Paul Manship was always fascinated by the myths in the Zodiac and the constellations.
We're looking at the Aero Memorial by Paul Manship.
I'm his grandson, Eric Natty, and I can remember it as a small model in the living room at home.
My name is Rebecca Reynolds and I'm an art historian.
My specialty is American sculpture.
The Aero Memorial is a monument to World War I flyers.
But to us growing up it was the celestial sphere.
A celestial sphere is basically the sky that surrounds the Earth.
It shows all of the major constellations.
You really should think about yourself being inside it.
And looking out every star would be in exactly the right place.
I spent all of my summers at the Manship house.
All there is around it is the ocean, so it's actually dark.
You can really see the stars.
On starry nights, my grandfather, he'd go out and point out constellations.
He really dedicated himself to learning all about what ancient Greek and Roman art had to teach him.
Because the myths that are in the sky were very much a part of this.
So much of what he did was based on those universal truths that we find in the myths.
The more you look, the more little details you see.
This is a piece that really requires close, careful inspection.
You should be able to see Sagittarius and Taurus as well, the bull.
All of them, they're all there.
I think any astronomer would tell you that it is quite accurate.
He was just absolutely concerned that it'd be right.
The family story is that he sat down and taught himself the calculus needed to measure along the surface of a sphere to put things at the right angles.
And if you look very carefully, you may be able to find, next to a fish and a swan,
down by the Pisces Australis, the portrait of the artist himself, Paul Manship.
It looks like him when he had air.
He may have wanted to be a constellation in the sky.
He's got a star in the middle of his forehead, not a whole constellation, just one star.
You might ask why a celestial sphere is representing a World War I memorial to aviators.
Finally, I got him where I wanted to and peaked steep, shooting all the time.
I saw he had been hit and made a vertical spiral to watch him frill down.
That was Houston Woodward, one of the six men commemorated in this monument,
describing for his father the first German plane that he had shot down.
I'm David Contasta. I'm an historian. I write about Philadelphian Philadelphians.
And I've written a book about Houston Woodward's family.
Houston Woodward seemed typical of the kind of young man who would fly in World War I.
Flying in World War I was very romantic.
They were above the mud, the lice, the rats, the filth, the stench,
climbing high and high and high into the sky with the wind whistling through their ears, through their hair.
Of course, the thrill of flight and the romance didn't last long for most of World War I fliers.
Houston Woodward was killed only eight months after he joined the fight.
They chose a celestial sphere, presumably because it's where aviators are. They're in the sky.
I think it works very well for someone like Houston Woodward, who gloried in being in the skies.
In fact, to have the night sky represent fallen aviators. It's rather poetic.
