ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 4, 1996 TAG: 9607050064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: HOLIDAY
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
After months of rancor over where to put a monument to Arthur Ashe, a bronze statue of him was set atop a stone column Wednesday on a street dedicated to Confederate icons in the city where he was born.
Dozens of people watched and many took pictures as a huge crane lowered the 12-foot-tall figure into place on a 44-ton stone column base along Monument Avenue. Statues eastward along the tree-lined boulevard honor Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
``I knew Arthur Ashe when he was a teen-ager, a young child growing up,'' said Shirley Segar. ``I'm glad the controversy is over. ... I hope the statue will encourage young people to strive to be what he lived for.''
Ashe, the first black man to win the Wimbledon tennis championship, spent his early years in a segregated Richmond where he was denied permission to play on the city's whites-only tennis courts. He became an advocate for human rights and research into AIDS, which he contracted from a blood transfusion. He died of AIDS in 1993.
The statue arrived Wednesday morning aboard a flatbed truck after traveling nearly 100 miles from Waynesboro, where it was cast by sculptor Paul di Pasquale.
``A lot of people were looking. You could tell who liked it by their reaction. Some waved and smiled,'' said Robbie Drumheller, who drove the truck bearing the statue.
City residents argued for months over whether the statue should be placed on the avenue or another spot, such as Byrd Park, where he was turned away from the tennis courts. An arts group also tried unsuccessfully to persuade City Council to put di Pasquale's statue elsewhere and hold an international competition to come up with a design with more artistic merit.
``It belongs here. It belongs anywhere in the city of Richmond. Any monument should go on Monument Avenue - black, white, Civil War or whatever. But he's a good role model for black youth,'' said Bill Hutchinson, a neighborhood resident.
``It's very hard to explain to the kids why he couldn't play tennis here,'' said Richmonder Carol Wolf. She was escorting her children as well as relatives from Edmond, Okla.
Those who watched the statue being set in place said it looked better than they expected.
The statue will be unveiled officially next Wednesday, which would have been Ashe's 53rd birthday, amid songs by the Harlem Boy's Choir.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB