DEL.ICIO.USDooley statue to be unveiled before Georgia game
Dedication ceremony at newly created garden plaza on south end of campus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Athens — It began as banter in a bar. It was in danger of melting away at one point. Now it stands 14 feet tall for all to see.
A project four years in the making will be unveiled on the University of Georgia campus Saturday morning: a statue of former football coach and athletics director Vince Dooley being hoisted on the shoulders of two players from his 1980 national championship team.
Brant Sanderlin/bsanderlin@ajc.com
Vince Dooley compiled a 201-77-10 record during his 25 year coaching career at Georgia. He served as athletic director from 1979 to 2004.
Perhaps even more impressive than the 2,600-pound statue or the nine-ton granite base on which it rests or the lavish garden plaza that surrounds it is the story of how it came to be.
“Well, that might be a novel,” said Stan Mullins, the Athens artist who started work on the statue before he knew if there was anywhere to put it or anyone to fund it.
“Really, I just saw it as something that should be done,” he said. “You’ve got to take a leap of faith sometimes.”
Shortly after Dooley’s 2004 retirement, Mullins and his friend Russ Thornton, a local insurance agent, were talking — “over a couple of beers,” Mullins said, “as Athens is famous for” — about the need to appropriately honor Dooley’s legendary career.
Pretty soon, Mullins — a UGA graduate — was at work on a statue.
By spring 2005, he had sculpted a larger-than-life clay likeness of Dooley being carried off the field by victorious players. But the artist lacked the money for the next step in the process: having a rubber mold made to preserve the work. As temperatures rose that spring, the clay statue began to soften and crack, Mullins said.
Or as Dooley put it: “That thing almost melted.”
Just in the nick of time, Mullins obtained a personal loan to have the mold made.
That bought time for friends of Dooley — including his former player Billy Payne, who brought the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta — to galvanize support and raise funds to have the statue completed and bronzed.
Early this year, the UGA athletics board, the UGA Cabinet and the state Board of Regents approved renaming the sports complex on the south end of campus the “Vince Dooley Athletic Complex” and placing the statue in a newly created garden plaza at the entrance to the area, which includes Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, Stegeman Coliseum, the Spec Towns Track, Foley Field and the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.
The athletics association spent about $2 million from reserve funds to build the terraced, almost-one-acre garden plaza, while private donors wound up covering the $225,000 statue.
On Saturday, 2-1/2 hours before Georgia plays Georgia Tech, a dedication ceremony will be held in Butts-Mehre and the statue unveiled at the nearby corner of Lumpkin Street and Pinecrest Drive.
“Someone asked me, ‘How do you think you’re going to feel?’ ” Dooley said. “I don’t know. I guess a little embarrassed.”
Georgia’s winningest football coach hasn’t seen the finished work yet, although he happened to be driving on Lumpkin last weekend and glimpsed the statue — heavily wrapped in plastic — dangling from a crane as it was being lowered into position.
“I think what has been the [best part of the] experience is to see the people involved in the project and the excitement they have for it,” Dooley said.
“It’s a very nice tribute, and I appreciate it very much. And I thank everybody that was involved in making it happen.”
It’s not the ultimate tribute many Georgia fans and former players have advocated for years: attaching Dooley’s name to Sanford Stadium, either by hyphenating the name of the stadium or by naming the field for him.
But it does put Mullins’ creation in a prominent spot.
“I did it for everybody [Dooley] has inspired along the way,” Mullins said. “It’s a multi-generational project, to be totally honest. It’s really thrilling to be a part of.”
A noted lover of plants, Dooley is thrilled that the statue is surrounded by a garden. In fact, he accompanied renowned horticulturist and former UGA professor Michael Dirr and Atlanta landscape architect Alex Maddox to a nursery in Hickory, N. C., to personally select many of the trees and shrubs that have been planted in the plaza.
Maddox said visitors “will see plants they don’t normally see — weeping plants and variegated pines,” among others. And plenty of Dooley’s beloved Japanese maples.
The center of attention, though, is the bronzed Dooley, held aloft by players wearing Nos. 64 and 88. The numbers represent the first (1964) and last (1988) seasons that Dooley coached the Dogs. On the back of the bronzed jerseys, the players’ names are “National” and “Champions.”
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