His face is set, determined. Not a trace of a smile appears across set lips, as if whatever it is that stands in his way is formidable, even daunting, but not invincible. His determination is created by his confidence. He knows that what must be done, will be.
His hair is entirely his own. If your memory includes any image of John Neihardt, Nebraska's poet laureate-for-all-time (he still is, although he's been gone for 50 years), that image features his incredible mop of tangled hair that might well have been out of control but still did him proud, the mane of a hero drawn from poets of old.
It might surprise you--it did me--that this sculpted face right out of Ovid was created by his lover, his wife of fifty years, Mona Martinson, who was one of only three young sculptors ever to study with the artist considered today the master of contemporary sculpture, Rodin. Mona Martinson came from treasured stock. Her father was in the railroad business when that meant money. As a child of wealth and privilege, she lived a rare life in two locals--5th Avenue, New York, and Germany's Black Forest.
Mona sometimes fought her mother's plans for her life. When she was little more than a child, she told her mother that when she married, she wouldn't have an entire roomful of childcare like she had--she'd do her own mothering.
But it was her mother that brought a country writer named Neihardt into Mona's life. Her mother read and enjoyed some of Neihardt's early poems and short stories and recommended them to her daughter, who happened to be back again from Europe.
And thus began one of the great love stories in American history--I'm fully aware of overstatement, but I'll stand by it.
In the library at the John Neihardt Center in Bancroft, Nebraska, you'll find that bust, one of only three sculptures Mona ever finished after marrying Neihardt, which she did less than a day after meeting him at Omaha's Union Station. They'd exchanged pictures, so he knew who was his sweetheart when the passengers stepped off number 112 on track 13. So convinced of their plotting was he that had their license to be married in his back pocket, dated the next day.
Seriously, even more impossible is that John Neihardt, an unmistakably promising voice in American literature and history, a day or two later took his bride out to Bancroft, Nebraska, to his mother's house, where the three of them would live. Mona Martinson Neihardt had studied with Rodin, for heaven's sake. Her upbringing likely included lawn tennis and croquet. She'd grown up on two continents, had to be multi-lingual (her father was German), was a product of the most prestigious educational possibilities, and there she was, married to a man considerably shorter than she was on the edge of the chilling loneliness of life on the Great Plains.
Disaster, waiting to happen? You'd think so, wouldn't you? Little rich girl surrounded muddy pioneer Americans, married a day after she first laid eyes on this little poet her mother thought interesting, a short guy with a huge mop of hair--it can't last. Conventional small-towners? Not really. Their neighbors didn't always understand them and didn't know what to think of their skinny-dipping, but their commitment to each other was indomitable. Amazing. Just amazing.
But the marriage did last, and that's why I'm telling you once again that this marriage of theirs--Mona and John--has to be one of the great American love stories.
Next time you visit Bancroft and the Neihardt Center, check out the sculpture, the bust that Mona did of her husband, one of only three sculptures she did after studying with Rodin, the master, go find the sculpture. You'll know there's more to its intrigue than simply a formidable sense of purpose and drive.
She gave him his determination because, well, she loved him, as he loved her.
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