Lindy Hart Recalls Sculptor’s Dedication

For seven of the past nine years after the death of her husband, Lindy Hart has lived alone on the family's 250-acre estate, Chesley, in northern Virginia.
About a year and a half ago she moved back to Washington, the city where her husband created the masterpiece that would be considered among his best known and perhaps greatest artistic contributions, the Three Servicemen Statue.
In an interview at the Orman House prior to Saturday's ceremony, Hart shared some of the details of the passion her husband poured into his sculpture, which came into being after a controversy arose the artistic commission was first awarded to architect Maya Lin.
"It was very controversial to add the sculpture to the wall," said Hart. "Someone asked him what the hardest part of that time period was and he said ‘Going out in the morning and picking up the Washington Post.' It was difficult, it was hurtful, a lot of the controversy.
"He was very dedicated and determined to express the nation's gratitude to Vietnam veterans in this sculpture," she said. "His idea was that you had all the military in this pyramid and right at that point was the grunt on the ground."
Because the sculptor had finished third in the original competition, when the time came to add a representational sculpture, he was the committee's first choice.
"Rick's original entry also had a wall and he had two allegorical figures running towards each other at the end of the wall," she said. "His was the only figurative work that placed in the competition, that's why they went back to him to do the figures.
"His idea was to set a tension between the wall and the sculpture," Hart said. "There was a fleeting idea of just one soldier, but three is an artistic number, a complete number.
"One veteran said ‘it looked like they were coming out of the bush and looking for their own names on the wall and facing their own immortality," she said.
The Harts were living in Washington in the early 80's when the sculptor worked on the project, ‘He had a studio on F Street, the 930 building,' she said. "Often veterans would come by and they would critique "Well, we didn't do our boonie hat that way," and what he found out was every unit had their own little style how they dressed.
"He sort of used different elements of different stories veterans had told him. And the African American soldier with the towel around his neck, that was very indicative of what the African Americans did," Hart said. "The uniforms are kind of generic, he sort of crossed services with some of the detail."
The couple became good friends with Jim Connell, who was one of the models, a Marine stationed at the barracks on H Street. "He also used the brother of a friend of Rick's who was Mexican and that was sort of the Hispanic and represented the other ethnic composition," said Hart.
"Someone said ‘Did you use Vietnam veterans for models?'" she recalled. "Well this was 20 years after the war. Rick was trying to portray how young the soldiers were.
"And when he was actually visiting a friend at the hospital, there was a black kid in the waiting room that had this sort of rounded forehead," Hart said. "He was there with his mother and here's this man comes up and says ‘I'm a sculptor and I would like to use your son for a model.' He invited them both to the studio, the mother and the son. He was about 19; Rick was sculpting men that were the age of the Vietnam veteran at the time.
"So she brought her son to the studio and so he used him. He loved his face, and his rounded forehead and he was very youthful looking to Rick," she said.
The work, made with what is called the "lost wax" process, took about 18 months to complete. It was originally done in clay, and then a mold is taken of the clay and wax taken of that mold.
After having heart surgery in 1993, Frederick Hart suffered a stroke in 1998, and died of cancer in 1999 at age 55.
His works are now represented by Chesley LLC, which like the family estate, is named for Hart's sister, who died of cancer at age 17.
The couple have two sons, the younger one studying film in San Francisco, and the older now working for a publishing company in Bangkok after earning a master's in anthropology. "Fortunately they got his talent and brains. They're very accomplished kids," said Hart.
After staying the weekend at Apalachicola's Water Street Hotel, she said she was much taken by the beauty and hospitality of the area.
"I love it. It reminds some of South Carolina where Rick grew up, the marshes," she said. "It's not quite as lush as South Carolina, it's a little more sandy.
"It's such a warm and embracing community," said Hart. "I'm from Oklahoma so I have Southern roots. I feel at home here; I like it very much."