T. Perry Wesley (1905 - 2001), Editor Emeritus
of the Spencer [Indiana] Evening World. Mr Wesley spent over 50 years searching for E.M. Viquesney's "Spirit of the
American Doughboy" WWI monuments.
| Photo: Smithsonian IAS. |
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| E.M. Viquesney's ''Spirit of the American Doughboy''. |
A LIST OF WHERE E.M. VIQUESNEY'S
"SPIRIT OF THE
AMERICAN DOUGHBOY" ISN'T
Listed here are various locations currently or at one time
reported to be those of E.M. Viquesney's famous WWI memorial monument, "The Spirit of the American Doughboy", but which are
incorrect or can't be confirmed, despite some Smithsonian Institution Inventory of American Sculpture (IAS) records to the contrary.
It might seem strange to devote an entire Website to a
list of locations where something isn't, but read on:
Because there are more of Ernest Moore "Dick" Viquesney's "Spirit of the American Doughboy" WWI memorials
placed around the country than those of any other sculptor, a number of people have adopted the hobby of trying to find all
of them, former or existing. One of those people was T. Perry Wesley, the former editor of the Spencer Evening World,
the local newspaper in Viquesney's hometown, Spencer, Indiana.
It must have been an interesting hobby for Mr. Wesley,
to say the least, and his research attracted the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, which asked him to send them whatever
data he had, so they could include it in their IAS files. But Mr. Wesley hadn't finished verifying his collected information;
rapidly losing his sight and hearing, he largely relied on his teams of "Doughboy Searchers" to find the statues for him and
report back.
But in the Summer of 1990, T. Perry Wesley had an idea; on
August 23 of that year he sent a photo of Spencer's Viquesney Doughboy to the editor of Home and Away Magazine, published
by the AAA. Mr. Wesley asked its readers if they had the same statue in their towns. He got over 350 replies, but the results
were both blessing and bane; in the "Doughboy Report" he published in early 1991, largely based on those replies, he correctly identified more than 100 Viquesney "Spirit of the
American Doughboy" statues out of a total of 136 on his list (up 'til 1990 he had catalogued only about 25 of them after 40
years of searching). But over 35 of the statues he included as "confirmed" Viquesney Doughboys on his new list were misidentifications.
It was clear some of Mr. Wesley's respondents reported other WWI monuments that had poses similar to "The Spirit of the American
Doughboy", and were accepted as genuine by him. Many actually were a statue called "Over the Top" by another sculptor, John Paulding.
Moreover, some of the statues Mr. Wesley reported to the Smithsonian as Viquesney's "Spirit of the American
Doughboy" were actually statues by other sculptors that the SI already had on record. This resulted in many double entries
in the IAS files, with each duplicate set now having one record describing the actual non-Viquesney statue and the other describing
a second nonexistent Viquesney Doughboy (referred to on this site as "doppelgängers" on the pages where they occur). When
the Smithsonian added Mr. Wesley's data in its inventory of American sculpture, it unfortunately included many of these errors.
It is thus the purpose of this site to list (and hopefully clear up) as many of these IAS and other errors as possible .
Some errors have already been corrected through the efforts
of Kenneth Berchem-Nigg, the great-grandson of Jules Berchem, the man who once owned American Art Bronze Foundry and sued
Viquesney in 1922 for copyright infringement. Ken has gotten the Smithsonian to change a number of its entries formerly misindentified
as E.M. Viquesney's "Spirit of the American Doughboy" to the correct John Paulding's "Over the Top".
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The information for this site was mostly gathered from
four primary sources: T. Perry Wesley's 1991 Doughboy list; the Smithsonian Inventory of American Sculpture (IAS) files; an archive of logs on Geocaching.com; and a partial list of unspecified "monument" locations published around 1936 by Viquesney himself. Some of those "monuments" are actual locations
of "The Spirit of the American Doughboy", while others are not.
I have not included any Geocaching.com location errors
listing Canada or Europe; there were no Viquesney Doughboys installed, nor are there any existing outside the lower 48 states.
Viquesney often boasted in his ads that there were "over
300" of his "Spirit of the American Doughboy" monuments at courthouses, schools, city parks and cemeteries across the country,
with at least one standing in every state of the Union. This, however, seems to be nothing but Viquesney puffery, as no "Spirit
of the American Doughboy" or record of one has yet been found in California, Delaware, Louisiana, Oregon, Nevada, New Hampshire,
New Mexico, North Dakota, or Rhode Island. If the "over 300" figure is correct, it's more than double the total actually found
or documented so far, so we have a lot of work to do if we're to find them.
Now see where they really are.
Please report dead links to the Webmaster.
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