WASHINGTON – On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the scaffolding around the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial will be pulled down, the controversial “drum major” quote will be gone and the striations on the statue will be deepened. But a crucial step to make the statue look better might not be finished.
Miscommunication over how to sandblast The Stone of Hope after the offending inscription was chiseled away has caused the delay.
Without sandblasting, the surface of the statue won’t look uniform, according to the sculptor, Yixin Lei. But the contractor can’t get insurance to use the material Lei wants.
The National Park Service is trying to bring in its own crew to do the sandblasting before Lei’s scheduled departure for his home in China in a week. If that fails, the work would have to be halted for the Aug. 28 anniversary. The NPS then would try to get Lei back to supervise the final steps of the project.
NPS spokeswoman Carol Johnson said the work is “substantially done” with the quote removed and striations deepened.
Lei’s team disagreed.
“My dad is very unhappy,” said Lei’s son, Ke Shi. “He came here to fix the statue. It would appear extremely irresponsible to him if he had to leave his job unfinished.” Shi added that it would be difficult for Lei to return because of pending projects in China.
Lei wanted to apply a mineral slag abrasive named Black Beauty – the material used for the original construction – to sandblast the entire surface of The Stone of Hope. Because the contractor did not have insurance to cover using the particular material, Lei agreed to a test using Walnut Shell – another common sandblasting material.
The Friday test, however, left a yellow stain on the statue, which can be removed.
“The key is they [contractor] have not used that material on this particular type and color of stone so they were surprised how the oil of the walnut shell breached into the stone itself,” said Ed Jackson, chief architect of the memorial.
The contractor, Worcester Eisenbrandt Inc., of Baltimore, was picked by an office under NPS, though Johnson said she wasn’t sure when the contract was finalized.
“We were unaware that it needed sandblasting at the end of the process when we did the contract. It was not mentioned to us by the foundation, who had been working with the artist,” she said.
The Memorial Foundation, which oversaw construction of the memorial, is now referring all questions to NPS, and the contractor was not available for comments.
Johnson said the issue now is when the sandblasting can be done and who will do it.
Jackson said the problem surfaced February, when Lei, the contractor, the foundation and the park discussed sandblasting. Though the contractor didn’t plan to conduct the process in the first place, the discussion went on to include the materials used and environmental concerns.
“We’ve been talking sandblasting every month since February, trying to insist on the importance of it,” Jackson said.
But Lei’s team arrived in the U.S. last month still not knowing what material would be used for the sandblasting. “I felt that the park wasn’t fully aware of the necessity of sandblasting until they see the removal work done,” Shi said.
The work is aimed at removing a quote on the memorial that read, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” The quote was incorrectly worded and critics said it made King sound arrogant.