman. It can't do things
That it is just beyond its capability
I actually looked at the pilot's manual because I hadn't looked at it in a long time for this kind of altitude and so forth
It ran out
There was no chart or graph that showed
What would happen at that altitude under those weights?
On december 17th 1985 the airlift began
The weight of the pieces would prove to be a major challenge for the helicopter crew and the men on the mountain
The helicopter crew and the lady the rockies crew said if anything happened at all that we wouldn't take the piece
Up so everything had to be perfect as we looked at it and they looked at it
Emotions were pretty high
Over the next two days the crew would successfully place three of the six sections
We were elite with a big smile on his face bill bars with a big smile on his face and everybody up on the crew is smiling george james
and uh
Everybody after a smile and we got her into position and and we're home free
Day three of the airlift the hand section the aerodynamics of this piece created problems as the piece was lifted up to the mountain
hoot gibson said
You know we'd never work in the wind usually I like it so we didn't have any wind today
And when we were on the top of the mountain we turned the corner
We went to the statute was dead calm as they flew the top of the hand section over the top
We all reached up and grabbed a tagline
and
I I looked up and thought how beautiful them hands looked hanging down underneath that that piece
He was coming over the top of us pretty soon
It started spinning that got the air turned on and they had ropes on them
And I looked over at the one corner and it was ropes wrapped around one guy. He threw him off
We were in control, but the
Load itself was fluctuating tremendously
It just came out right through us between us, you know, it was a take your breath away moment and then
for me
I was at the back side of the statue and then the hand section came flying by and just stuck
On the front of the statue then the helicopter seemed like it was going to go into the mountain
But then a doble doble way from where I was all of a sudden I couldn't I thought the whole thing
Was just going to crash right there in the front of the mountain
So we all ran to the edge of the cliff and we watched the helicopter going down the cliff going
Slying and back and forth the ground crew on the mountain were filled with terror as they rushed to the edge of the cliff
When the first one hit the side they everybody
Their heart just just dropped
they thought
My god, this is going to be the end of it. I had my hand on the button to release it
And my first ever if I had that's an extreme extreme situation
Because we were at the aircraft's absolute limits and our absolute limits losing that that load would have been
The most awful thing that ever happened to these guys then he's going to drop it or he's going to set it down and smash the hands
He managed to pull in some more power a little more and a little more and a little more and began to get the nose up
And we finally got some airspeed and then they were lucky to find a spot out of the airport
To set it down where there couldn't have been wasn't that much damage to the
To that fourth section
We couldn't go any further if we were missing that section of the statue. That was it
We were going to have to stop who knew when we were going to get a helicopter back again
The previous two days excitement as this six-year odyssey neared completion
Began to ebb away from the crew and was replaced with a sense of dread
And the fear that years of effort were coming to an abrupt end
That for me was probably the pivotal moment and I think it's about that time people understand we were
Uh, there was a bigger power up there than just us and I and I think everybody was involved in that pair
Not I might have had the words but the thoughts were going through everybody else's mind
That mirror you need to help us get this done because
We realize that we aren't in total control here
We all came up here for our own reasons
And we're all dedicated ourselves to this project for whatever each of us has to offer
We're offering our skill our ability that we've learned over the years
And we're offering it up that we get this project completed for the people that have involved us in this
We thank everybody here and we thank the one up above who brought us here
And let's bring this baby home to a happy conclusion and we need her help to do that
Yeah, we got the skill she's got to help us
But let's get her up there
It just seemed like everybody just joined in and everybody held hands and Jim said a prayer
Tears were there and motions were very high and I'm telling you I'll never forget it was like a little light switch
And we said our prayer the wind went to 35 knots
And the rest is history
It means a lot different to different people they see the pictures and all the memorials in there
To me it's a miracle
You go back and you go through the whole thing and it's just it's just unreal. I mean you cannot believe
What happened up there, you know why that statue's up there
Love and faith is is the two words that I have to describe it in and I think that that is so true
And it's even more true today
Day four of the airlift
The face of the lady looks back at the city the city that had turned a promise into a reality
As it made its way to the top of the great divide
Six years leading to this final moment
As soon as I got the statue head in place we had the topping ceremony that we gently laid down the sider
And we put that piece last piece on we're down and looked up in front of it
It's really made you feel good
Made your heart feel good everybody was
Hugging everybody it was it was it was really kind of a fulfillment for everybody's dreams and aspirations
I guess that was when my son asked me dad what do you get paid for this project?
It's just sun the night the lights are turned on the entire city had to be watching
I mean it was just there's certain things that you will never forget in your entire life and that's certainly one of them
So we pulled up to 12,000 feet
And then came back around slowly in front of her to see her in her entirety for the first time
To look at all the men with tears in their eyes and after five years of
Working on it the feeling was indescribable. Well, I mean it was and then to look up at her face
I mean, I guess I could say I thought it was happiest day of my life
The chopper come up and the statue turned completely 180 degrees around like
I was looking at the crew
And my wife was up there and it was truly the greatest day of my life
And uh, I still had her and uh, and the promise was completed
I love the lady and I love my wife
And uh, and I love the people of you
So as I started across the highway, I looked up bubble building electricians. It stayed up to put the lights on the statue
And I was crying so hard at the time I got home and my wife put my head on her lap and she said
And I said why me Pat? Why was I chose to build this? I'm a nobody and my wife said
When Jesus and his mother want something done, they always pick a nobody
So if anybody out there asked you people who built the Lady of Rockings just tell them it was a whole bunch of nobodies
And I was crying so hard at the time I got home and my wife put my head on her lap and she kept asking me, Liora, what's the matter?
So when we built the Lady of Rockings, just tell them it was a whole bunch of nobodies
Everybody, buddy, and now it's part of the community
I think we can accomplish anything
It's just a wonderful sight, you know
One of the most rewarding missions that I had ever undertaken
Couldn't think it would be done, but it is
I was glad to be a small part of it
And it allowed people a place to pull together
It's in my heart, so it's hard to put it in words
I know I look at it in a just statue, some memory
We were all proud of each other and what each one done
It was done out of love, love, and faith
Our Lady of the Rockies, a husband's promise fulfilled, a community's effort, strength, and commitment triumphant, and 30 years later an enduring tribute stands on the mountain
The Lady of Rockings, a mother's promise fulfilled, a community's effort, strength, and commitment triumphant, and 30 years later an enduring tribute stands on the mountain
The Lady of Rockings, a husband's promise fulfilled, a community's effort, strength, and commitment triumphant, and 30 years later an enduring tribute stands on the mountain
The Lady of Rockings, a husband's promise fulfilled, a community's effort, strength, and commitment triumphant, and 30 years later an enduring tribute stands on the mountain
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