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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThere might be no better time to honor Richard Lugar, a transformative Indianapolis mayor and influential U.S. senator, than now, as partisanship and a hard-fought presidential race seem ready to tear apart the fabric of our country.
Lugar, a Republican, led with civility and grace that were well-recognized in his time but are even more revered today. And so it’s no surprise that another of the city’s great leaders—the late Jim Morris—spearheaded the effort to fund a Richard Lugar Monument for downtown.
Morris started that work in 2019, shortly after Lugar died at 87 years old. Civic leaders raised more than $500,000 to fund an 800-pound sculpture that sits 7 feet tall and is mounted on a 2-1/2-foot-tall base that weighs 1,000 pounds.
It depicts a relaxed Lugar during his third U.S. Senate term leaning on a column representing the U.S. Capitol.
The monument was unveiled Tuesday, just weeks after Morris died at 81 years old, but his and Lugar’s spirits reverberated through the crowd gathered at Bicentennial Unity Plaza outside Gainbridge Fieldhouse to see it.
The speakers—which included former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mayor Joe Hogsett and Gov. Eric Holcomb by video—used words like “remarkable,” “extraordinary” and “humble” to describe Lugar, who served as mayor from 1968-1976 and as a senator from 1977-2013, including time as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“He put humility and servant leadership well above ego,” Rice said. “This humble man, however, was also an innovator. A creator. A strategist. A problem-solver.”
Among his accomplishments in the Senate was the bipartisan Nunn-Lugar Act, which created a framework for dismantling weapons of mass destruction from the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Hogsett credited Lugar with launching the “modern Indianapolis” with Unigov, which consolidated the city and Marion County, boosting the city’s population and revenue and unifying what had been competing local governments.
“Abraham Lincoln belonged to both the ages and the angels,” Hogsett told the crowd. “And as I said five years ago [when Lugar died], so, too, does Sen. Richard Lugar.”
Longtime local architect Jonathan Hess, chair of Browning Day, designed the memorial. The statue was sculpted by Ryan Feeney, an Indianapolis firefighter and metal-forge owner.
The statue will later be moved to a permanent location amid a grove of sycamore trees on the southwest quadrant of Lugar Plaza, along the Cultural Trail on the south side of the City-County Building. Five plaques will surround the statue, with each inscribed with accomplishments.
We look forward to the statue’s permanent placement as a reminder of the bipartisanship and civility Lugar practiced throughout his career.
He was an example of how an elected official can inspire a generation of young leaders and leave a better community in his wake.•
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