ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 10, 1993                   TAG: 9305100033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium


CAPITOL'S STATUE OK AFTER RIDE

When the statue of Armed Freedom touched down on the Capitol Plaza shortly after dawn Sunday, a worker climbed a ladder, unhitched a web of protective straps, and kissed the bronze goddess on the cheek.

Hundreds cheered as a helicopter crew plucked the statue from the U.S. Capitol dome, where it has stood guard for 130 years.

Bringing the 7-ton, 19 1/2-foot statue down from its perch 268 feet above the ground took months of planning. Architect of the Capitol George White was obviously relieved.

"`I told everyone that if we dropped it, I had a 7 a.m. ticket to Mexico," White said. "I've just torn that ticket up. Everything was done in the best way possible. There weren't any hitches."

Armed Freedom now begins five months of repair to mend the ravages of 13 decades of Washington weather.

Pilot Max Evans flew the rear position on the bright orange Skycrane helicopter, owned by the Erickson Air-Crane Co. of Central Point, Ore.

"The back seat does the lift work and pickup," he said. "I just picked it up and set it on the stand down here."

"This was quite a normal operation," Evans said nonchalantly. "The ground crew does quite a lot of preparations to make this go easily. When that's over, we come and do the easy part."

"After seeing that statue up there for all of those years, to see it come down safely was truly great," said Diane Lane, a Capitol staff member who rose before dawn to witness the operation.

The workers who prepared the statue for its move also got into the act. They pasted onto the statue's sword and shield two large red, white and blue labels which read: "Proud to be American."

To prepare the hollow statue for lifting, workers had to jack it up with an internal column and slip a lifting ring under the base, White said.

"It had to be lifted from the bottom because it was assembled in five sections and we couldn't be sure that it wouldn't come apart," he said.

The lifting ring will be made a permanent part of the statue's base, adding 4 inches to its height.

In the meantime, Armed Freedom will get a much-needed cleaning. "When it's finished, it's going to look like a bronze statue again instead of a corroded green statue," White said.



 by CNB