Sedalia Missouri Pettis County Doughboy Statue

Text

The sculptor Ernest Moore Viquesney of Spencer, Indiana, created his stone design of “The Spirit of the American Doughboy” statue to immortalize the importance of what the soldiers were and had sacrificed in the Great War. In December of 1920, his patent was approved for the sculpture to be reproduced and the sculptor planned to mass produce the statute in different sizes. It took him two years to complete a lifesize statute. The first memorial statue was installed in Nashville, Georgia, where it was placed on top of a marble base. In 1922 Viquesney received an award for a design contest for a WWI memorial in Centralia, Washington but in the same yearJules Betchem, a stone carver from Chicago filed a copyright infringement suit against Visquesney. Visquesney then sold his rights to the Doughboy statue to his business partner Walter Rylander, but regained them in 1926.

The Pettis County Post No. 16 American Legion purchased a bronze doughboy statue in 1925, but it was not immediately installed because a list of those soldiers who fought and died in World War I from Pettis County had not been compiled. The statue was stored at the freight yards at the Missouri Pacific Railroad depot. The statute was installed and dedicated on November 12, 1926, --one day after Veterans day and one day after the World War I monument was dedicated in Kansas City, Missouri. The base of the statue featured the names of the World War I veterans from Pettis County who had died followed by the names of other veterans from Pettis County.
In 1927 and 1929 a rail guard, spotlights, and a concrete walkway encircled the statue. The statue continues to be an important place where individuals come to express their appreciation and rememberance for all of those Pettis County residents have died in military service to their country.