For nearly a month, Thomas Jefferson was my only friend. I stumbled upon him on my very first day as a graduate student at the University of Missouri. I was walking through the school quad, feeling like I was on the other side of the world from my family in Virginia, when I saw him. He was sitting pensively on a bench, quill in hand, quietly contemplating the next line of the Declaration of Independence. I stopped in my tracks and stared. Here I was, in the middle of nowhere, USA, and right in front of me was my very favorite president and founder of my alma mater. Never before in my life have I had such a reaction to a statue. My eyes welled up and I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. I might be 1,000 miles from home, but at least I knew where to find one familiar face.

Tom and I spent many autumn mornings together that year. Conveniently, his bench was large enough for the two of us, and I often perched next to him, sipping coffee and scanning the pages of USA Today. He good-naturedly thought through his never-ending writer’s block and gazed upon the hordes of students passing by. Sometimes I’d read him headlines about the 2008 election or about the downfall of the economy. I’d lean on his shoulder and whisper that he should be very thankful he’s no longer president.

I told him he was the best Jefferson statue I’d ever seen – even better than those at U.Va. I remembered peering through the Rotunda keyhole at Alexander Galt’s magnificent marble sculpture and climbing on Sir Moses Jacob Ezekiel’s Liberty Bell statue on my 21st birthday—it’s too late to get into trouble for that, right? Those renderings paled in comparison to my Missouri Jefferson. There was just something about the way his hair was pulled casually into a ponytail, his flawless complexion, the delicately raised veins in his hands, the way his kerchief spilled elegantly out of his carefully buttoned waistcoat. He radiated confidence, calmness and kindness. He was perfect.

The fact that his tombstone was only 20 feet away simply added to his aura of completeness. Perhaps that sounds morbid, but the history majors among us will recognize the astonishment I felt when, one day early on in our relationship, I wandered over to the obelisk and read:

This original marker, placed at the grave of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, Virginia, in 1826, constructed from his own design, was presented July 4, 1883, by the Jefferson Heirs to the University of Missouri, first state university to be founded in the Louisiana Territory purchased from France during President Jefferson’s administration.

All those visits to Monticello and I had been looking at an oversized replica. Who knew all it would take was enrolling in two years of graduate school and forking over tens of thousands of dollars I didn’t have to see the real thing. “Tom!” I exclaimed, turning back to him, vanilla latte sloshing out of my Starbucks cup. “This is fantastic! It’s like the opposite of visiting Monticello!” I recalled the wooly pelts, mammoth skulls and intricate maps decorating the mansion’s foyer. There, the Wild West had been transplanted to Albemarle County, Va. Here, a Charlottesville relic had been relocated to Boone County, Missouri—and yes, that is Boone as in Daniel Boone.

As the months went on, I jogged past Tom on my morning runs, cheerfully tapped him on the head on my way to classes, laughed when he donned a party hat—courtesy of the Museum of Anthropology—on his birthday and eagerly introduced him to friends visiting from the East Coast. Like Jefferson, I had finally found my place west of the Mississippi.

Before too long, I met a nice—and very much alive—young man whose arms were warmer and more pliable than T.J.’s bronze appendages. Even so, I felt I needed to clear the air; I rather bashfully admitted I had a special place in my heart for our third president. My now-husband looked at me skeptically and said after a moment: “Well, it’s a good thing we don’t live in 1803.”

Comments

• George lundeen on November 11, 2010

  Whitney, your article is well written and makes a sculptor like me happy. Thank you for taking your time to touch my bronze.

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