Day Sixteen

The Guardian

In 2002 we only had one vehicle, the infamous mini-van. So every morning Kat got up and ready for work and then loaded me and the boys into the van and drove us all to her office. Kat works at the state capital complex, but not in the capital building. In 2002 they had finished the new dome on the capital building and were getting ready to place the guardian on top/

The guardian is the work of renowned artist and former Oklahoma state senator Enoch Kelly Haney. In 2000 his design was selected in a blind competition to find a fitting crown for the dome. The first week of June 2002 the Guardian was placed on top of the dome. Prior to that the Guardian was on display on front of the capital building, and Paul saw it every day, and he witnessed the daily progress made with the giant cranes and the whole process involved in getting the guardian atop the dome. Every morning when I drove home from taking Kat to work he talked about the guardian, and the big trucks. Of course he thought the president lived in the capital building and that the guardian was one of the Native Americans from the Disney movie Peter Pan, but that is not the point.

In 2003 the “friends of the Mansion” group that makes the commemorative Christmas ornaments that are sold to make $ for the Governors mansion choose the guardian as the ornament of the year. I kept telling Kat we should get one for Paul for Christmas to help him remember that year. I meant to, I kept thinking I would, but then I never got around to it. I mentioned to a friend at a Sunday school party how interested Paul had been in that whole process, plus the fact that he had seen it go up day by day, and that he would always be able to say as an adult that he witnessed that part of Oklahoma history first hand. A few weeks later when we had out Christmas party she brought the ornament for Paul.

This is one of those, it means more to me than it does to him things, but there it is. Someday I hope when he is 39 and hangs it on his tree he will tell his kids, “you know when I was just a child I saw this statue placed on the capital dome. . . “