DANA — Southern Indiana sculptor David Ross Stevens will present a bust of famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle to the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana at 2 p.m. May 14.
It will kick off the 2022 tourist season for the museum.
Pyle, who was born in 1900 near Dana, located north of Terre Haute, was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet in 1945 in the waning days of World War II on a small island near Okinawa. Most of his wartime efforts were in the European theater of action prior to the surrender of Germany.
The Hoosier journalist was published in more than 700 newspapers and was considered to be the most widely known “war person” other than U.S. Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Stevens, a resident near Borden in southern Indiana, has many busts and statues in public places including: astronomer Edwin Hubble at New Albany High School; golfer Fuzzy Zoeller at Sellersburg; activist Frederick Douglass at Division Street School, New Albany; Lucy Higgs Nichols, an escaped slave who served as a nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War, at the Carnegie History and Art Museum, New Albany; Supreme Court Justice Sherman Minton, Floyd County Public Library; and bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson at the Williamson Museum, Helena, Ark.
The sculptor spent his early career as a journalist and said the Pyle bust — made in cast stone — was particularly satisfying to do because he shared the life of newspapering with Pyle.
Stevens said most of his pieces are commissions, but he did Pyle on his own initiative and then decided to donate it.
“That was just a fun thing for myself since I had been in journalism,” Stevens said.
The Ernie Pyle World War II Museum is open three days a week. Its hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. All times are Eastern time zone.
