Senator Bartlett's statue was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday, March 27, 1971. Felix de Weldon, the Viennese-born artist who sculpted the Iwo Jima Memorial, had worked with Bartlett's widow, Vide, to create the likeness. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens opened the proceedings and the Rev. Edward Elson, Chaplain for the U. S. Senate, provided the invocation. Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, Alaska Representative Nick Begich, Washington Senator Warren G. Magnuson, and Alaska Lieutenant Governor "Red" Boucher also spoke in Bartlett's honor. Rev. Elson closed the ceremony with a benediction.
Lieutenant Governor Boucher, presenting the statue to the Nation, announced that "as representatives of the people, the Alaska Legislature authorized that Alaska's first hero in Statuary Hall be Bob Bartlett. His place in history was now inscribed in the halls of the nation's Capitol, the building in which he worked for fourteen long years to achieve statehood for Alaska. "The millions who will visit this statue this year and in the years to come," Boucher concluded, will see in the statue of Bob Bartlett "the face of a man who gave his service and life to Alaska."
Rev. Elson praised Bartlett's "high vision, lofty idealism, prodigious energy and sacrificial devotion;" he lauded Senator Bartlett's legislative and executive talents and "enduring statesmanship," but also spoke of his "selfless labor for others," the "warmth of his friendship," and his gentle and human graces which endeared him to the multitudes of his fellow citizens." "Statehood," Senator Gravel said of Bartlett, "is his monument." He referred to the statue as "a small tribute, but it is one [Alaskans] offer with love and respect." Congressman Begich then introduced Bartlett's wife, Vide, and Hugh Wade, Alaska's Secretary of State, who unveiled the statue. Senator Magnuson of Washington, who had worked with Bartlett since Bartlett's arrival as a Territorial Delegate to the U. S. Senate in 1945, recounted Bartlett's life and work.
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