McGaw does his part to restore Hebe – for free
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McGaw, 75, has been working for more than a year in an attempt to save the statue, which was donated to the city by a women’s group in 1915. He said by the end of next month, his work should be complete.
To date, he has spent about 2,300 hours in what has become a tedious attempt to restore the dilapidated statue which was rusting from the inside out.
Using a crane, volunteers carefully removed the statue from its perch on Court Square last March after some dissenting opinions circulated about whether the statue was worth saving. City officials had denied a request to fund restoration and had encouraged concerned citizens to apply for grants. But private donations and, in large part, McGaw, are currently making restoration possible.
McGaw, who was born and raised in Ireland but whose business partner is from McMinnville, said he heard about the plight of the statue and costs estimated at $40,000 to fix it.
McGaw initially wondered where it was located, adding he never noticed it at Court Square before the dispute began.
McGaw is a mechanical engineer and metallurgist who also holds an MBA from Notre Dame. He has donated his time and labor to the cause, saying he’s “not charging a dime” for his work.
Heritage Alliance president Jo Lunsford said a fund-raising effort that yielded about $12,000 for restoration will still be used to purchase items like paint, although the final color has yet to be established.
Since last March, Hebe has undergone quite a transformation. The statue, bases, tiers and other parts have had their paint removed, and have basically been rehabilitated inside and out. And while some balked at early cost estimates, McGaw said no one could really have known the amount of work involved without looking at it from the inside out, which could not have been done without taking it apart.
Portions of the statue, which has almost 60 pieces, were cracked to the point where the paint was the only thing holding it together, he added, noting years of neglect caused major problems.
“And everything that had been attempted to restore it created additional problems. And every place it was welded, it broke,” McGaw said. “It had hundreds of breaks. The entire unit was cracked, broken or had pieces missing.”
The rust has been removed, the cracks have been braced together and welded and epoxy has been used to bring the cast iron metal together. Missing or broken pieces have been replaced or re-cast and the body of the Hebe figure itself now contains a lightweight concrete and a 1-inch stainless steel rod where the statue can be bolted to the base plate, among many other details.
“The tedious part was bending all the pieces to the inside of it to get it where you could hold it together,” McGaw said of the bracing. “I was probably underneath that thing 400 or 500 times. You bend a piece, then you check it, then you come and bend it again, and then you do the drilling and bolting and tapping,” he added.
It needs some finishing work and the tiers need to be stacked, but McGaw said when it’s finished, with proper maintenance, the statue should last another 100 years.
Lunsford noted the amount of work is significant.
“It’s remarkable,” she said. “It’s just amazing somebody would do that. Not being from here, I think it’s wonderful for him to do this.”
Why would anyone donate this amount of work? He’s got an answer for that.
“You’ve got a 100-year-old piece of heritage,” he said. “Why not? I mean, what’s a little bit of money? And it is a nice piece. It was donated to the community. You would think the community would have fiscal responsibility to take care of it. Well, they didn’t.”