Lee statue is ready to unveil — or not

WASHINGTON CITY — Jerry Anderson's sculpted bronze statue of John Doyle Lee is ready to be unveiled, but some people would rather see the larger-than-life sculpture melted down for scrap.

"We've had all kinds of suggestions on what to do with it," Washington City Mayor Terrill Clove said of a $35,000 statue that is slated to join bronze sculptures of other city founders on the grounds of a historical museum on Telegraph Street. "If I had to do this over again, it probably isn't worth it. I'm weary."

The City Council is poised to decide once and for all where to place the Lee statue during Wednesday night's public meeting. The statue's dedication has been delayed at least twice over the past year and is currently scheduled for May 7.

"We need to come up with a decision that doesn't include postponing it," Clove said.

Anderson said the city can do whatever it wants with the statue since it owns it, but he would like to see the statue erected so people can see Lee as a physical figure.

"First of all, I am an artist. If artists are given a choice of people to sculpt, they will always choose a controversial figure or one that is famous," said Anderson. "I take full responsibility for that choice. Whether John D. Lee is guilty or innocent is not the point. Like Butch Cassidy, Jesse James or Wyatt Earp, John D. Lee will never go away."

Lee's legacy as an influential and important pioneer leader who helped found many southern Utah towns is undisputed. But history also remembers Lee as the only man ever tried, convicted and executed for his role in the Sept. 11, 1857, slaughter of 120 Arkansas emigrants in nearby Mountain Meadows. Local members of the Mormon Militia and area Indians reportedly participated in the attack that spared only 18 children.

Descendants of the massacre victims, which included men, women and children as young as 7, find it hard to believe that city leaders not only considered commissioning the Lee statue but paid for it with public funds.

"I don't think most of the people in southern Utah understand the descendants," said Oregon resident Lynn-Marie Fancher, who said she is related to members of the doomed Baker/Fancher wagon train that passed through Washington County on its way to California. "That's what this symbolizes to me. They're honoring that man, a mass murderer."

While Lee's descendants may want to emphasize the good he did, both before and after the massacre, there is no getting away from the fact that Lee was a scapegoat who bore the guilt of many, said Gene Sessions, chairman of the Department of History at Weber State University.