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statues

The Christopher Columbus statue at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park in Boston was beheaded on June 10.

By Elof Axel Carlson

Elof Axel Carlson

I can accept the toppling of statues of dictators and those who were traitors and I can see as justified the removal of Confederate flags from public places. People whose personal deeds were heinous to Americans, like Confederate generals, or Benedict Arnold, have few virtues that can compensate for the major actions associated with their names.

It is more difficult for me to remove Columbus’s name from cities and our national celebrations of the opening up of the New World to Europe. The history of colonization is as old as history. Kings conquered whether in biblical times or in the fifteenth century.  If all present occupants are colonizers and descendants of colonizers, should they go back to the countries that their ancestors left?  Where would it end? In the Middle East when all the countries of the world were in the Middle East?

A similar difficulty is honoring a scientist for a major contribution to knowledge. Good science can be done by people of any ideology, religion, or ethnicity. Good science can be done in countries led by dictators. The scientists in those countries are also patriotic to their countries. They may also vary in their personalities regardless of how their countries are governed. A good scientist can make major contributions to humanity while being a cheating spouse, a tyrant as a mentor, a sexist, or a bigot.

I enjoy reading a lot about science and scientists. Most people are not saints. I am reminded of a phrase I learned in school — “most heroes have feet of clay.” It is important that a work of science is independent of the scientist’s personal behavior and beliefs. Often those beliefs are learned by the scientist who is shaped by the culture in which he or she resides.

In the 19th and 20th centuries most people were raised with racial theories that were discriminatory and prevailing views of human differences were based on what turned out to be false assumptions.

Virtually every educated person raised in the 1800s and early 1900s believed there were classes of people who were social failures. They called them paupers or degenerates. They falsely believed that they had defective heredity although genetics was not a science until the twentieth century. Some believed this defective heredity was caused by bad environments and could be reversed by good environments. Some believed the damage was irreversible except through draconian measures by laws forbidding their marriage or even worse, by sterilizing them as unfit to reproduce. It led to the “negative eugenics” movement that we reject today.

Very different was the “positive eugenics” movement that led to a conscious use of assortative mating, urging those who were successful, healthy, long lived, and talented to marry similar well-endowed spouses. Even W. E. Dubois embraced this positive eugenics outlook in 1903 calling it the “talented tenth” who would lead Black people out of the subjugated state most found themselves to be through neglect and bias of white society.

I believe we need to weigh a lot of issues in making decisions about renaming buildings, putting person’s portraits on currency, and naming our cities, high schools, and other public places. Should we avoid buying Volkswagens because Hitler wanted German automakers to make a “people’s car?” Should we avoid eating cream puffs because they were Hitler’s favorite dessert?

Humans live with diversity and not all that diversity is what we choose for our own lifestyle. We live with contradictory values, sometimes having rigid rules of behavior where right and wrong are clear-cut (don’t lie, cheat, or kill others) and other times we practice utilitarian ethics and go with “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Sometimes we trample on basic human rights in our self-serving interests like dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities filled with mostly noncombatant men, women and children.

Elof Axel Carlson is a distinguished teaching professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University.

Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A has been owned by Mario Tribuzio since 1966. The business continues to sell statues made from concrete by Tribuzio despite it being down to a one-man operation. Photo by Kyle Barr

Mario Tribuzio, the 87-year-old owner of Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A, sat in his chair among gods and angels and wondered how the deer survive the winter.

“They have to drink out of people’s bird baths and they go in other people’s gardens,” Tribuzio said. “You’re tucked into a nice warm house and they’re surviving out there in the winter, rain, ice and snow. Incredible, eh? But I feel bad for the deer. The deer got to make a living too.”

Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A has been owned by Mario Tribuzio since 1966. The business continues to sell statues made from concrete by Tribuzio despite it being down to a one-man operation. Photo by Kyle Barr

Somehow, despite the cold and the frost, year after year they survive, just like the statuary. Every winter the business slows to a crawl, but every spring Tribuzio is there, in his chair, awaiting the next customer to walk through his gate.

Every weekday morning, he walks from his house, just across the street, and opens the gates to the sound of rushing traffic. Every day he gets customers who come to him saying they had driven by so many times, wondering at the hundreds of Jesus, Mary and Buddha statues out front, but having never decided to stop in.

That wonderland of monsters, gods and animals is something the old statue maker has been building since 1966, when he first opened. In the workshop there are hundreds of statue molds lying in heaps on worn wood shelves and floors. In his paint studio, really a small shed to the rear of the statuary property, Tribuzio gives attention to his own deer. They’re concrete and painted with an airbrush and a well-practiced hand. Without close scrutiny, a passing figure might think they’re real.

“That’s why I’m still around — because I’m making them, but I can’t pick up a bag of cement no more,” he said. His face grew into a smile as he commented on his waning strength. “I never knew it was so heavy — a bag of cement, it’s like they’re making them heavier today, something’s going on.”

Tribuzio got his start as a young kid, carving shapes and figures out of soap. Later, a newly married Tribuzio was driving by the property on Route 25A and saw a man was selling statues on his front lawn. He bought the property in 1966 and moved in. Later, he bought a house just across from that property and has lived there ever since. From his perch behind the chain-link fence he has seen things change, and he said he questions if there is still a desire for crafts like his.

Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A has been owned by Mario Tribuzio since 1966. The business continues to sell statues made from concrete by Tribuzio despite it being down to a one-man operation. Photo by Kyle Barr

“People are running too far too fast, the pace of living today is just too much,” Tribuzio said. “Once people entertained themselves at home doing sculpting — carving stuff.”

With the majority of his family living in Maine, most of the time he is alone, even if he remains in the company of his stone brothers and sisters.

“Even the smell of a bag of cement brings back so many memories,” Tribuzio’s daughter Marjorie Adams said. “Statue making is in his blood, and he’s been doing it his whole life.”

Though all three of Tribuzio’s children moved up to Maine, several of his children and grandchildren still take the trek south periodically to help him in his workshop and also learn the art of statue making. Tribuzio’s granddaughter Megan Tribuzio said some of her family has continued their grandfather’s trade and made a small statuary in the town of Northport, Maine.

“I’m proud of his business, and I hope there is some way to keep it open,” Tribuzio’s granddaughter said. “No matter where you are, a lot of people like those statues, whether it’s a mermaid, a dolphin or a deer, people like to have them in their yard.”

Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A has been owned by Mario Tribuzio since 1966. The business continues to sell statues made from concrete by Tribuzio despite it being down to a one-man operation. Photo by Kyle Barr

Where in earlier decades he had young people working with him to make the statues, now it’s just him. He said the liability insurance has pushed out any hope of hiring anybody new. And as he ages he finds it near impossible to lift the bags of concrete to poor into the molds. He’s contented himself by making smaller statues like his deer, or the small ornaments designed to look like bread, donuts and Italian bread real enough to eat.

David Perry, who now lives in Brentwood, worked in the statuary for nearly 25 years before heart issues forced him to stop. Tribuzio called him one of the best statue painters he ever saw, painting beautiful work on images of Jesus or Venus, back before it became too expensive to use the glossy lacquer paints.

“He was more than just a boss, he was a good friend, and he’s about the only thing that I have that resembles family anymore,” Perry said. “He’s very fair, that’s the best way to put it, he’s real old school.”

Tribuzio remains the last thread that is currently holding the statuary together, and despite the family’s desire to maintain the business it would be hard for any of them to leave Maine and take it over.

Still, the old statue maker has cement in his blood, and for now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

“I’m fortunate, real fortunate,” Tribuzio said. “I started out dedicated to do something like this and I can’t believe how it worked out myself.”

Rocky Point Statuary on Route 25A has been owned by Mario Tribuzio since 1966. The business continues to sell statues made from concrete by Tribuzio despite it being down to a one-man operation. Photo by Kyle Barr